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02-18-2009 , 03:24 PM

RoyalCatcher

enthusiast

Join Date: Jan 2009 Posts: 89

I've never played Backgammon and would like to learn the game ,can anyone suggest a good place to start.

Thanks G/L

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02-18-2009 , 06:23 PM

kitaristi0

l'étranger

Join Date: Feb 2005 Posts: 16,139

Not to pimp this forums moderator too much but I would buy Backgammon For Winners by Robertie then download GNU Backgammon and play with the tutor mode enabled a ton. Then I would move on to Backgammon by Magriel or Backgammon Boot Camp by Trice and go back to GNU for more.

At least that's what I did.

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02-18-2009 , 07:06 PM

Viikatemies

journeyman

Join Date: Jan 2009 Posts: 377

Personally, I would seriously recommend to read 501 BG Problems of Bill Robertie. If you are looking for an Internet site, try Backgammon galore. They have a lot of good articles there and it is free.

There's one absolutely fantastic article there, in my holy opinion, that really opened my eyes. It is an article about a short match between Kit Woolsey and Jeremy Bagai, which was annotated afterwards by the players and supplemented by the evaluations of TD Gammon, the first neural network backgammon engine (thus an ancestor of Snowie and Co).

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02-18-2009 , 09:32 PM

WhiteWolf

old hand

Join Date: Mar 2005 Posts: 1,856

Quote:

Originally Posted by Viikatemies

There's one absolutely fantastic article there, in my holy opinion, that really opened my eyes....

+1 on this recommendation. I found this article incredibly informative + entertaining.

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02-19-2009 , 03:59 AM

CieloAzor

veteran

Join Date: Mar 2005 Posts: 3,198

I first read Backgammon for Serious Players by Robertie back when I barely understood the rules. I thought it was very interesting and educational but I didn't really follow up much on it other than playing a few casual games against a friend online. Now finding this forum has already encouraged me to download GNU and get back into it. I'm loving the tutor mode and the ability to evaluate my play after each turn or each match. I'm planning to re-read Robertie's book again soon and lurk this forum a bit to learn what I can. Thanks for that link above; the article is really neat and I plan to read the whole thing!

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02-19-2009 , 01:36 PM

RoyalCatcher

enthusiast

Join Date: Jan 2009 Posts: 89

hanks for all the help guys,I'll check back later.G/L

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02-19-2009 , 04:06 PM

ajmargarine

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Jun 2005 Posts: 21,228

Quote:

Originally Posted by Viikatemies

+1 on that site and the recommended article. Also on that site, the 'How to Play the Opening Rolls' was great for a noob. Just enough information and well presented imo.

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02-19-2009 , 07:20 PM

Jonnymch

adept

Join Date: Nov 2008 Posts: 983

Have a taste of pavlonian conditioning by downloading gnubg and putting it on tutor mode with the sound turned up! Worked ok for me. Reading Roberties books (Modern Backgammon is excellent) is good once youve played a few games and running rollouts on gnubg (a bit like pokerstoving) is useful for working out solutions to generic cube and checker decisions.

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