If you are a chess player and don't find the same intellectual challenges in backgammon, it might be a good idea to consider alternative moves which leave one or more blots in the beginning stage of the game. Thereby often the way is opened to a kind of checker chaos, which increases the complexity of the game dramatically. When you look at the evaluation hint window you almost always see moves which look daring, but are not more than 0.3 away from the best move. I give you some examples from my last session:



Many of you will think that the bot is an omniscient backgammon god, but this is a false assumption. It just can't see ahead from the beginning of the game to the end. Besides, the bot is not representative of a human player, particularly in the case of doubling decisions. This means that even when it would have perfect vision, there will be room for relativizing. In other words, the bot is a backgammon laboratory.
As a consequence I am not averse from playing bad moves in the beginning stage, for example:

This is how I play 65 as first move:



Just try if it works, and in times that it don't, you can play in the normal way.

I have seen players slot the 5 point on the opening roll with 6-2, that can increase the complexity.

I would play 13/11 13/7, because if the opponent hits, there is a good chance you can hit back, and the ball gets rollin' ...

An unintentional byproduct of this kind of loose play is that if he misses, you can have a very good offensive position next turn.

As a chess player, when your only goal is win a game/match maybe against a (supposed) weaker opponent I think is ok to mess up the position and the opening, because the longer the match/game is the better the chance that opponent runs into unfamiliar and sharp positions where it's easy to make a blunder and lose.

As a backgammon player it's not clear. I speak for myself: I have a terrible leak playing "many men back positions". To give an idea: if I play "normal and linear position" my checker play pr is about 5, but unfortunately when I play with/against many men back my error rate is about 10-11. So my opening moves and rolls aim to avoid that position, so e.g. with an ace on the opening I NEVER slot. Never. I usually split every opening also, except in the cases where it's crawford game and I trail.

I think that even when playing a (supposed) weaker player I will avoid complexity. Simply because it can backfires.

But in the end I think that one should follow his own personal style, and I admit that I hate playing against players that plays 6-1 this way: 13/7 6/5 but if you don't care abut PR it can be a good tactic OTB.

David Rockwell is one of the world’s top theoriticians of the early game. You may not recognize his name, but if you use eXtreme Gammon, you are benefiting from his work. David has contributed more rollouts to the XG Opening Book than anyone else.

Rockwell speaks about response error when he considers whether to make a deliberate misplay in the early game. His analysis is based on something we all know to be true. Downstream effects in backgammon are generally much less important than the immediate result of the next exchange or two. By exchange, I mean your turn and your opponent’s, so two exchanges is four rolls.

His concept is particularly useful when you want to analyze a single exchange. That’s because it is not overly difficult to set up all 21 rolls an opponent might have after you make a given play, and roll out each one. Usually this exercise will reveal that certain rolls for the opponent are more likely to generate misplays than others. You can then form a weighted sum of the equity your opponent will lose if makes those misplays.

Now you have a useful number. By comparing the equity you sacrifice when you make a deliberate misplay with the equity you gain via your opponent’s response errors, you can determine whether “creating complexity” is a good idea.

Against the competition Rockwell usually faces, David estimates that he will break even or gain when his sacrifice is around 0.01 or so. He won’t try one of these “complexity” gambits when his initial sacrifice is much more than that. 0.015 is definitely too high for him. If your opponent’s are of a lesser caliber than the open-level tournament players David competes against, you may well observe that your threshold is higher. Whether it reaches 0.03 is something each of us will have to decide for ourselves.

My own practice is very conservative. I am probably ranked among the lower half of open-level players, so you can imagine how difficult it is for me just to find the right play in a given position. Usually that is hard enough for me. Since I don’t even know what the best play is, I don’t try to find the next best play. Even if I wanted to, how could I be sure I was right? And if I found the second-best play, how good would I have to be to correctly estimate that it only sacrificed a small amount of equity?

Here in 2015, I don’t think I am that good yet.

Mike

I love playing against opponents who open 13/7 6/5!

I think it will not differ much from a 4-ply evaluation. But whatever, the argument is again that the bot is no human representative. In one way or the other the sumtotal of the difficulty degree of all next moves of the two players should be compared, and this outcome should be included in the evaluation, which looks not so feasible to me. And then still it could be that you could take on a much greater degree of difficulty than your opponent. I am less a theoritician, and more a practicalist, and I know what I am talking about. It's not often that I play live games, but the times that I do I am pretty successful. Ask a dutch topplayer and the chance is great that they will know me.


It could be that he is a little bit apprehensive about his PR (pun intended). The performance rating reminds me of the IQ discussion of years ago, in which it was contended that IQ also shows to what extent someone is adapted (read: slave) to the culture or the system. If you ask me, performance rating has some connotations with a drycleaner.

You have written a backgammon ebook. Could you give the link, please?

That's because you are f*cking ants (dutch colloquial). Again, the certainty offered by the bot is an illusion at this stage. Backgammon is about risk taking, and your approach is like a chess player. It is the difference between the street fight and the ring fight. I don't advocate anarchy, but when you vary your approach it will be an enrichment to your play, and maybe also to your personal psychological evolution. And I am not even American!

Off topic a little, but I don't agree with this. In chess, making the position into a big mess helps the weaker player IMO. In complex tactical positions where neither player can work it all out, the stronger player might also blunder. But in ordinary positions, the strong player is unlikely to blunder, while the weaker player will very likely drift into positional and strategic errors that cost the game.

The same is true for Go in my experience.

Off topic but answering...

In chess if you mess up the position and you are an IM against a GM youre right: as a weaker player the more messy is the position the more your odds to get chanches to win.

But as amateurs with some experience say 1500 elo against 1700 elo i think you, as a stronger player, to avoid draw in must win situation the best strategy is to play "messy" e.g 1.e4 Nf6 because is easy for the weaker player to exagerate and push pawn and create weaknesses. In go its not close and modern korean top player ( but even 1 dan pro play ) play from the beginning messy Joseki because it destroys the pattern of weaker player. See "Avalanche joseki" for better understanding

I have RolloutSummary spreadsheet that contains rollout results for more than 3000 early-game positions. It uses Nactation, but that's pretty easy to get used to. For one thing, I include a Nactation key that gives traditional notation for every single Nactation. The spreadsheet is a Microsoft Excel document.

If you would like me to add you to my distribution list, drop me a PM, and include your email address. I'll send you the current release today, and add you to my distribution list for future editions. The same invitation is extended to any reader here.

Well, I didn't expect you would like my approach!

Mike

I have played several games to a moderate level of competence, but I am better at go than I am at anything else. And I can say for certain, if I am playing an even game against a weaker player and need to win (a tournament, perhaps), then the absolute last thing I want to do is get into a complex fight that can swing 50 or 100 points either way. It is much safer and easier (although maybe less fun) to just stay calm and outpoint them, especially in the endgame.

Chess may be more debatable, but endgame strength is still a huge factor. A player +200 rating points can usually win an equal ending.

Let me add (in case I am losing credit with the moderator) that I am aware there is a very well substantiated rationale behind the conventional beginning play. Being able to understand and apply this rationale or beginning strategy is a precondition before you venture off the chaos-springboard, because the subsequent moves will need to be played properly in order to make up for an eventual timely sacrifice of equity.