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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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My favorite backgammon books

Usually I view a book in the context of the pyramid of understanding. What parts of the pyramid are they focused on? What are they trying to teach me? In this blog I will focus on books that I believe together would give a broad foundation within all levels of the pyramid. These are my favorite backgammon books.

Opening Concepts

This great book was written by one of the top players in the world, Michihito Kageyama and his good friend and Roland Herrera who contributed by making the book very clear and concise in the way everything are presented.

This book is mainly for beginners. I like it very much because it breaks down a position in concepts that can be expressed clearly in proverbs. They give you a way to put a position into words. This in turn gives you an opportunitet to talk about and analyse a position. I did get a few things cleared up myself.

The book mainly discusses the opening phase of the game talking about how to figure out what type of position you are in and what game plan you need.

Beginners and intermediates will benefit most from it but advanced players can definitely also learn a thing or two from it.

This is a must read!

From Basics to Badass

This book is written by grand master Marc Brockmann Olsen who is one of the people behind Backgammon Galaxy. He is trying to provide a platform where you have integrated play and analysis into the same product. Marc’s dedication to backgammon as a skill game is apparent in his approach to his backgammon site. This book is for beginners but it also covers a lot about match play for the intermediate and advanced players.

What I really like about this book is that it gives you some simple concepts that you can try to apply to the game. If you learn them all and manage to utilize them you will be an advanced player. I don’t think there are enough examples in the book but it is also clear that this was not what Marc is aiming for.

This book is to be considered as a list of concepts that covers almost all facets of backgammon. It is then your job to work with the material and get a feeling for each concept and how it interacts with other concepts.

As a stating point for a new backgammon player I don’t think you will find a better book.

Boot Camp

Walter Trice wrote a series of articles for GammonVillage that he put together as a book. This book is supposed to cover all aspects of backgammon which is of course not possible – but this is the best try I have seen so far.

The book is basically for everyone. Yes, everyone. There are so many ideas and concepts that you can find something about everything. Sometimes I feel that the book is not connecting the dots. Some sections are too self-contained and it does feel like the book was not written as a book but first as a series of articles.

I use it as an encyclopedia where I look up ideas if I need one. I can recommend this book to everyone.

Modern Backgammon

The last book I’d like to mention in this blog post is my favorite book from multiple times world backgammon champion and extraordinaire author Bill Robertie. This book is not for beginners at all. I would say that you will start getting something out of it when you reach strong intermediate level.

This book is inspired by the way computer programs play backgammon. Bill set out to put the new concepts and ideas from the computer programs into words that we as humans could understand. The book is very well written and with good structure and many good examples. I believe that this book did the most for my game in helping me understand the over-all goals of the game and how to achieve them in practice.

If you are on your way to becoming a strong player this book might be what you need to advance. I can definitely recommend it to all serious players.

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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.