Cliff notes follow my blather:

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Inspired by the backgammon thread on the "Other Games" forum for the last week or so I've been messing with GNU Backgammon after a long hiatus from this great game. GNU BG seems like a fine program and with the help of tutor mode my game might be a bit better than it was in the old days (which I suppose isn't saying much).

Meanwhile my girlfriend became a decent poker player with 2+2's and my help years back but the last few years she hasn't had time for casino play despite living in the poker capital of the world (that's LA of course).

Still over cocktails at my place we'll play some online SNGs and have lots of fun arguing the right play and what not. She also likes to play me heads up in $40 NL holdem freezouts or similar three way games when my best friend is around but it's really a drag - who the heck feels like dealing after a long day at the card barn (in my friends and my case) or a long day at the office (in her case). Still when we do play it's fun in part because we'd rather beat each others brains out than softplay. I can't understand why so many new breed poker players won't play their friends hard and still remain friends. In fact I think it makes the sex better when you play your girlfriend hard but it may be just a personal quirk that I can't prove.

Anyway, to make a short story long she's over the other night and for the first time in years my Stars account is below seven cents so we can't even play the ten cent "no juice" donkaments. So in mini despair she loads up Windows Solitaire while I made a quick meal. When I come back with the grub the Solitaire looks so pathetically uninteresting I fire up GNU Backgammon and ask her to bear with me and follow along.

She's completely enthralled by the action and the racing/blocking/hitting/defence/offence/priming and especially doubling! She also loves the fact that when I'm not sure of my next move I can go to the tutor for a hint (or the tutor scolds me if I don't ask and make a mistake; she loves to see me scolded). Within about five games I can see she's getting the hang of it.

Now this is the woman I hope to life my life out with and I'm starting to see a future where backgammon may fit into the fun. So as I'm battling GNU BG and iTunes is cranking great stuff and she's finished my delicious home cocked one dish "guy living alone" style meal as she finishes her third Cosmo with me on my second Tequila straight up (I'm on low carbs for a couple weeks) I have a revelation.

I say, "My Baby (like many couples we have cutesy names for each other), you know with only a little bit of effort you could be at least 90% as good as me with this program and maybe reading a couple books. And if you want to read a book or two you know I'll get you to the right ones."

She responds, "This is fun My Darling".

I blather on not taking any romantic hints. "No, I'm serious. It's a great game and different than let's say chess. In chess an excellent player is going to beat a very good player every time. That's no fun for the very good player. But in backgammon a very good player should beat the excellent player maybe 40 to 45% of the time in a short, social session. So the game can be fun for both players with the outcome still a mystery. And the best part it's a super interesting game with lot's of gambling! We could play for real money and I'll spot you doing the dishes if I lose to keep it fair."

She responds "Yes My Baby, I'm excited". Now I wonder if the Cosmo's are taking hold. Still I continue to ignore all romantic hints and imagine us a little older and grayer with a backgammon board on our quaint little patio. It's the dimming of the day but one of those oil based patio torches fills in the light and a nice string quartet selected from our 70 GBs of mp3s fills the air. We're intently playing 11 point matches and she's gotten so close to even with me in the hundreds of matches we've played she won't admit I'm still a bit better so I don't even have to spot her doing dishes.

In the final game of the night I get a few men sent back early but play a masterful holding game, hit the right pip when it counts, force her behind my prime, and roll her up for the win.

Later I try to duplicate my performance in the bedroom but she tells me I was just lucky.

~ Rick

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Cliff Notes: Backgammon can be a lot of fun for couples (or friends) because it's pretty easy these days to get at least pretty good starting from scratch and if you're pretty good you can have fun competing with someone who is real good (unlike geeky games like chess).

Great story! I wish I could get my wife to play Backgammon with me but she just says, "It's a weird game!" .. She'll see me playing GNU BG or on the Xbox and say, "You're playing that weird game again!" .. haha

We play a lot of different games together but I just can't get her into Backgammon. So it looks like our "grow old" game is going to be Gin Rummy. Which is all good. I love playing it as well and she really gets into it.

I do need to see if I can get some of my friends into Backgammon though.

Thanks. I sometimes get in the mood for writing stories, although most of them are posted on B&M.

Years ago that's what the same girlfriend said. But I think the exposure to a great piece of software in tutor mode got her a lot more interested (along with her new taste for Cosmos). She will study to a degree (she certainly studied the poker books) and I'm looking to find the right two or three modern books to get her off to a good start. I think if you read a little what the tutor advises will make a lot more sense. I'd like to review a few modern books myself along with the better selections from my old collection.

