handicapping ideas

[Walt]

I was visiting the family over the hollidays and played a few games of
backgammon. While I'm no expert by any means, the few months I've spent
on FIBS and jousting with gnubg made the competition rather "pale".

So, how to level the playing field? One thing I tried was giving my
opponent re-rolls - that is each game they would be able to re-roll
the dice if they came up unlucky, or make me re-roll if I had a lucky
roll. We settled on three re-rolls per game, but that didn't seem to be
quite enough.

Any other ideas on how to give newbies a break to make the game
interesting for both? Play a more luck based game like Acey deucy?
Stick to Canasta?

Thatks.

[Chris Roddy]

Walt wrote:
> So, how to level the playing field? One thing I tried was giving my
> opponent re-rolls - that is each game they would be able to re-roll
> the dice if they came up unlucky, or make me re-roll if I had a lucky
> roll. We settled on three re-rolls per game, but that didn't seem to be
> quite enough.

There are a few discussions about this on Backgammon Galore's forum
archive at http://www.bkgm.com/rgb/rgb.cgi?menu+miscellaneous .

Some of the more straightforward approaches are to give the weaker
player an opening 3-1 (or other strong roll), to permit some number of
re-rolls as you've described, or to begin the game owning the cube.

cmr

[Walt]

Chris Roddy wrote:
> Walt wrote:
>
>>So, how to level the playing field? One thing I tried was giving my
>>opponent re-rolls - that is each game they would be able to re-roll
>>the dice if they came up unlucky, or make me re-roll if I had a lucky
>>roll. We settled on three re-rolls per game, but that didn't seem to be
>>quite enough.
>
>
> There are a few discussions about this on Backgammon Galore's forum
> archive at http://www.bkgm.com/rgb/rgb.cgi?menu+miscellaneous .

Thanks for the link.

> Some of the more straightforward approaches are to give the weaker
> player an opening 3-1 (or other strong roll), to permit some number of
> re-rolls as you've described, or to begin the game owning the cube.

The cube? Um, you're way over the heads of the audience here. (c:

//Walt

[mont...@lycos.com]

Just play DMP - no cube. Unless they are terrible, there is a huge
amount of luck (as opposed to skill) in these games. However, if they
are really bad, I'd suggest giving them lessons rather than playing
against them in a competitive way.