Michael Vondung wrote:
On 14 Dec 2006 18:27:13 -0800, wrote:
The point is that the world backgammon champion is not going to
play you one game for a million dollars. You will have to win a 25
point match, as well as a bunch of other matches that are very
long, and this means you have to be very skilled with the cube.

So this combats the luck factor a bit,

You mis-spelled `a lot'. To win a single game of backgammon, you need
to roll a total of at least 167. Since an average roll at backgammon
is 8 1/6 (recall that doubles count double, so to speak), that means
that, on average, you roll the dice at least 20 times per game. Now
multiply that by the number of games you'd be playing in a 25-point
match (I've no idea how many that wold likely to be, since it's
possible to score more than one point per game) and you end up with a
large number of dice rolls. It's practically impossible to `luck-out'
for that long.


Dave.

--
David Richerby Generic Atom Bomb (TM): it's like a
www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~davidr/ weapon of mass destruction but it's
just like all the others!

Ian Burton wrote:
[Heavy Clip]

In Backgammon, you do NOT get choose what move you make - your move
selection is pruned by the dice you roll. Therefore, it is obvious to
everyone but you that luck in backgammon plays a major role in how well
you do. Your die rolls decide what SUBSET of moves you can choose from.
Chess has not that mechanism.

I can objectively say that if you, being the defacto best backgammon
player in the world, and me being the worst, if I was given the choice
of die rolls for both of us, and my die rolls being objectively the
best for each turn and your die rolls being objectively the worst for
each turn, you will win ZERO games from me, no matter what your skill
level is, as your moves could not ever be the best moves objectively,
and my moves could not be the worst moves objectively. I would
reasonably be expected to make the BEST move occasionally, and you
could be reasonable expected to make the worst move occasionally.

Wrong. If you are the worst player in the world with the best rolls, you
still will play the worst moves. Your opponent, with the worst rolls, will
play the best moves, and should win.

I love backgammon -- it's my "second" game -- and think it much more
reflects the real world than does chess. Good and bad luck are a part of
life, and we must make the best of it. Too bad it's not taught in schools.
Because of its mathematical basis, it has much more to offer young kids than
chess.

--
Ian Burton
(Please reply to the Newsgroup)

[Clip]

How so?

You let me decide what your roll is each turn and you will have NO
CHANCE of winning. I would guess that you playing 1-2 each turn would
be enough to convince you, no matter how bad a player I was.

Backgammon is a game of skill AND chance. Chess is a War Game and
reflects WAR. And backgammon, having an element of CHANCE in it, has
the built in, politically correct excuse that people like you look for
in it to teach our children with so you you can placate them when they
lose. "It's ok little bobby, its the dies' fult you lost." God forbid
they realize they lost a game because they simply got beat, as in
chess, and not have the excuse of 'bad die rolls' to fall back on, as
in backgammon.

And as for teaching children lessons, chess is BY FAR the better game,
in sophistication, complexity, and the exhibition of ideas that can be
translated into real-world problem solving situations. NO CONTEST. You
might have 3 or 4 moves each turn in Backgammon to choose from at most,
and most of the time, only one or two. Chess, over half a dozen
reasonable alternatives exist at each turn at a minimum.
DECISION-MAKING skill building.

markgravitygood's attitude demonstrates many of the points I make to
people in this context. For example, I wish there was a backgammon
team in high school and not a chess team, which I was on. Chess is for
the Don Quixote's of the world, or the Captain Ahab's. Unless you have
the technical skill, you will always be chasing the great white whale,
and you will always be going down with your ship. Backgammon is fun
even when you lose, so long as you know that you are better than your
opponent, because you know the odds will catch up with him/her.
Backgammon is the game of "ultra-sophistication," not chess, which is
best suited for those who think they will be the next Alexander the
Great of the gaming world. Chess is about being able to "out-study"
and "out-calculate" your opponents, and you either can or you can't -
not much of a "game." You are chasing impossible dreams, and you don't
even realize it. It is more about fighting personal "demons" than
anything else, unless you are one of the few that can make a good
living by doing it. In backgammon, there are countless subtleties, and
you can tell when your opponent doesn't see what you do, and you know
it's like you are the fisherman and he/she is the fish. And if you
play every day, you are constantly learning about these subtlteties. I
keep a little book and write down things that are of signficance -
things I know I can use in the future to win. And what does my clearly
inferior get? Some wins here and there due to the dice factor. I will
gladly give that to him/her any day, in order to keep them coming back
for more. Would I play Kasparov for $1000 if all I had to do was to
win one game against him out of 20? Never.

But I don't want to distract from my main point, and that is once you
see how backgammon functions in practice, along with what you need to
know and how you can go about learning it (as well as the fact that
your opponents can only be a bit better than you once you reach a
certain level), there is just no comparison. Chess is fine in theory,
but it is hopeless drudgery in practice, though I can see how people
with certain personalities are draw to it like moths to the flame.

David Richerby wrote:
David Richerby wrote:
Inconnux wrote:
lol now that is pure crap... if you roll the dice and you get
crap numbers, there is NO way to win

The skill in backgammon is in positioning your men to minimize the
number of rolls that are bad for you.

And using the doubling cube. Among those skills in backgammon are
such diverse elements as fear, surprise, positioning your men to
minimize the number of rolls that are bad for you, using the doubling
cube and, oh, I'll come in again.

I'm sorry to add that a skilled player is also in a good position to cheat
without easily being detected by a novice opponent.

