Hi. I have an old hard back copy of Backgammon by Magriel from 1976 and really enjoyed it. I just borrowed a paperback copy of the same title with a copyright of 2004. What are the updates in this new edition? It appears identical besides a long introduction from Magriel's ex-wife.

I read in the intro that Magriel decided it was a mistake making the 5 point the golden point instead of the bar point. The intro said changing this in the new edition would have required an entire rewrite of the book. I sure wish he rewrote the book based on this assumption. That advanced anchor 5 point sure seems important. I don't see any mention of this correction in the new edition besides in the intro.

Are there any changes in this new 2004 edition vs my 1976 copy?

There are no changes apart from the new introduction by Renee Magriel.

Wow. Putting out a book as a new edition with only the addition of an introduction? I haven't checked yet but I remember an error or two in a few diagrams of the checkers in my old copy. I hope they corrected it in the revised edition.

Is it true per the introduction of the revised edition, that the bar point is more important than the 5 point? Should the bar point be considered the golden point?

No. They're both very good anchors, but the 20-point has a couple of small advantages over the 18-point: you can't get closed out when you have the 20-point anchor, and if you later leave the 20-point and get into a race, your opponent may not have made the point himself and thus he'll be missing with fives in the bearoff. There's also the fact that your opponent's best offensive point is his 5-point, not his bar-point, and by making the 20 you prevent him from making it.

In the real world, there are hardly any positions where you actually have a choice between making the 20 or the 18. Usually it's one or the other, and if the position requires you to have a defensive anchor, you're happy with either one. Paul and I talked a lot of backgammon over the years and I never heard him express the opinion that the 18-point was the best defensive anchor.

I was very surprised to read this in the last few paragraphs of Renee Magriel Roberts' foreward in the 2004 edition:

"Paul now feels that he made a significant error in Backgammon when he named the opponent's 5-point the Golden Point and called that the capture of it the most important objective of the early game. Time (and yes, Snowie) have since shown us that the opponent's bar point is actually the true Golden Point, a much better point to attack and claim in the early going......."

Have you read this part of the 2004 edition?

Yes, and I don't quite know what to make of it. My best guess is that Paul learned from Snowie rollouts that the 18-point was somewhat stronger than he originally thought.

In the 1970s, the general opinion among top players was that the best anchors were the 20 and the 21, with the 18-point in third place. Over the next 15 years, the bar-point rose in value in most player's estimation, to the point where it was thought to be at least equal to the 21-point and maybe a little better. But I never heard anyone (Paul included) who thought that it was actually better than the 20-point.

The genius of the book, for me, was the clarity of the presentation- not the content. I know many of the solutions were later controverted by Snowie, et seq. In fact, Jeremy Bagai published a set of corrections (+ a few for Robertie?). I imagine even some of the themes may have been wrong or over/under-valued.

Context is everything, and what Magriel, Robertie, Trice et al have taught us is that making any point is only worthwhile if it fits into the endgame-winning strategy dictated by the current position. So determining whether the 20 or the bar anchor is "better" is useless out-of-context. What you need to understand is why you would value one over the other in a given position (and whether you value a defensive anchor at all, as Bill stated above).

My understanding is that the bots reinforced the simple fact that all backgammon games end in a mindless pip race. For example, making advanced board points early was found to be not the naive blunder formerly assumed- even if a blitz is bisected with a 20 point anchor, you can still hope to race by or duck shots shamelessly with good dice- and the prematurely advanced checkers can never add to bear-off gap woes.

In the simplest terms, all else equal, having the 18 anchor instead of the 20 means you are 4 pips ahead in the race and have 2 fewer crossovers. And it allows you to split safely to your 13 with 5's if that might help get you home. Better checker "connectivity" with the 13, despite the 4-gap, might outweigh the few extra closeouts you risk.