Backgammon Super Genius Quiz

[Timothy Chow]

I just bought James Vogl's new book, "Backgammon Super Genius
Quiz." It contains 100 tough quiz problems that were presented
to 12 of the world's top backgammon players under competition
conditions. First prize was $5,000. The 12 contestants were:

Aref Alipour
Bob Wachtel
David Wells
Dirk Schiemann
Hideaki Ueda
Joe Russell
Mochy
Ryan Rebelo
Sander Lylloff
Sebastian Wilkinson
Wilcox Snellings
Zdenek Zizka

I won't spoil things by telling you who won, but I will say that
even the winner scored only 56/100. That gives you some idea of
how tough the problems are.

I've only just started the book (I got 5 of the first 10 problems
right), but I can already tell you what I think are the main pros
and cons.

Pro 1: Every problem solution is accompanied by commentary by some
of the 12 contestants. As you might expect, there are some really
top-notch insights to be found here.

Pro 2: You can take the quiz yourself under conditions that are
very similar to those under which the contestants took the real quiz.
Just give yourself an average of 1 minute per problem, or 10 minutes
per set of 10 problems. The answers don't appear until the end of
each section, so you can take an honest look at each problem and make
your decision before seeing the answer.

Pro 3: Most of the problems themselves are very interesting. The
position on the cover is one which none of the 12 contestants got right!

Con 1: The print quality of the book is poor. The diagrams are legible,
but fuzzy and unattractive, sometimes with weird proportions. The
rollout information is barely legible, and we are not shown how much
variance is left in the equity estimates. The introductory section,
where the contestants are briefly interviewed, contains photos that are
downright awful---tiny, grainy, and often with a highly distorted aspect
ratio. The sans-serif font that was chosen for the main text of the
book also makes it look amateurish to my eyes.

Con 2: In some of the problems, there is very little equity at stake.
I don't find these as interesting, one reason being that who knows if
the next generation of bots will agree with the answer. Also, the
contestants were ranked based on the number of problems they got right
and not by the total equity lost, which seems somewhat unsatisfactory.

Con 3: The problems were multiple choice. There seems to be no good
reason for this, and it gives away information unnecessarily.

Overall, I thought the Pros greatly outweighed the Cons, and I highly
recommend the book to others. I just hope that if there is a sequel,
the production quality of the book will be better.

---
Tim Chow

[peps...@gmail.com]

Con 4: Gender Imbalance. All of the 12 contestants were male.
(Is this right? I don't know this for a fact.)

Paul Epstein

[Stick Rice]

All contestants were male but to fit the stipulation of "12 of the world's top backgammon players" they almost have to be. I don't know if that's Tim's stipulation/presentation, James', or both but depending on how you define it a few people should not be included.

Stick

[Timothy Chow]

On 10/13/2022 6:57 PM, Stick Rice wrote:
> All contestants were male but to fit the stipulation of "12 of the world's top backgammon players" they almost have to be. I don't know if that's Tim's stipulation/presentation, James', or both but depending on how you define it a few people should not be included.

It was James's wording. The first sentence of the Introduction
uses the phrase, "a dozen of the world's best players."

I just checked the BMAB, which I know Stick doesn't care for, but
which at least provides some objective information. Nine of the
players are listed there, but I'm going to omit Wachtel because
he has too few BMAB games for his ranking to be meaningful.

Rank Title Name
1 SG2 Mochy
2 G0 Ueda
10 G1 Zizka
12 G1 Schiemann
22 G2 Wilkinson
24 G2 Alipour
39 G3 Lylloff
56 G3 Rebelo

For the remaining four, I looked at the 2019 Giants list.

Rank Name
24 Wachtel
29 Snellings
32 Russell
44 Wells

James does not define "top player," but one possible definition
would be, either a BMAB grandmaster or a top 32 Giant in the last
Giants list. According to this criterion, only Wells would not
qualify. (The only woman I know who would qualify is Akiko, but
there could be other women that I'm not aware of.) One limitation
of this definition is that someone like Nack Ballard, who has been
inactive for a while, would not qualify, even though I would expect
him to do well on the quiz.

I think that contestants had to show up in person, so that would
limit who could participate. By the way, there's a comment in the
book that Gus Hansen was going to be a contestant, but pulled out
at the last minute because of a conflict.

---
Tim Chow

[Timothy Chow]

On 10/13/2022 9:46 AM, I wrote:
> Con 3: The problems were multiple choice.  There seems to be no good
> reason for this, and it gives away information unnecessarily.

I just went through the second batch of 10, and the multiple choice
format definitely worked to my advantage in one case. There were many
options provided, and I was initially tempted by one of them, until I
noticed that a slight variant of the play was not on the list. I then
correctly inferred that if the tempting play were right, then the
variant would at least be one of the listed options. Therefore the
tempting play could not be right.

I can confirm that doing these quizzes is fun. For example, I got one
of the problems right that all the actual contestants got wrong. So
there are many opportunities to experience the pleasant illusion of
being just as good as the best players in the world.

---
Tim Chow

[peps...@gmail.com]

I was thinking of Akiko -- I think her inclusion could have made a huge difference
with regard to how gender in backgammon is perceived.
Agreed that including someone far weaker than the rest of the field, just because
she's a woman, would be tokenistic and I wouldn't be in favour of that.
Of course, it's possible that Akiko was invited and couldn't participate. In that case,
at least explain that to the reader.

Paul

[Timothy Chow]

On 10/14/2022 3:21 AM, peps...@gmail.com wrote:
> I was thinking of Akiko -- I think her inclusion could have made a huge difference
> with regard to how gender in backgammon is perceived.

It would have made some difference, but I doubt that this event
was big enough to make a "huge difference" of any sort, good or bad.

---
Tim Chow

[Timothy Chow]

I just finished the quiz. I was doing pretty well at the half-way mark,
with 24/50, which would have put me in the middle of the pack. But the
second half of the book was tougher for me, and my final score was
41/100, which was the score of the 10th-place finisher.

Though I still think this is a very fun book, by the end, I was less
enthusiastic about the quality of the positions than I was initially.
There are too many positions where the equity differences are small,
and in some cases I'm not sure I believe the rollout result.

There are also some other anomalies, e.g., positions where the Jacoby
rule is in force and the cube is centered, but one of the multiple-
choice options is "no double/pass," or a racing position where the
EPCs are displayed right there on the problem page! I like the concept
of the book, but if there's a sequel, it could benefit from more careful
vetting of the positions and proofreading of the book.

Also, I found much of the commentary to be somewhat disappointing and
superficial. There are some gems to be sure, but there are also glib
"analyses" that I'm pretty sure miss the point of the position.

---
Tim Chow