If the user saves the analytical results to player profiles, you build up a database of games and matches. Online sites like FIBS (the First Internet Backgammon Server – open, free for all, lots of swearing, a bit clunky but a a great environment) and grid.gammon (invitation only, more players and more of them are very serious and skilled) let you save games you’ve just played in formats that can be opened and analysed for luck and mistakes by the various backgammon-playing software. We quantify our errors in post-match analysis (you can play a computer in tutor mode too, and that’s the best way to train, but not the subject of today’s post).Īs well as being the best backgammon players on the planet, XG-Gammon and other software such as GNU Backgammon and Snowie are used by many backgammon players to analyse their own matches, to identify areas for improvement and (let’s face it) to find out if the opponent really was as lucky as we thought they were. Of course, while you’re playing a human under match conditions, you don’t know that you just gave up (for example) 0.096 of your equity, although sometimes you have a pretty good idea from a nagging feeling of “I really shouldn’t have done that…”. Here’s a post from ancient history (ie 2005) on the origin of the term “blunder” in backgammon – apparently it only goes back to 1998, who knew? Whereas gaining 0.300 of equity by a luck dice roll is a common threshold for a “joker”. If you give up 1, you just moved from being certain to win to certain to lose in practice losing 0.080 of your equity in one turn is usually defined as a “blunder”, and 0.020 as an “error”. Each decision by a player can be compared with an optimal play that the computer would have made, and the computer can estimate exactly how much equity in the final result you just gave up by playing differently to how it would have done. ![]() Since the rise of robot players that used machine learning neural networks to identify winning strategies, we’ve had a new way to quantify exactly how much skill and how much chance. For a complete mismatch – a master playing a beginner – the master will win about 75% of one point matches, and nearly 100% of matches to 11 or more (the longer the match, the more chance for skill to emerge as dominant) – see my earlier post on those odds. Consider that for two exactly equally skilled players, the result appears to be 100% luck and the best forecast for a result is a coin flip. Don’t forget to paint the dice and tokens! You will need 2 dice for each player (four total) and 15 tokens for each player (30 total).Backgammon is a game that combines chance and skill, and everyone who comes across it asks “how much is luck, and how much skill?”.When the paint is dry, peel off the tape and start on the second color. This will avoid runs and keep your triangles clean. TIP: Before painting, tape along the edges of the triangles of one color with masking tape. Start with the first and then alternate the colors. Keep the tips around 1 inch from the guideline that you drew in the previous step. At the top and bottom of each large rectangle, draw six triangles.Now draw a guideline across the center of the board, crossing the rectangles. You should now have the following (in order, across the board): one large narrow rectangle and a second larger one the same length (use the picture as a guide).At the center of that rectangle, draw two lines down the length of the board 1 inch apart. Draw the first rectangle 1/2-inch from the edge of your board.
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