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Teaching young dogs new nactation tricks
Posted By: Matt Ryder In Response To: Teaching young dogs new nactation tricks (Daniel Murphy)
Date: Sunday, 6 February 2011, at 1:19 p.m.
Thanks for the considered response, Daniel. You make some good points, and I enjoyed your historical survey of the slot versus the split.
Perhaps I overstated it. Let me rephrase: I think basic nactation could be taught as a precursor to traditional notation. You seem to think it's imperative that a rank beginner learn traditional notation from the get go. I don't really agree. There are some intermediate players in my local backgammon club who've never learned any notation, yet play a reasonable game due to hours of observation. It's more important for a newcomer to get hands-on familiarity with "quadrants, points, setup, and moves" than be able to (say) identify the 16 point or read notation. Counting pips comes later. In respect of "physically moving checkers around the board", I think basic nactation is a better teacher. If a newcomer saw a backgammon board for the first time, and you said move a 42 from 24/18, he'd ask you to show him the 24 point, then ask which is the 18 point, then move the checker between them. But if you instead told the newcomer to take the back checker and move it 4 and then 2, he'd be able to do it immediately. Similarly, "24/24 13/10" would bewilder a newbie, but the S action (move the large die from the back, and the smaller from the mid) is easy to comprehend (and remember). The emphasis on actions makes nactation the superior teaching tool in my opinion.
As a first step, I'd teach R, S, H and P. After P, I'd probably show the newcomer @ (discussing the golden point and the value of a high anchor for holding games). Then I'd show him $ and D, followed by a discussion of blitzes with A and K. Only once he's got a familiarity with the board and the basic moves would I teach him traditional notation.
But I can't even imagine talking about backgammon using Nactation without understanding numeric notation. Which point does 31P make? The 5 point. And so on.
I can't at all see why you need an understanding of numeric notation to follow nactation. 31P makes the golden point, which is important for all the reasons that Magriel devoted a chapter to the concept. Where is it? Well, it's immediately to the right of a starting home-board stack. The beginner couldn't care if that's the 5 point or the 50 point. I think all the early nactation symbols are supremely understandable so long as the learner can count to 11. If you insist on teaching some numerical tricks, point out that 3 minus 1 is 2, and there are handy stacks two apart with spare checkers to make a point with.
Their names [MCG and Stick's] are out of place in that paragraph and your argument.
My claim was that newcomers will not shrink from nactation. I don't have empirical evidence for this (but then again, neither do the nactation detractors who present these apocalyptic visions of newcomers running for cover). What I do know is that the "new breed" of backgammon masters (who picked the game up in no time flat) appear to have an edge, and I was speculating about why. These guys have trained their brains differently, and my (perhaps controversial) contention is that nactation has something to do with it. I agree that this is a new angle not previously touched upon in the post, but I'm surprised it confused you so.
I'm afraid I still don't understand why learning basic Nactation early on should have led to a greater appreciation (or less fear) of slotting for years to come. Surely it wasn't Nactation that first presented these concepts to you?
I started playing backgammon at university about 20 years ago after my parents gave me an old travel set. My only guide to the game was a crumpled one-sheet that described the basic rules. I remember that for two semesters I erroneously assumed the outer board was my "home" (the faded setup schematic didn't clarify), knowing no better. This was before the internet, and backgammon books were hard to come by in South Africa. Later on I joined a club, and my game improved rapidly as I was exposed to advanced play. But back then, I didn't even know the terminology "slot", and I wouldn't have imagined that deliberately leaving blots in my home was a particularly advisable strategy.
I'd guess that most casual backgammon players intuitively avoid slotting, as the general neophyte tendency is to play safe wherever possible (to their great detriment later in the game).
I can't gainsay your experience that exposure to Nactation has given you an illuminating perspective, and no doubt fashionable play changes over time, but any number of good books written by experts since 1976 (and perhaps since 1929?) have stressed and explained these concepts -- all of them, including slotting -- long before Nactation was invented.
To clarify: I'm no newcomer, and I didn't learn about the slot from nactation. But had I been exposed to it when starting out, I believe the first three pages or so of Nack's beginner-friendly tutorial may've provided such an "illuminating perspective". Nactation did not originate these concepts, but it does help distill them. Could you teach these principles independently of nactation? Sure: as you point out, authors have been doing this for years. But nactation might provide a useful pedagogic framework for teaching and discussing the concepts.
Matt R
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