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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.

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Backgammon Galaxy opens its doors for testing

Recently the website Backgammon Galaxy opened its doors for beta testers. It is a new site where you can play backgammon online against other people. A big advantage for backgammon players is that one of the people behind the project is a strong backgammon player himself. I was one of the lucky 400 people who got a change to try it out.

My impression was very positive. The look and feel are good, and it just feels nice and intuitive to use and play games on.

Artificial intelligence helps you getting better

A major difference between this backgammon site and the others is that it is made for serious players who want to become better at the game. There is a built-in artificial intelligence that will provide you with a complete analysis of your match as soon as you have moved the last checker. You can go into the analysis interface and browse the whole match and get hints about what you should have done and how large your errors were.

A game of skill

With a focus on backgammon as a skill game one of the new ideas is the design of the ranking system. Usually you move up when you win and down when you lose. Here they changed it, so you will only be able to move up if you win and played the strongest in the match. This way you will also be protected from moving down if you got unlucky and lost but played best in the match. This would then be considered a tie.

Understanding how well you played

In backgammon circles we have measured the skill level for many years by an index linked to how many and how severe errors you made in a game. The lower the number the better you played. If you on this scale on average play 4.0 or lower you are considered to be at grand master level. If you play 5.0 or lower you are considered to be a strong international player. Most casual players will play above 20.

These numbers are of course to be taken with a grain of salt in the short run, because there are a lot of fluctuations over a few games. Usually it would take multiple tournaments running for weeks to meet the required volume to be able to determine your skill level.

More to come

In the future I’ll write some blogs discussing different topics that I have been working on.  Based on a series of lectures I recently held at a local backgammon club I realized that I totally forgot to follow my own advice that I provided at the lectures. In essence – do the hard work.

Writing and explaining is a good way for me to process material. I’m happy to share some of my ideas and results with you.