Backgammon on the X-Box? I wonder how well it plays. I'm looking into X-Box mostly because it will stream Netflix "watch instantly" movies from your computer to a big screen in the other room. I don't play normal video games but if it plays backgammon well (which I suspect it doesn't) I'd chose that option over the dedicated Netflix box at half the price.


Gin Rummy's a good game and along with cribbage will be in my backup plan. I don't want to come home from the casino games just to have her challenge me to heads up holdem .


I think the right book or two along with GNU BG (or Snowie if they have bucks) might do the trick. If they have trouble setting up GNU BG the download of Jellyfish Light 3.5 is pretty easy to install and plays half decent.

~ Rick

My wife and I use our Xbox 360 for Netflix streaming (Works great). The 360 is also nice because you can stream divx videos (other formats too) from your Windows PC to your Xbox.

The Xbox Backgammon game I play is: Hardwood Backgammon:
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/h/ha...arcadexbox360/

As far as the difficulty or the play of Hardwood BG, I really don't know where to rank it. I'm an amateur BG player at best. I do know that the Easy level is a joke .. haha .. There are 3 or 4 difficulties though.

It's still nice to sit back, chill and play on the couch though when I've got 10 or 15 minutes to waste.

Gin Rummy is great! Cribbage is on our list to learn as well. We bought a cribbage board a while back but the directions that came with it don't make ANY sense.

Anyway hopefully she can watch me play enough of the "Weird" game of Backgammon on the Xbox to eventually get the itch to play. She watched me play last night and started asking questions so that's a good sign!!!

I'm sort of at a standstill regarding what to eventually buy because there's a lot of stuff I'd like to stream and synchronize from the computer in the home office to the living room (and bedroom for that matter *). For example Apple TV lets you stream your computer iTunes library (in my case it's about 65 GBs of mostly well ripped (I use EAC) and encoded (using LAME) music and their own "licenced for a fee" movies, InterWeb stuff such as U-Tube and I'm not sure what else to your home theatre. But I get the feeling Apple's not yet fully behind this product yet and it's on about version 1.3 or so and you know it will be better if you just wait. So I'll wait.

Of course there's Slingbox and similar options which still confuse me despite being an occasional AVS Forum lurker and subscriber to the Astroglide's Home Theater Thread on the El Diablo Forum. Then we have the Wii, a wedding present from me to my brother and his wife which is currently residing (by this I mean the Wii, not my brother and his wife) at my Mom's place back in Rhode Island while the newlywed couple is in home-buying between houses hell. My Mom's 81 years old and holds even with my brother and destroyed me and most other wedding guests at Wii Bowling. As an aside Wii Bowling is not only a fun group game but a great way to get PITA wedding houseguests out of the kitchen.

Because of concerns about Mom having an accident (brought to our attention by a wedding guest who works with the elderly in some sort of assisted living facility despite the fact that my Mom keeps perfect house without assistance) we did ask her to stop sliding down the hardwood floors toward the 52" LCD doing that bowling leg lift thing she used to do in her youth as a top duckpin bowler. Originally the motivation was her health and safety but since Googling only showed good things about Wii use by the older folks I uncovered our real concern in the first paragraph or so since one of us hopes to inherit the 52" Sony .

Anyway, I pick up Mom at LAX tomorrow for her first visit in 17 years (obviously I visit her, I'm not that bad a son) and I'm very excited which explains all these silly links (I want my Mom to turn into an Internet junkie so I'll have cable Internet when I visit).

~ Rick

* Quick cheap trick regarding recycling old computers as long as you aren't too concerned about aesthetics and have tons of music. Take a real old computer you can hardly give away, clear the hard disks and reinstall the OP (I guess Win XP or better). Don't worry about Windows updates, just download iTunes or a music player of your choice. Then using an external hard drive (everyone has one these days right?) or el cheapo flash drive if you don't have much music and transfer it to the old computer. Stick the old computer in the bedroom (BTW, the computer and let's say a 37" $400ish LCD TV can share the same screen as long as you don't use the computer for close in work since TV LCDs aren't that good from 15" away) and hook it up to a sweet old "college days" (I'm 55 so we had stereo rather than iPods in college) receiver and old fashioned speakers most likely stored in your garage or basement/cellar. The output of the computer will interface with the receiver using a cheap cable like this.. Meanwhile you can also use the more powerful better sounding receiver/speakers for your TV. Now if you want to spend a fair amount of money you can use a wireless network and let's say Apple TV and keep in synchronized with the office PC but this is the cheap, green, and recession friendly alternative. Keep in mind I write this to explain the presence of an old 17" CRT computer monitor in the otherwise tastefully decorated bedroom where my Mom is the honored guest (of course I sleep on my camping mat in the office, I'm not from Appalachia).