Delving Into Match Play - Match 18 - Game 3

by Jay Bidal
23 June 2009

Jay Bidal

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jay Bidal is a Canadian expatriate living in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates where he teaches English at Zayed University.

Jay has been playing and studying backgammon seriously for the last several years and has won first place at the 2008 and 2005 Abu Dhabi Ramadan tournaments. He plays mostly online on the FIBS backgammon server as jaysbird. His immediate goal is to become the best player in the Gulf region and the Middle East.

This column is aimed at intermediate players who wish to improve their play by improving their thinking, but hopefully players of all levels will be able to benefit to some degree. One difference this time around is that I would like to solicit matches from you, the readers, as basis for future columns.

If you have an electronic copy of what you feel is an interesting match (not too long, though—10 games in the match would be about the limit), feel free to send it to GammonVillage, and it will be forwarded to me. I can't guarantee that I'll be able to annotate every match we receive, but I'll certainly do my best.

In any case, I hope that you will enjoy and learn from the games published in this column, as I have. If you can, please try to rate the articles to give us feedback, and also feel free to post any comments, queries, additions, or contradictions—any and all are most welcome!

Here is game 3 of Jay's 18th match in "Delving Into Match Play." This article and all subsequent articles in this series will be found in the Annotated Bot Matches section of GammonVillage.

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Subject: Re: Delving Into Match Play - Match 18 - Game 3

From: Dorn125145

Date: 06 Jul 2009 15:51 EST

Nice job, Jay, and especially entertaining annotations! Seems to me that White made serious mistakes not doubling on either move 4 or 5. Many more than 4-5% of expert (let alone intermediate) players in Green's position would drop. More like 20-25% would be my guess.

Subject: Re: Delving Into Match Play - Match 18 - Game 3

From: bedu

Date: 08 Jul 2009 04:28 EST

Thanks for the FB, Dorn. You're right that it would have been worthwhile to dwell a little longer on the cube possibilities during those moves. Certainly a "bluff" cube was in the offing, especially against a weaker player. I'm not sure how many advanced players would pass as Green-- they would have a decent blocking structure, sound positional fundamentals (though the extra checker on the 4 point would be better off on the 8 or 9 point), and likely mastery of the outfield. An advanced player might also have his fingers on the pulse of the match score and realize that a soft pass would put his opponent at 4-away, while a take (where gammon chances are not that high) would, in the case of a loss, put his opponent at 3-away, not really a big improvement, so the "risk" of a take would be justified. Anyway, thanks for the comment and the desire to delve further into the position!

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