There has been a lot of noise on the internet lately about The New Yorker opening up their archives to the unwashed masses.

The greatest New Yorker article I've ever read was a profile of Falafel titled The Chaos of the Dice.

Calling it the greatest New Yorker article of all time may seem like absurdly bold praise, but I challenge you to cite me one better. There is no writer or artist as amusing as Falafel, God bless his gambling-stained heart.

wow! what characters.
abe the snake
paul the russian
the bone
croc
vinny the chin gigante

I'm a little surprised nobody else got excited about such a brilliant article. It's not deep on backgammon theory, but sooooo well-written.

Maybe the major posters in this forum got schooled by Falafel in handicapping tourneys? Dunno.

It's been a long time since I've seen this inspiring doc on here:

Part I:



Part II:



Part III (starts off with a splendid Dickens quote)



Part IV



Part V



I don't care what you say about Mochy as the GOAT, or the Gaza Strip. This is a fascinating character, and with the exception of Bill Robertie, you will learn a lot from the article and the documentary...Not about backgammon, but about the psychological makeup of a successful high-stakes gambler in a very unusual game.

Enjoyed the linked article. Thanks for posting.

My personal favorite article was the April 1979 Sports Illustrated article about Paul Magriel. It gave a more accurate and favorable picture of backgammon as a game of real depth and strategy, not just as a venue for assorted characters winning and losing huge sums with abandon.

Link to the article Mr. Robertie mentioned: http://*******/GR74mi

The actual magazine containing the article is for sale on eBay.

SI have the Magriel article in their vault:

A Gamesman's War Against Luck, Disorder And Surface Chaos Paul Magriel is a mathematician and backgammon champion of the world. His enemy is the dice, which obscure the intricate and beautiful patterns of his game

http :// goo . gl / NpRw9S

also, if you search "backgammon" on their vault page, a number of other articles seem to be available

If you can link to it, check out the May 4, 1964 article "Everyone for Backgammon". It's a long account of the very first international backgammon tournament ever held, at Grand Bahama Island in March, 1964. Only 32 people played, but the organizer, Prince Obolensky, had the foresight to see that this was a notable event and must have contacted Sports Illustrated in advance to get a reporter and a photographer down to Lucaya.

He ran the event again the next year and doubled his attendance to 64 players. From those beginnings came the backgammon boom of the 1970s.

Thanks for the links! Both made for good reading.

Here are the direct links to the same articles.

Everyone For Backgammon
Sports Illustrated, 1964-May-04
A crowd of socialites and their friends gather on a resort island to play the game they love best

A Gamesman's War Against Luck, Disorder And Surface Chaos
Sports Illustrated, 1979-Jun-04
Paul Magriel is a mathematician and backgammon champion of the world. His enemy is the dice, which obscure the intricate and beautiful patterns of his game

Here is a link to Wikipedia explaining why it does not accept shortened URL's such as those from goo . gl. Evidently, TwoPlusTwo has reached some of the same conclusions.

Mike

With reference to the scandinavian dominance in backgammon, maybe he had even more foresight than is realized. It seems that the Obolensky family belongs to the Rurik dynasty, which can be traced back to the scandinavian vikings. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia#Kievan_Rus.27

Abe the Snake is Abe Mosseri. Around 1998, Falafel won some cash when a Las Vegas gambler flew in and played Abe alternating 10 games of BG, and then 10 of Gin Rummy, over the course of ~ 48 hours. Abe took him for
$1MM. His backers were very happy, especially one young guy (can't remember his name), who did not have the funds if Abe had lost.

This was at the Ace Point, where Falafel really made his name, and moved to after the Chess and Backgammon club, where it was usually much smaller stakes.

I don't go to tournaments, so I don't know who Genius or Mr. Joseph are. Can someone enlighten me?

Cool. Thanks for the insight.

I have a few things to say to Taper_Mike and Mr. Robertie:

1) Thank you both for your contributions to this board. You guys are the tits. (*)(*)

2) The articles Taper_Mike linked are fantastic. I've seen them before. I read them again just now, and it won't be the last time. They're both worthy of multiple perusals.

My favorite old-school article was the one in which Magriel beat George Plimpton while blindfolded (yet another New Yorker jawn):

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/19...urrentPage=all

Of course, at that time, Plimpton was the ultimate fish--rich and arrogant--but choosing the best between those three old-timey articles is a matter of taste. New Yorker pinheads sure know how to write, whereas SI keeps it real for the general populace.

Have I mentioned you guys are the tits? (x)(*)

(Those are tits on a trampoline)

In my opinion the article is romanticizing professional backgammon. Like all sports and games, the more money is involved, the more the fun, character and sportsmanship go out of the window. It invites a culture of (a?)sex, drugs and rob and roll, and is lightyears away from the atmosphere of the vast majority of forum members. Suddenly I am filled with nostalgia about the times we were playing cards with our grandpa, and we all were laughing about his bloopers, and he just didn't care. But it was all very cheerful.

Give me the sex, drugs and rob and roll over a game of cards with grandpa every time!

Smells like very poor high volatility philosophy.

Have you read a word by Magriel? Without sex, drugs, and gambling there would be no championship at Monaco.

Magriel--a man with a Princeton chair--disappeared for days on end, while his wife wondered where he went.

I understand you are Rus. Putin is the man. Kasparov would side with me when I tell you Putin is nowhere near as cool as Paul Magriel back in the day.

Now, Mochy and Falafel battle it out for the best in the game. We are not talking politics here. We are talking about backgammon.

Mochy failed his college entrance exams. That is the ultimate humiliation for a Japanese teen. Falafel was kicked out of his home for being a bum. Bill Robertie squandered his Harvard education to write about games and give lessons for a mere $50 an hour.

And yet these are the best players on the planet. What does this say about them? What does it say about you?

Why are we so fascinated by this game?

I am glad I am just a normal average human being.

There are merits to it.

Sol --

Don't mean to be picky, but my lessons are actually $125 an hour.

And BTW, I don't consider my education to have been squandered.

Bill

I have a questions on backgammon programming. Before asking the questions, I had heard that you were proficient in Systems Analysis and Programming with work related experiences If so, you may be just the person to answer my concerns. Thanks

Mr. Robertie, I consider you to be a dazzling genius. I admire you greatly.

I play scratch off lottery tickets every day in hopes of earning enough money to take lessons from you at $125/hr. So far, I have only won twelve bucks, but I know my big lucky ticket is coming in soon, and you'll have the best student ever.

As soon as you help me figure out how to count pips over the board, and then make really, really, really, really, really close cube decisions, I just might become the next world champion.

Perhaps your neocortex is so oriented toward logic and mathematics that you didn't immediately perceive the cognitive dissonance behind lumping you in with the greatest minds in backgammon, who might possibly have been a disappointment to their parents.

Those clowns did not graduate from Ivy League schools. So apparently, nobody's education was squandered after all.

I included you in that fold because I think you are pretty smart for a Harvard chap. When that super-nerd mathematician analyzed 501 Backgammon Problems there were surprisingly few errors, especially considering you did all that **** in your head.

See you in Cannes!

Sol

Thanks for the kind remarks. I'm looking forward to our lessons. 'Dazzling genius' seems a little over the top, however. That's good for Newton/Mozart/Picasso/Fischer, but I don't really run with that crowd. 'Good player' is plenty sufficient.

Any good articles or stories related to backgammon lately?