Backgammon is on of my favourite things to bet on, poker is obviously my favourite. I like a cheeky sports bet too football (soccer) or golf. I never feel the need to wager any money on chess but i suppose it is good as anything else.

Like poker I like the skill of backgammon but i enjoy the thrill of the luck factor aswell. I have been playing for a month or so now and am just starting to think about the stratergy of the game regarding when to double ect.

If you have any advice, useful tips, questions or if you just wanna tell the community a good backgammon story then this is the thread...

Can anyone help me! when is it a good time to double? how much of an advantage do you need?

idk what youre looking for. this really cant be summed up in a simple phrase.

do you know of any good websites?

I just finished reasing Bill Robertie's 'Backgammon for winners' book. Here's an answer to your question. He mentions another bit about doubling during the latter stages of the game too, but it's very situational.


Exert:

thanks very much

The excerpt from “Backgammon for Winners” sums up the concepts pretty well, but here are some added thoughts on when to double.

In general, you want to be between a 65% and 75% favorite to double. The more volatility (the more likely that the state of the game will change radically depending on the next roll, or the more likely you are to win a gammon), the less overall advantage you need to double. So for instance, if a quarter of your rolls will point on your opponent and give you a huge advantage with good gammon chances, you want to double before that happens, even if your overall winning chances are just in the low-60% range. (This situation is obviously analogous to the semi-bluff in poker.)

With static positions, where only big doubles will change the position markedly, then you want to be very close to 75% before you double.

Experienced players carry around in their heads a big library of “reference positions”, standard positions where they know the winning percentages and gammon percentages almost exactly. They compare the position on the board to one of their reference positions and make an approximate guess as to the percentages.

Hope this helps.

Thanx Robertie

I can't believe that the game is not more popular.

Like roulette I am pretty certain that the game wouldn't work well online but I am amazed that so few people play.

hey pepsi, if you're ever looking for someone to play backgammon with online, send me a PM.

I like backgammon even more than poker. But nowadays I can't gamble here in the US online, and the evaluation software doesn't work on the "play money" games offered online. I used to love to play a session and then evaluate my moves with GNU and learn from my errors. It's a shame I can't do this any more.

Backgammon isn't really popular anymore, and I don't understand why. It's a beautiful game, and it's a very pure gambling game. The marriage of skill and luck makes for a perfect gambling game.

Currently reading Robertie's Backgammon for serious players.

Sick book imo.

Any more recommended books to read?

Trice's Backgammon Boot Camp is excellent (for beginner to intermediates), as are Robertie's 501 problems and "Modern Backgammon."

backgammon is an awesome game and would be much wider played if it werent for programs like jellyfish, snowie and gnu which perfected it and allowed anyone with the time to get good (plus bots are much easier to program). I really recommend downloaidng ''gnu backgammon'' (its free) for anyone interested as you can ramp up your fibs to 1700+ rating after a few hundred hours on tutor mode. IMO this is much better than any book and has helped my game far more than the 8 or so books ive read on it. Avoid ''backgammon for blood''!!!

www.bkgm.com.

installed gnu backgammon.

it doesn't seem to like attacking the 5-point nearly as much as Robertie explains in the book though.

I found the hint button is fairly useless since I can't seem to see the 'hints'

Pretty good for analysis and decision making though with the 'this is a doubtful play' gumps popping up.

I think the answer to the decline in backgammon popularity is the rise in the popularity of poker. There is just more money to be made in poker. You hear of backgammon pros learning poker: Magriel, Robertie, Hansen but you do not hear of the reverse.

I got a small backgammon set for Christmas, and this book looks pretty good. It might well be worth a purchase.

Are there any sites where you can gamble backgammon online? And if so, are the players any good?

partygammon.com

level of play varies and most of them play an attacking style.

Aao --

A short answer to your question: "Backgammon for Winners" is a beginner's book, so I somewhat overemphasized the idea of attacking on the 5-point. Most beginners never even think of leaving a blot exposed to a direct shot, so it's crucial to quickly introduce the idea that a point can be so valuable that you might want to leave a shot to try and make a great point.

But like everything else, there are a lot of times when attacking on the 5-point is very correct, and a lot of times where it's very incorrect. The bots, Snowie, Jellyfish, and gnu, handle these positions extremely well, because they occur early in the game, when the bots are at their best. (Bots have weaknesses, but they occur in late-game positions; their early play is almost flawless.) So if a bot is telling you that hitting or slotting the 5-point is wrong, believe it and try to figure out what makes this case different from other cases.

not sure whats going on with your hint button, gnu can be pretty temperamental sometimes, maybe try installing the old stable version?? also, id recommend you turn off ''doubtful'' checker play identification in tutor mode, instant analysis isnt always that accurate and especially at the beginning it can be disheartening and frustrating to keep getting the sign pop up.

Also, backgammon has less variance than poker so the fish realise they suck faster...Modern backgammon is definitely my favourite BG book, its just a bit tricky to get hold of.

Out of interest Bill, what FIBS rating does gnu give you? do you often play supernatural on checker and cube decisions?

I just bought the Praxis set. Great books! As is Boot Camp.

http://www.fortuitouspress.com/praxis.html

very true.

when i was taught how to play, i was always told to never leave any blots and play conservatively 'so you wont run the risk of getting hit and losing all the ground you've made.' i played this way until i was playing my godfather and in one game where i was ahead by far, he started leaving blots open all over the place and said 'if you're losing in a game, sometimes its better to fall behind even more so you have a chance to catch up' (or words to that effect).

it got me thinking a lot and i started to think about my plays in general, like leaving blots open in the opening rolls with 52 or 34... but even then, i never imagined slotting the 5 point.

Partygammon is not a good site to play on.
Too many cheatos in there and the games cannot be analysed easily, since they use a game history that gnu cant read without conversion which takes time and work.

i like this one,

Jacoby & Crawford is actually a remarkably good book considering that it was published in 1970. It was the first book of the backgammon boom of that era, and contains very few errors by today's standards. The only problem with the book is that while the analysis is very accurate, only a tiny number of situations are represented, so the reader doesn't get a real sense of the flow of a game.

The book could be helped if the authors had included just a couple of lightly annotated games, which would give a picture of the development of a game from start to finish. But it's massively impressive for its time; Jacoby must have crushed the games of the 1960s.

If you buy it, try to get the hard cover or the full sized soft cover (224 pages). There's a tiny paperback edition which is available everywhere but which leaves out a couple of chapters.