The Importance of Backgammon Reference Positions
by Phil Simborg
11 August 2009
Phil Simborg
Great players have great playing skills, high IQs, and a bundle of experience and knowledge. They also have amazing memories allowing them to instantly access reference positions and rules of thumb that guide them to the best checker and cube decisions.
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1.
Subject: Re: The Importance of Backgammon Reference Positions
From:
neilkaz
Date:
11 Aug 2009 11:58 EST
I will stress how important it is to study and remember recurring situations in backgammon... ie we want to spend significant time studying situations that come up commonly.
.. neilkaz ..
2.
Subject: Re: The Importance of Backgammon Reference Positions
From:
alex007
Date:
11 Aug 2009 19:54 EST
Nice and clean diagrams ! thx for the article
Reference positions are important and you have to spend much more time on the ones that actually do happen often.
There is ton of useless theoritical reference position out there ( books, etc). Our memory has better use...
I do beleive even more important than studying reference position to improve is mastering a 'theme'
For example, 2 man vs 1 . Take all the positions where you have an anchor in your opponent home and he has 1 checker in your home.
Than look for paterns, when do you have to attack the checker, when do you have to prime it, when do you have to contain it. What are the factors that change your game plan ? The race, how deep is your anchor, what is the struture in front of you, who has bordadge etc
This is a very important 'theme' since it happen very often
There are so many others like: having one man back vs escpaped checkers, 1 man back vs 1 man back, conteinment etc
my 2 cents
3.
Subject: Re: The Importance of Backgammon Reference Positions
From:
PhilSimborg
Date:
11 Aug 2009 23:04 EST
Alex makes a great point....recognizing themes, or patterns, that call for specific strategies, is key to consistently playing well. Reference positions are key to recognizing themes, and really great reference positions often indicate exactly when one theme switches to another. For example, the point at which you stop the attacking or blitzing approach and switch to priming can be defined by carefully-selected reference positions. Backgammon is far more complex than meets the eye, and the variables that can go into a single checker or cube decision can be enormous...far too great for most of us to fully consider over the board. It helps to have themes that suggest play strategies, and it helps to reference positions to help identify themes and strategies.
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