I would like to ask Mr. Robertie to draw parallels between backgammon and poker games, because no one can do it better than backgammon's two-time world champion and Harrington's co-author.

So:

1. What game is hard to understand - backgammon or poker?
2. What game is hard to play - backgammon or poker?
3. Do you know percent ratio between backgammon and poker players (including online)?
4. Why backgammon less popular than poker?
5. How do you can explain poker popularity?
6. How do you appraise backgammon future?
7. Why there are not great backgammon sites, forums and community on the internet? (For example: this forum is located on the poker site.)

Thanks in advance.

OK, here's a quick shot:

1. They're both difficult. BG has a harder initial learning curve by far. However, I think it's actually easier to get to be a world-class player in BG than poker if you're willing to put in the hours.

2. Impossible to quantify: playing either game very well is hard.

3. Semi-serious poker players outnumber semi-serious BG players by at least 100:1.

4. TV and online. Poker is much more accessible on TV, and it's more fun (and easier) to play online.

5. Exciting, fun, big TV presence, possibility of winning a big tournament and getting rich.

6. BG will always be with us with tournaments and clubs, but it will appeal to a small subset of the gaming crowd.

7. Many fewer BG players, hence less reason to put in the effort to launch a site.

Not a good backgammon player at all, so excuse my ignorance if this is dumb, but I did remember hearing that they had developed computer programs that could beat world class players. Is one of the reasons backgammon has not become a much bigger internet game simply because there would be bots capable of beating the very best (which is clearly not the case in poker)?

5 good players can sit at a 6max table and make money from one fish. Backgammon is almost exclusively HU.

http://www.bgonline.org/forums

This has been going on for a decade in chess. But that is a factor. Other problems are exorbitantly high rakes, small player bases, and US legislation.

Not even close to true.

Is there an online Backgammon site that offers chouettes?

poker>>>>>>>bakgammon

for me, backgammon and poker are incredibly similar in terms of luck and skill required.

at a rudimentary level, in both games novice players will just beat each other equal times until one player gleans some knowledge and begins to make an impact.

But how long do you need to be sure of defeating a weaker opponent in either game given the same skill differential?

What sets backgammon apart I think is the intensity of decision-making required and it is this facet that makes accomplished backgammon players decent winning poker players or fast-learning ones from scratch.

Somehow, it seems harder for poker players to adopt backgammon than visa versa. Or it may be an illusion as there are so many poker players out there, as a whole they look 'weaker' and less adept than the existing community of backgammon players do (as a whole!)

by the way, I think televised backgammon is just as good as poker, if not better, as long as you have some understanding.

Certainly it may not be as accessible.

The Gus v Sander Lylloff $10,000 special match we set-up at the WSOB Nordic Open 08 was superb entertainment! I have watched it at least 30 or 40 times and still enjoy it. Indeed, the secret is watching any of the shows we produced in preparation for play. There is so much valuable information to be gleaned!

I would attribute my own success winning a major event and a load of money to watching the action from Nordic 08 with Gus Hansen (and JC) commentary, albeit, I was in the edit for weeks, with them, the action and snowie! for a player like myself, with some years behind me, a lot of information gathered, what I got from watching these shows, gave me balance in my ideas and even under massive pressure, I felt I rarely got into too much trouble with making a decision or if I lost confidence, I regained it quickly. Not so easy when playing against the very best players like Jurgen Orlowski for thirty grand!

Commentary would make such a huge part for TV performance. In poker there is time to comment the hands, speculate on players plans etc. while the hand is played. There are less complex issues to be talked so it is fairly straight forward

I have not seen BG on TV but I would imagine that it would require more skill (both BG and verbal presentation) from the commentator.

I am just reading "Kit Woolsey vs. Jeremy Bagai" game. I can only dream of seeing this game played on TV, animated board showing the situation taking part of the screen so that viewer can see the situation clearly (and perhaps possible options if time taking decision). Major part of the screen showing live feed of the players. AND commentary on the lavel of the article I mentioned... Oh what a bliss that would be

Is the game you mentioned available from somewhere? Download or online viewing?

search 'WSOB' on Youtube to find the channel or a selection of match action clips and features and interviews from our events. You can also watch some shows from 06 and 07 in their entirety on Joost.com, again search 'WSOB', though the most recent 10 hours, the best stuff we produced is not available there. Clips are on Youtube including a great one of Gus Hansen playing Sander Lylloff.
We will upload some new content from the last WSOB Championship held in Cannes last year (the next WSOB Champ is being held in London on Feb 6/7_ as well as Gus Hansen's final against Bob Koca in the WSOB Cannes tour event final of 08 too, which was a 155 player event - for some reason, some say Gus has been "inactive" but of course he played our entire tour last year (has bought into the WSOB Champ for $7,500) and I know he has been playing lately, including playing a prop over three days with Sander Lylloff!

Andy

I was going to post the JOOST info a couple of days ago when I saw this post, but found that they were not longer there (still don't seem to be) so it has been more than 10 hours. Would love to have online access to more of your full shows, I watched all the ones that were up on JOOST. I understand that there are financial issues with doing this, but for those of us in the U.S. that have no other way to see televised backgammon it was great to be able to see them online. Are you uploading clips to YOUTUBE or full programs to JOOST?

ah, unfortunately it seems Joost is now known to be basically a failed experiment and is gradually shutting down.
In fact, Joost had an irritatingly and ludicrously convoluted bureaucratic and technical process to deliver encoded content, far worse than delivering for broadcast. That did not help content providers.
I didn't actually know our shows were no longer available there, but we are now looking for an alternative online solution for our TV content. As soon as we have it, we'll let you know!

