books and my 2 cents...
dave magyar
i have been trying to get my hands on a couple of books that i believe
are worth reading, from all the comments i have heard.
but, i want to spend a couple of minutes and talk about a book that i
know has gotten a ton of bad press for quite some time. the book i am
referring to is Backgammon for Blood.
here are my issues: first, i have the attention span of a spilt pea
(on a good day) so i am very concerned about reading something that
will effect my game in any negative way. i have read some comments
about this book that call it everything from "garbage" to "utter
trash" which makes me wonder why i have read part of it. i found one
section of the book on the statistics interesting and informative.
for instance, that you can roll a 6 17 out of 36 times (i know i could
have just sat there and figured it out, but the charts in the book
seem really great!). surely this information cannot be that far from
the truth. i am also sure that there are a ton of other books that
cover this. well, i read Robertie's Backgammon for Winners 3 times
already and even though i get something new out of it each time, i
still have not found the section covering these aforementioned
statistics.
the first book i bought was called Backgammon by Robin Clay. i was
brand new to backgammon, i saw the book for about $8 and figured i
would read it. after getting about 75 pages into it, i read a review
at http://www.statslab.cam.ac.uk/~sret1/backgammon/books/clay.html
that basically told me to put this book on the shelf and never read it
again. burning was a consideration, but after kicking out the $8 i
could not see myself doing that. so, after reading the review i never
picked the book back up again because i was/am afraid to get bad
advice and have it stick to memory.
what is my point? good question, i almost forgot it myself. my point
is, how is a player such as myself supposed to read only certain parts
of a book and believe them while reading other parts and dismiss them?
further, why not just tear those other parts out of the book to make
avoiding them all the easier? a good friend gave me the bg for blood
book and warned me that i should avoid a good portion of it. he is
such a good player that i felt like i would be insulting him if i
asked which parts that might be. i know that there are a lot of
different views on what is defined as "good" and what is not. my
analogy is with programming. i just wrote a scrolling applet in java.
i know there are a ton of ways i could have done it, but i chose the
way i did for whatever reason. is it right or wrong? i doubt both.
i do not think that some things have right and wrong answers and that
there as a lot of gray/grey (your preference) area.
well, once again, i went on too long, but i am interested in what
others think about this and if my opinions just prove why i am not a
good bg player.
again, as sarah (my 3 year old) says...
hasta lasagna
dave magyar
gg: dm
fibs: dmagyar
Daniel Murphy
On Mon, 28 Jul 1997 19:48:28 GMT, da...@usga.org (dave magyar) wrote:
[mercilessly snipped]
>Backgammon for Blood.
>
>... i found one
>section of the book on the statistics interesting and informative.
>the first book i bought was called Backgammon by Robin Clay. i was
>what is my point? good question, i almost forgot it myself. my point
>is, how is a player such as myself supposed to read only certain parts
>of a book and believe them while reading other parts and dismiss them?
There's something good in every backgammon book, even the worst ones.
Bad books come in two varieties. Some give you good information, but
not very much. Read one of these if you can't find a good book. It
won't hurt much. Some give you good and bad advice -- and some of
*these* books are worth reading if you can figure which parts are wrong.
If you can't, they'll hurt you; go read a good book. If you can, they
can help your game tremendously by (counter)example, give you an idea of
how and why theory has changed, and perhaps give you a little insight
into what some of your opponents are thinking when they, like Bruce
Becker, slot, and slot, and slot, and slot, and never move off the ace
point.
---
________________________________________________________________
Daniel Murphy Klampenborg, Denmark rac...@cityraccoon.com
FIBS, the First Internet Backgammon Server: http://www.fibs.com
Backgammon by the Bay: http://www.backgammon.org/bgbb/
Don Rae
Daniel Murphy wrote:
Dear Daniel,
I found your final sentence ("Bruce Becker...slot, slot, slot, never
move from ace point") intriguing but obscure! Would you mind expanding
on this?!
Thanks!
Don Rae
Daniel Murphy
On Tue, 29 Jul 1997 13:53:14 +0800, Don Rae <mel...@netvigator.com>
wrote:
>Daniel Murphy wrote:
>
>> [Bad books] can help your game tremendously by (counter)example, give
>> you an idea of how and why theory has changed, and perhaps give you a
>> little insight into what some of your opponents are thinking when they,
>> like Bruce Becker, slot, and slot, and slot, and slot, and never move
>> off the ace point.
>>
>I found your final sentence ("Bruce Becker...slot, slot, slot, never
>move from ace point") intriguing but obscure! Would you mind expanding
>on this?!
Bruce "Luck is for Losers!" Becker is the author of Backgammon for
Blood, published in 1974. Backgammon for Blood was a very popular book
and good enough to turn many beginners into winners.
Becker's writing style is entertaining, and his comments on luck,
probability, doubling and attitude are worth absorbing. His
recommendations on opening moves are not, and his recommended strategies
are no longer good enough to beat competent intermediate level players.
Here's how Becker plays these opening rolls:
62 13/5
53 13/5
41 13/9 6/5, 51 13/8 6/5, 21 13/11 6/5 (not necessarily wrong)
and most horribly,
65 13/7 13/8
64 13/7 13/9
63 13/7 13/10
Get the picture? Slot, slot, slot. Becker *hates* a running game and
has nothing to say about an advanced anchor holding game. His
recommended strategy therefore has two parts:
First, go all out for a prime extending from the 5 point to the 10 point
(Becker doesn't like a more advanced prime for reasons not fully
developed in his book). Slotting with checkers from the midpoint is
required to build this prime because -- although Becker doesn't develop
this idea -- there aren't enough builders available to make a prime this
high without slotting. Becker's high-prime strategy gives insufficient
weight to the starting position's placement of more than half the
checkers on the 8 point and 6 point -- checkers which are naturally
available to make a prime extending downwards from the 8 point.
So much for slot, slot, slot. Blots being blots, this aggressive
slotting strategy is going to fail often. Enter the second part of
Becker's strategy: he doesn't really care if the slotted checkers get
hit, because he's eager to outplay his opponents in a back game. That's
why Becker insists that the checkers on the ace point not be moved too
early: if the priming attempt fails, the ace point checkers must be
available to help establish a 13, 12, or 23 backgame.
Back games can be very strong, and Becker makes a good point: if you
never learn how to play a back game, you will win less often, and if
your opponents don't know how to play them, you will win a lot of extra
gammons, or a lot of free points with a scary cube. However, against
competent opponents back games are money losers and should be a last
resort, not something to aim for. If you play with Becker's style,
expect to play a lot of back games. This is even more true today than
in 1974 because theory today generally favors splitting over slotting,
and splitting is the best way to beat a slotter.
Brian Sheppard
Daniel Murphy <rac...@cityraccoon.com> wrote in article
<33dd8ff0....@nntp.best.com>...
> This is even more true today than
> in 1974 because theory today generally favors splitting over slotting,
> and splitting is the best way to beat a slotter.
Isn't it also true that slotting is the best way to beat a splitter?
Go figure!
Brian