Over the last two years, I've become increasingly obsessed with this game and its history, both ancient and modern. During the 1970's the game enjoyed a surge in popularity and a small publishing empire grew up around it, much like bridge. My compulsive book buying has landed many of these books on my shelves and as I've read them, I've wondered how well the conventional backgammon wisdom of the 70's has held up given the advances made in computer analysis in the last 40 years. Programs like gnu-bg have brought strong analytical tools to the desktop computer, enabling the backgammon enthusiast to gain a deeper understanding of the cruelest game.
The inspiration for this blog came from several directions. First, the excellent backgammon blog BlotBlog, which offers expert analysis on a variety of positions and problems. Second, the book Classic Backgammon Revisted by Jeremy Bagai, in which the author examines 120 positions in several seminal backgammon texts where the original solution contains a significant error. Finally, I was struck by this passage in Lewis Deyong's delightful Playboy's Book of Backgammon, published in 1977:
The fluid play of backgammon is something that will always resist mechanical analysis... in fact, it [the computer] might very easily blow up, like any gambler caught in a hopeless losing situation.While it is true that the "fluid" nature of backgammon is why there are no child prodigies at backgammon as there are in chess and why human players will always stand a chance against even the strongest backgammon AIs, Deyong was clearly no futurist. The affordability of powerful computers for the home user and the development of neural net technologies have vastly changed our understanding of the game.
My plan, at least initially, for this blog is to look at backgammon problems and quizzes presented in the popular backgammon books of the 70's and re-evaluate the solutions using modern tools, mainly gnu-bg. Gnu-bg is an open source backgammon program that offers great analytical tools and plays at a world class level. I'll look at openings, checker play and doubling decisions. I'm not a strong player and my hope is that this exercises will be edifying for both myself and anyone who cares to read this blog.
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