Thank you for the pointers. Found shows from youtube and I am looking into them.

to OP point #2.

I have played poker for bit over 2. years. (newbie with BG, moderate with other games of skill). Within that time I have aquired enough skills that I can enter a major tournament with tough field and have a good fighting chance of success. With Backgammon (or other games of skill) I do not see this as possibility (in other word the need more time& work).

to OP point # 3 and #4
Poker is more approachable (since it is a major brand and people have friends who know and can introduce them to the game)

It is easier(more rewarding, more fun) for novice player to have a game of poker than it is to have a game of backgammon. (in backgammon a novice can get hammered down so bad that he/she leaves the game).

definite bonus for BG is that it can be played without stakes as friendly game. With poker the game loses its major element when stakes are removed.

I’m a novice backgammon and poker player and am surprised the major difference has not been mentioned. At the time of any decision in Backgammon, everything is a know factor. The placement of the checkers for each player and current roll of the dice is known when a player makes a decision.
In poker, there are unknowns. You do not know what the other player has and you depend on your ‘read’ on that player to make your decisions. Both games have odds and math and are easy to learn but hard to master. But it’s the unknown in poker that makes it different.

As for TV, poker did not become popular until they started showing the viewer the hole cards (the unknowns). This gives the viewer information the players do not have. It brings up the same emotions when watching a movie when you know the killer is hiding in the closet and the possible victim is about to hang up their coat. Will they toss the coat on the chair (fold) and walk away or open the door and be a murder victim (knocked out of the tournament).

I’ve always thought the poker vs. backgammon is a bad comparison. It’s like comparing speed skating and swimming. They have many of the same elements but are very different.

I don't really think this is true. You know the current position, but you don't know what the next dice roll is going to be, or the roll after that and so on. How often do you take a double -- even if it is a correct take -- only to have your opponent roll a joker that completely changes the complexion of the game? If that roll was known you would have certainly dropped the double. Or you make the "correct" play only to have you opponent roll the 18 to 1 shot to hit that perfectly placed builder and turn the game around. Had you known that was going to be the roll you would have certainly made a different play. So even though the current position is known (unlike poker) there are still a lot of unknowns when you are making decisions in backgammon.

The idea that everything is known in backgammon but not in poker is a big misconception. In fact, the decision-making processes in both games are almost the same, which is why good backgammon players adapt to poker so easily.

When you are doubled in backgammon, you know the position but not your opponent's upcoming roll. What you can do, however, is group his upcoming rolls into certain ranges: x% of his rolls are very strong, y% are mediocre, z% are weak. For each range you can estimate your winning chances, leading to an overall assessment.

When you face a bet or raise in poker, you know quite a bit: your hand, the board, your opponent's tendencies, the stack sizes, etc. You don't know his hand, but again you can break his range of hands (based on how the hand has played out so far) into certain groups: x% strong made hands, y% semi-bluffs, z% bluffs, etc. Then you estimate how likely you are to win or lose money.

It should be clear that the two decision-making processes are fundamentally the same.

The big difference comes from the fact that in poker the players have different information available so they try to mislead each other not only by bluffing but by changing their betting patterns. Working with ranges is only part of the equation.

There are no ranges in chess nevertheless good chess players adapt to poker as easily as good BG players do simply because they are also smart. I see more similarities between BG and chess than between BG and poker by the way. Generally the more accurately you calculate the variations in the former two the better you are.

Another thing is that backgammon players have a very good understanding of equity considerations. Not just game-equity (which roughly translates to poker as "hand EV", but especially the backgammon match equity concept in relation to the doubling cube decisions. This is conceptually very close to poker tournament EV decisions, when considering relative stack sizes and blind levels measured up against a given prize structure.

I think that's why you so often see good backgammon players excel in tournament poker and understand some of the special tournament poker scenarios (as discussed thoroughly in Harrington & Roberties books - both backgammon players - remember that one of the concepts comes from Paul Magriel, also worldclass backgammon player back in the days!).

Some of the crazy moves you see Gus Hansen do in tournaments often makes sense from a tournament equity perspective, and I bet you that his plays are rooted in the mathematics of the game, and in his early poker days, those mathematics were backgammon match eauity mathematics translated/extrapolated to poker tournaments.

Can anyone recommend a good book about maths applied to backgammon?

There's no such book, because the only math you need to know for backgammon is pretty simple. You need a good formula for pip counts in races (when to double, when to drop), a modified version of this for straight bearoffs, and a match equity table. Most world class player don't know any more than this.

There are serviceable race formulas in Advanced BG, vol. 2, and a good match equity table in Woolsey's How to play Tournament BG. Neil's Numbers (Inside BG, vol 3/#3) give a way to approximate a math equity table with a simple formula.

thanks

Kit Woolsey has a nice article on Backgammon Mathematics that can be found at http://www.bkgm.com/articles/GOL/Jun01/math.htm, it is pretty simple.

You can find a good description of various race formulas at http://www.bkgm.com/articles/CubeHandlingInRaces/

For short bear-offs the effective pip count methods are of interest http://www.bkgm.com/articles/EffectivePipCount/

If you want to know more about how to arrive at a match equity table Tom Keith has an article http://www.bkgm.com/articles/met.html.

awesome!! thanks a lot for these links