Hi all,

Before I make a minor complaint about this book, let me say that I really love it. I believe that it has improved my game more than any other single resource. It taught me a different way to think about the game and actually made backgammon more fun...

Okay, here comes my small complaint. I don't like that each chapter's problems are grouped up front and then the solutions are grouped at the end. I am always flipping back and forth and losing my place and forgetting which problem I just looked at / which solution I just read. I understand why it was printed that way, but it is really annoying.

Maybe I'm the only one with this semi-pedantic complaint...? Does anyone know if there's a website or resource which just lists out the problems? Something that I could pull up to keep my place in the solutions and look at the problem at the same time? I think that would help a lot... It would take the book from a 9.5 to a 10...

Hi Teddossan,
Perhaps you can photo copy the problems, tackle them as a work and then look up the solutions.
When I studied the books years ago, I wrote my solution into the book with a pencil and when finished a chapter looked at the book solution to compare.
No one ever said obtaining knowledge was easy. Best of Luck!

Zimri007

I do not know of any online source where you can examine the problems in Robertie’s 501 Essential Backgammon Problems. I can, however, point you to an excellent resource for those who do have Robertie’s book. It is the web site by Timothy Chow where he posts many GNU rollouts of problems in the book. Chow deliberately withholds any board diagrams, so that unless you have the book, the rollout data are essentially meaningless.

Here is an excerpt from Chow’s introduction:

The rollouts below (performed by GNU Backgammon) are the ones that in my opinion are the most interesting. This list includes all positions where GNU Backgammon significantly disagrees with Robertie; these are highlighted using BOLDFACE ITALIC. The other positions have been included for a variety of reasons. For example, in some cases, GNU disagrees with Robertie, but (in my opinion) only slightly; in other cases, Robertie and GNU agree, but GNU thinks there is another move that is almost as good as Robertie’s recommendation; in still other cases, GNU thinks that the doubling cube is not in the most logical position.

By Timothy Chow
http://math.mit.edu/~tchow/robertie/robertie501.html

My solution was to seperate the book into two books ring bound. I did this by cutting the sections into diagrams and solutions. Where the back page of a diagram was on the same page as an explanation I photocopied it. Then when I read it I put the 2 made books side by side. It was a lot easier to read and reread. It is probably my most read Backgammon book and I own over 50.