--
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~Semper Fi~

To the original poster:

Perhaps your preference for backgammon is more a matter of temperment
and personal taste rather than anything else?

I'm no expert at backgammon, but I've played enough of it to know it
just doesn't appeal to me in the same way that chess does. In fact,
some of the very things you seem to like about backgammon and dislike
about chess, I dislike about backgammon and like about chess.

I like the fact that chess has a rich literature and a great body of
lore and technical knowledge, most of which I will never master. I
like the fact that chess is difficult to learn; that it both rewards,
and at a certain level requires, a high level of effort. This makes
the game more challenging, but also, at least for me, ultimately more
rewarding. I firmly believe that the more difficult a task is to
achieve, the greater the satisfaction from achieving it.

I like the fact that chess sometimes requires deep and prolonged
thought, and that a single mistake can ruin an entire game. What is to
you apparently a negative aspect of chess is to me at the very heart of
its appeal. It is a very difficult game, an unforgiving one, and when
you lose you have no one and nothing but yourself to blame. However,
unlike backgammon I sometimes get from chess a feeling of intellectual
productiveness after I play a good game (at least by my standards); a
feeling that I have achieved something. A feeling that, at least for a
short period, that I have mastered the flaws in my character and
intellect; that I have rooted them out. I have never gotten that
feeling, or anything close, from a game of backgammon.

I like the fact that chess is less associated with serious gambling. I
have had sufficient contact with both chessplayers and gamblers to
decide that, while there may be individual exceptions, I will take
chessplayers as a group over gamblers any day. And I am not interested
in making my living playing chess or backgammon, so the possibility of
making a little money playing backgammon online means very little to
me.

One last point, one which you don't really cover in your comparison; an
aesthetic one. There is a lot of beauty in chess; beautiful
geometries, beautiful combinations, beautiful strategic concepts,
beautiful games. I derive pleasure from going through the games of the
great players, from observing them move sure-footedly and gracefully
through a dense forest of possibilities, from trying to understand the
subtleties in their choices. Although there may be an element of
beauty in backgammon, I rarely hear it described in those terms.

Of course, the fact that chess appeals to me more than backgammon in so
many ways doesn't necessarily make it a better game than backgammon,
any more than your preference for backgammon makes it a better game
than chess. Ultimately, I suspect that our differing preferences have
more do with our personal idiosyncracies and what we are looking for in
a game, than the games themselves.

Just my two bits.

- Geof Strayer

First of all a few of you who are posting don't understand the game of
backgammon. Maybe you know how to play it, against your grandmother,
but you certainly don't understand it. I love chess, it's a great
game, no doubt there, but any game where I have to study it so much
that it invades my dreams, that's obsessive, I had to quit.

On to the discussion at hand. First of all, you're discussing
backgammon as a single game and it is rarely (if ever) played in this
form. It's either a long money session or a tournament/match format.
I prefer longer matches in backgammon, this gives rise to more
decisions and the better player typically wins rather easily. Most of
you are also forgetting cube decisions in backgammon? The cube is a
vital key to winning backgammon, match or money play. The complexities
of the cube cannot be understood w/out serious study.

Any of you, such as "Inconnux" who know how to play backgammon and
would like to show me all of the luck involved I'll play you any stakes
you like ... anyone. Afterwards feel free to whine about my lucky dice
and how I just seemed to roll what I needed all the time.

I would elaborate but I was linked to this off rgb and the topic has
been pushed off the main board already and I doubt many will keep
reading it. If you'd like to discuss this further feel free to post on
my forums, http://www.bgonline.org/forums/

Stick

On 15 Dec 2006 19:37:23 -0800, Stick wrote:

First of all a few of you who are posting don't understand the game of
backgammon. Maybe you know how to play it, against your grandmother,
but you certainly don't understand it.

That might be because this is a chess group, and a lot chess players are
not interested in games involving chance. Monty's post was flamebait,
and the fact that he advertised this thread in the backgammon group is just
further evidence of the true intention.

Thanks for stopping by and advertising your web forum, though!

M.

"Inconnux" wrote in message
ups.com...

... The 'luck factor' is why i started
playing chess. Nothing to blame except
yourself if you lose a game... in luck
games there is always an excuse.

And in many of those backgammon losses your only 'excuse' is the fact that
you were outplayed, with the dice rolls being irrelevant!

"Inconnux" wrote in message
ups.com...

... when I see a backgammon board I think
"theres another mindless luck game"

Which is why you and a couple of other posters here should probably refrain
from posting, because when it comes to backgammon, it appears as if you
don't know what you're talking about. I don't believe you have any IDEA on
the amount of skill backgammon requires!

The more I play and study backgammon, the more I realize how much skill
there is! Back games, holding games, running games, priming games, cube
decisions, when to run, when to slot, duplication, diversification... My
God, it is anything BUT a mindless luck game!

Poker and backgammon are also games of skill. Oh sure, there's an element
of chance involved in both, but over a very short period of time the chance
factor always evens out and the better players come out ahead.

Note: All of this is coming from a tournament chess player, who's been
playing chess since 1972. Chess is my #1 game... always has been, always
will be. And since I love skill games, I also LOVE backgammon and poker
too.


Ed Collins
www.edcollins.com

"David Richerby" wrote in message
...

... I suspect that, if you were to play some
backgammon against a reasonably experienced player,
you would be surprised by just how consistently
`unlucky' you were.


Yep, I agree. In fact, many backgammon players feel the strong neural net
backgammon programs 'cheat' by either a) manipulating the dice or b) looking
ahead to future dice rolls! THAT'S how well they play!