Why the Best Backgammon Players are the Best

From: ekw   

Well, I don't know.....

A lot of assumptions here. Maybe "The Best" is a different category for different people. Or wait, a new category! The Very Best. The Very Best backgammon players don't have to do the mat(c)h, because they already have. So for example Neil Kazaross would have already hit before the average Best Player realized the dice had come to rest. I know this sounds too good to be true, but I'm only saying it because I've SEEN HIM DO IT, in pretty much a similar position. Well, it was one of those desperado break-your-5-point-board to leave-two-blots-and-hit plays. Same sorta resulting game, no? He did it so "a tempo" you'd think there were no other plays. [As an aside, I remember the last time he and I played, I was proud of getting him to actually puzzle over some plays. His arms would be up in the air for a few seconds before he'd muscle the checkers into position.]

You could probably divide up the players on the Giant list into those who would stop and think here, do a bunch of attempts at calculation, and probably end up hitting, and the selection who would just make the right play. There might even be a few on that list who would find some other play. Oh well, it was just a vote after all...

From: tobaksa   

There's a story which may or may not be apropos.

You may have heard a version of the story problem about the fly flying back and forth between two trains heading for a collision? The solution is to add the combined speeds and determine how long before the trains meet, then figure out how far the fly can fly in that time. Supposedly (I hardly believe it) some mysterious "they" polled two groups, logicians and mathematicians, and found that the logicians, using the method I described, solved the problem in about fifteen seconds on average, while the mathematicians tried to solve it with calculus, adding up the individual segments the fly flew, which took them a couple of minutes.

Then they gave the problem to Karl Friedrich Gauss, who qualifies as among the "best of the best" mathematicians, and he solved it in 8 seconds. "This is surprising," they told him, "that you are a mathematician, yet you used logic rather than calculus to solve the problem.

"But I did use calculus," he replied.

Best,

Jake

From: RichMunitz   

The times I sit over the board for a checker play decision and ask myself what percentage of the time do I win here are far and few between. I can do it, but I find the game to be less enjoyable. Nor do I have 10,000 positions sitting in my head that I retrieve the proper one at the proper moment. Developing players should not feel that they need to have a computer brain in order to reach the highest level. Experience on what to do in these positions comes from study and looking at mistakes after analysis, asking the question "why was it wrong", and figuring out the features of the position that were essential. I immediately noticed the gap on white's 4 point, and black's cube ownership and realized that getting hit after sending back a second checker is therefore not even close to fatal - it will save alot of losses and alot of gammons. Close white's board with the two buried spares and then what's the right play? Not the winningest play, I'll tell you that.