The abstract states "The game of checkers has roughly 500 billion
billion possible positions (5 x 10 ^ 20)" Walter Trice calculated
about 1.8 x 10^19 positions for backgammon http://www.bkgm.com/rgb/rgb.cgi?view+371.
His calculation is actually a little too large because he did not
worry about if the positions could actually arise or not but that is
probably an insignificant factor.

I am surprised that checkers has more possible positions than
backgammon. I figure that the 30 backgammon pieces instead of 24 for
checkers would about balance 33 locations in checkers forthose pieces
instead of only 26 locations for them in backgammon. Backgammon would
then pull way ahead becuase there can be up to 15 checkers at a
location as opposed to 2 for the all the checker locations except "off
the board".

Am I missing something in my intuitive argument or is one of the
calculations incorrect? The Trice argument looks solid to me.

Bob Koca