Make it Pretty: Beautiful Backgammon

Backgammon is a game of odds. The best play in backgammon is only the best play when it gives the better odds of winning the game or match than any other play. A double or take is only right if statistically you win by doubling or taking.

All the best backgammon players know this. They use this approach to winning. And now, since we have excellent computer programs that can play out a game for us millions of times and assure us which play or decision is statistically right, there is little argument about right and wrong, even amongst the top players who used to have completely different approaches to elements of the game 20 years ago.

So if you want to become a top player in the world, the path is simple: learn the odds.

However, there is a challenge. The odds are pretty complicated. It's not that difficult to figure out your odds of getting hit or hitting a blot (loose checker) on any given play--there are only 36 possible rolls of the dice and you can count shots on your fingers and toes if you need to. But when you start calculating the odds of winning or losing a game or match, and then add in the value of winning or losing possible gammons and backgammons, the odds get far too complicated. And even if you happen to be a great mathematician, it takes years of study to learn the match equity tables and even more years to be able to look at a given backgammon position and estimate the odds of winning and losing and gammons and backgammons.

But please don't be discouraged. It is possible to learn it all and become an expert. Some of the world's best players can see very complicated positions and look at a position and do some quick calculations and estimate numbers that turned out to be within a couple of percentage points of the computer rollouts. Top players are not always right, but they are usually pretty close. Even they are doing a lot of "estimating" and rounding-off in their heads to come up with the numbers, and they also have two other tools that help them with the decisions. First, because they have been playing for so long, they have seen and studied just about every possible position and situation there is, and second, because they have incredible memories, they usually remember pretty well what the odds are for a given type of situation, and they might even remember playing from this situation many times and remember how it usually turned out. They have hundreds of "reference" positions in their head to call on to get them close to the odds before they even have to start doing calculations.

But what about the rest of us? Let's discuss this in the next article.

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