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Learning from mistakes 1: Introduction

Personally I believe that you learn the most from your own mistakes. You made them – you own up to them. This is the first part of a series of blog posts called “Learning from mistakes” (LFM) where I will go into some of the errors I made in serious games.

XG Masters 2018

In Denmark we have a tournament running over the summer where a lot of very strong players attend. The main focus is playing well – not winning. You will get awarded one point for winning a match, one point for having the lowest error rate and one point for giving up the least match winning chances.

Each round is planned individually between players and it is typically played at one of the players home or at a cafe. All matches are recorded by video and later transcribed and analysed by eXtreme Gammon (the best backgammon software available).

Getting back into tournament backgammon

I’m participating in XGM this year with a hope of getting back into playing tournament backgammon again after a break for more than 10 years. In the meantime I have been playing a little bit with the computer and on my phone, but mostly single games and primarily to kill time.

Recently I realized that I’ve been missing playing tournaments a lot. Unfortunately I’m very rusty and have to dedicate myself to work hard on the game to be able to be competitive again.

Main focus points:

  • Spend the time needed
  • Play serious tournaments (record all matches)
  • Understand my mistakes
    • Question everything
    • Make sure to learn something
  • Play matches online to think about backgammon every day
  • Discuss backgammon with strong players.

Personal goals

There are two tournaments in scope. XG Masters 2018 and BMAB UK in September. My main goal is to play below 6.0 (average Performance Rating) in those two tournaments together and below 5.5 in BMAB. My current level is around 6.5 which is unsatisfactory to say the least. I make too many unforced blunders.

My main weaknesses are cube action in general and match play in particular. These are typically the first things that you get out of touch with when not playing for a while.

Next blog

The next couple of blogs will go into the first match in XG Masters that I played against Ole Michael Nielsen yesterday evening. There are plenty of mistakes to learn from…

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Dilemma: Hit or not

In one of my matches on Backgammon Galaxy I got into a position where I got it all wrong. I could hit a checker but there were also good alternatives. How do we break down this kind of problem and analyse the position?

Methodology

The main idea is to use the pyramid of understanding as I mention in an earlier post (Concepts for improving your game). The following steps are directly related to the way you would understand backgammon, if you followed the “pyramid of understanding”.

  1. Consider the match score
  2. Establish the game plans
  3. Consider which concepts are at play
  4. Consider the options and how they fit into the game plans
  5. Consider any technical data (return shots, pipcount ect.) – in practice often done while going through 1 to 4 to support the findings.

Lets go through them step by step.

Match score

We are playing a 3-point match and the score is 0-0 (often written 0-0/3). The cube is centered.

A simple guidelines for playing a 3-point match at the score 0-0 is that you should

  • double earlier than normal if there are few gammon chances
  • play on without doubling earlier than normal if there are good gammon chances.
Game plans

Let’s have a look at the position.

Blue is working on a prime and has already established three points with more to follow soon. Blue is not strong in the blitzing potential with only 8 checkers in the zone. Usually you would need 10 checkers to be in a strong blitzing situation.

White is also trying to establish a prime and should White succeed White would have 10 or even 11 checkers in the zone for future blitzing plans if needed.

Concepts

Here are the concepts I believe are at play in the above position.

Blitz power: 8 checkers for a blitz are weak. 10 checkers are strong 12 checkers are very strong.

Race: If you are ahead in the race try to minimize the contact.

When in doubt, hit: If you have to choose between two candidate moves that feels like being equally good, choose the one with the hit.

Candidate moves

There are two candidate moves:

  1. B/15*
  2. B/21 13/7.

B/15* will remove a builder for a future prime and it will also weaken the future blitz potential for Blue. White is ahead in the race and even more by hitting. Unfortunately by hitting White created even more contact than before. On top of this White does not achieve anything in relation to his prime but leaves a blot on the 7-point and a lot of return shots.

B/21 13/7 does leave one more checker behind Blue’s emerging prime. Blue has only 8 checkers in the zone so only little blitzing potential for White to be afraid of. White is not yet under pressure. By not hitting, contact is minimized at least between the two candidate moves. Last but not least white will cover the blot on the 7-point and extend the prime. On top of this White adds another checker for a potential future blitz.

technical data

These were taken into consideration

  • Blitz potential (checkers in the zone)
  • Race (pips)
  • Return shots.
CONCLUSION

Following the arguments above it is hard not to conclude that B/21 13/7 is by far the best move. This is also what the Artificial Intelligence shows in the post game analysis. Over the board I chose to go with B/15* because I did not spend the time needed to reach the correct conclusion. This mistake is considered a Blunder because the difference between the best move and my move was more than 0.080 points (0.086 in this case).

Good luck with your training. See you at the tables.

 

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Concepts for improving your game

Commitment

For more that 20 years I have been a part of communities where people play games. Some of these people are highly successful and some are not. What is the difference between them?

I see at least four important factors:

  • Time spent: It takes a lot of time and practice to become good.
  • Agony of losing: People who really hate to lose will tend to go the extra mile to avoid the upsetting defeats.
  • Structured learning: Make sure that your hard work does actually give you a specific result. If it’s not specific, then it is probably not structured good enough.
  • Having success is more important than not failing: The people are going for the gold and not satisfied with less.

Mindset

Some years back I had a talk with a really strong backgammon player who told me that he had a good explanation of why I struggled so much with improving to become a very strong player. His theory was that I didn’t care enough about correcting my mistakes. To begin with I was kind of offended because I felt that it was untrue and unfair. In his mind you either make the right decision or you work on understanding why you made a wrong decision. No in-between.

That was where I understood that I’ve been having the wrong focus by trying to only work on the really bad decisions. I was never really challenged in understanding the details of the game because I expected my progress  to come from not being bad instead of being the result of trying to be good.

Developing your backgammon skills

My approach to understanding backgammon can best be viewed as a pyramid.

Start learning from the top and add new knowledge from the next level when you are done with the previous level. If you start learning technique you will have a really hard time understanding when and how to use it because you don’t have enough grasp on concepts or even game plans.

When you start out as a new player try to establish what the main objectives of the game are. Then move on to learn the game plans and what relation these have to the main objectives. Later you can look at some concepts and again try to understand how those are related to what you’ve learned about main objectives and game plans. It is the relation part that challenges most players. It’s relatively easy to learn a new concept, but to understand how it fits into everything else is difficult. This is where the hard work and structured learning comes in.

Good luck with your training. See you at the tables.