Backgammon and Poker?
Edward D. Collins
> between poker and backgammon?
I can think of a few "connections":
Both are best played as gambling games.
Both require patience and knowledge of the laws of probability.
Both are games of skill.
In both games, weak players who lose feel they lost because of "bad luck"
rather than admit they were "outplayed."
Both have a big following and have an extensive library.
> I personally feel that backgammon is a
> game for three year old children...
Backgammon is a game of skill, make no mistake about it. Is there luck
involved? Of course, but just as in poker, the better player is going to
eventually get all the money in the long run.
I own about 40 books on backgammon, have been playing it for 25 years, and I
STILL feel I have much to learn. Obviously it is not everyone's cup of tea
(what game is?) but to those who enjoy it, it is a very deep and interesting
game.
I'd even be willing to start a discussion on which game requires the greater
amount of skill - backgammon or poker. Knowing both games quite well, at
first glance I would say there is indeed more skill involved in backgammon
than in poker. (I say this because I believe an amateur backgammon player,
who has only played in online tourneys, would have a much more difficult time
winning a similarly staged world series event like Chris Moneymaker did in the
WSOP.)
(Although the thread I'm replying to was only posted in rgp, I'm cross posting
this to rec.games.backgammon too.)
Ed Collins
(backgammon and poker fan)
rugcutter
player?
"Edward D. Collins" <edward...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:3ef8d1bd_3@newsfeed...
Edward D. Collins
> collection for the advanced player?
I would go with these:
----------------------
"Backgammon" by Paul Magriel
"Backgammon - Learning to Win" by Lewis Deyong
"Backgammon For Serious Players" by Bill Robertie
"The Backgammon Handbook" by Enno Heyken and Martin B. Fisher
"Paradoxes and Probabilities - 168 Backgammon Problems" by Barclay Cooke
I've included the last title even though I've read that many of his Cooke's
problems have now been proven incorrect by today's backgammon software.
However, with this book that's not the point. This book helps one to think of
new ideas and to use one's imigination when playing.
I've also gotten a lot of mileage from "The Backgammon Quiz Book" by Prince
Joli Kansil. This book contains 112 challenging quizzes. In each one, you're
presented with a board and three different dice rolls (thus, there are
actually 336 different problems) and asked to pick the best move for each
board. I picked this book up at a garage sale for .25 many years ago.
Ed Collins
Tom Keith
Backgammon Galore. For ideas on good books to read, start here:
http://bkgm.com/books/suggestions.html
Tom Keith
Michael Sullivan
> I'd even be willing to start a discussion on which game requires the greater
> amount of skill - backgammon or poker. Knowing both games quite well, at
> first glance I would say there is indeed more skill involved in backgammon
> than in poker. (I say this because I believe an amateur backgammon player,
> who has only played in online tourneys, would have a much more difficult time
> winning a similarly staged world series event like Chris Moneymaker did in the
> WSOP.)
I'm not sure this is true. The impression I have is that Moneymaker was
a *very* good player, not that he got incredibly lucky. Maybe he wasn't
the "best" player, but the best player doesn't always win even at games
of pure skill like chess or go.
Someone who plays bg online only could conceivably get very good at bg.
While it would be easy to not pick up skills (like pip counting) that
are critical in over the board play, if you expected to play in a big
OTB tournament, you'd probably figure those things out and work on them
enough not to be at a huge disadvantage.
I suspect that there's more to bg than to the mathematical strategy of
poker, but the mathematical strategy is a much smaller part of the game
of poker. Backgammon has luck, but it also has perfect knowledge. Both
players know all the same information, which puts a tight limit on the
extent to which psych matters with competent players. There's still a
bit of the "external game", but no more than in a game like chess. In
poker, the psychological game is deep and as much as part of the game as
the abstract strategy. Maybe as important, maybe much more. I'm not
good enough at either side of poker to know from experience, but I've
been told that at a high level, everyone knows enough of the pure
strategy that almost all of the difference in skill is due to psych or
luck.
Michael
Adam Stocks
"Michael Sullivan" <mic...@bcect.com> wrote in message
news:1fxdhou.1buemo4rj85csN%mic...@bcect.com...
The answer of "which is more skillful, bg or poker ?" is somewhat simplistic
to start with (and is often viewed too simplistically). The differing
models of the two games requires a more specific question(s), perhaps along
the *broad* lines of "what is the Return on Capital Employed for both games
?". Even this requires that certain assumptions are made about the
scenario, such as how many players are involved in the poker, and what skill
levels those opponents have relative to each other and to the player being
measured.
The psychological skills needed at poker are large (across all skill
levels), whereas in bg, they are much smaller, regardless of what some
people may tell you about so called 'bluff cubes' etc, which is really a big
red herring in the overall scheme of things, particularly higher up the
skill levels. However, the abstract skills of poker, enough to become at
least 'reasonably competitive with regular players' are significantly easier
to learn than in bg.
In short, a direct comparison is like comparing apples and elephants, but if
pushed, I would say that one could maybe do a return-on-capital-employed
analysis of bg versus heads-up poker, for a given clock-time span, and come
up with some sort of figures, but these would have to be taken with so many
caveats as to be all but meaningless.
Adam ('reasonably competitive at both games') Stocks