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BGonline.org Forums
Testing the limits of nactation
Posted By: Matt Ryder In Response To: Testing the limits of nactation (Timothy Chow)
Date: Thursday, 6 January 2011, at 5:30 a.m.
... the way I perceive systems of definitions is shaped by decades of experience with mathematics and computer programming.
But nactation wasn't devised as a mathematical notation. Take a step back from your decades of experience and perhaps you'll see nactation for what is: a descriptive language used by experts to convey ideas about backgammon.
It's a lingo that's been adopted by some of the top minds in the game. If you care about the insights of these players, learning nactation is not an option, however "baroque" you may personally feel it's becoming.
Which is not say I think that nactation is perfect. I mourn in particular the loss of the elegant and compact * convention to denote a hit. Nactation in my view unnecessarily masks hits in many situations. Much better for me would be to show hits in the old way, even when other principles take precedence, (eg. P* or R* or $*)
Still, there's no point in railing against an established orthodoxy. Learn the common language.
Studying nactation won't [aid a study of backgammon], except indirectly, by allowing you to read certain literature more easily and categorize opening data more efficiently.
By "certain literature", I guess you mean "virtually every post on bgonline"? :-)
For this latter purpose [ie, studying the opening], a basic grasp of nactation suffices.
I disagree. 21S-11 played 24/23, 6/5(3) is nactated E, a variant not covered in Nack's basic tutorial. While 24/23, 6/5(3) is not the best use of a 11 in response to 21S, it's not an outrageous blunder either.
I maintain that you should be concerned about the risks of organic growth.
I'm less concerned about the horrors of "organic growth" than you. (Many viable software projects are written this way, utilising a modern agile methodology -- cf. GnuBG as a good example). But even if you don't believe that a community of experts can successfully hone a system of communication iteratively, I don't see much evidence of a wild uncontrolled proliferation of contradictory principles here. Nack has not published multiple incompatible versions of his system. To my knowledge, he's issued one "official" paper on this to date, with a revision in the works. Your pique seems to be directed at Nack's various off-the-cuff answers to specific questions posed about a system he (and other giants) use in their private capacity. It seems presumptuous to (pre)judge the long-term efficacy of as-yet unreleased enhancements to a system that's seen widespread acceptance in the expert backgammon community.
Matt R.
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