Or something like that in effect (some distribution that is pretty wide) since in principle eventually you will get sequences of rolls you cannot avoid taking you to the end or making unstable whatever plan you have in mind, hence finite in duration , albeit still pretty long...

I mean if you started a match could you play in such a legitimate manner as to increase the duration of game to unreal large number of steps say hundreds of rolls or more? Obviously its a backgame plan . But can it become totally controlled by you or very close to something like that pushing the duration to extreme levels? Is there an international regulation against such attempt in matches (assuming you are trying to defeat the opponent by prolonging the duration of the match for his clock to expire if yours is ahead initially) ?


I just played a session that i recorded 124 vs 123 rolls against GNU. What is your personal record?

Hi,

its a nice question, but i dont think it is possible to play in a way that makes the game last forever. A back game plan will come a long way, but when you slot blots to the extreme you will stay on the bar for a long time and the other player will bear-off.

I think even when both players would try to play a game as long as possible it would not work in the long term, since there will always come high doubles to spoil the fun,

greetings k.

It is provable that all backgammon games must terminate. However, you can have an arbitrarily long finite sequence of rolls.

Back in the early 80s in Boston we experimented with a variation where the loser won; the player who bore all his checkers off first was the loser. We abandoned it pretty quickly because the games lasted hundreds of moves and the play wasn't all that interesting. It did show, however, that if both players cooperated a game could last a very, very long time.

Bob Koca posed this question in 1994 and Curt McMullen came up with the answer. Doug Zare wrote a nice article on Curt's proof here: http://www.bkgm.com/articles/Zare/BackgammonEnds.html

Interesting. Did the better players have an edge similar to their edge in the standard game? How would compulsory hitting affect the game? I played lots of "Loser's Chess" as a kid where capturing was compulsory but as we got better we realised the game was pointless. Being new to backgammon, non-standard variants interest me but I'm guessing they've all been tried and tested and abandoned?

Most of the games never ended (they were abandoned) so it didn't appear that backgammon skill played much of a role. With successful games that have a history extending over hundreds of years, the rules represent a fine balance that creates a deep and very playable game. Creating such a balance turns out to be extremely hard, which is why most variants fail.

Backgammon to lose is better when it's "n" moves of backgammon to lose, then players change sides, and play that side to win.

Keep in mind however that i never implied playing a game you want to lose or one where the opponent is cooperating. I am strictly playing a game where the objective (mine alone) is not to lose any time soon and not to win unless necessary to win after the delay mode has collapsed. This is why i asked if there is an international regulation against a player that is for example down in a match to 17 by say 13-4 and has started a backgame after an initial bad turn of events but which succeeded in hitting and that has now taken 300 moves per side in an effort to take out the opponent by killing his time . To an objective opponent there is a clear difference between a backgame that is trying to win and one that is trying to postpone the end of the game indefinitely. My trial record so far with GNU at the top rating is about 300 rolls that was achieved exactly as proposed with a backgame with 3 checkers left for opponent and all of mine starting at the home quadrant of the opponent endlessly delaying his return, gradually moving the blocks and then demolishing them orderly and rebuilding them from the back . That works well with 2-3 left for him because you can hit all 3 or 2 while you demolish one ot two of the 6 anchors and then rebuild it fast before he had time to get back and jump over (something that would still take highly specialized multiple rolls anyway even if you failed to rebuild. Plus even if he did get back fast 1 or 2 you can rehit them over time and continue this until you create a 6 block again.

Ideally the 6 anchors are between his home quadrant and the second one endlessly keeping the game at this mode because with every multiple hit you get he needs to come out and advance and this takes enough time for you to rebuild if you had destroyed one of the 6 anchors although typically you dont need to do that because your 3 free checkers can do a lot of delay hitting the other 2-3 of the opponent .


It is as proposed an intelligent effort by one side to prolong the game indefinitely where the opponent has absolutely no choice what to do but simply get lucky over very long periods of time to catch a break and pass the blocks during a demolishing or terribly unlucky forced roll phase. I do believe once the backgame has succeeded and he has 2-3 back its very easy to win if you wish but also very easy to prolong the game several hundred rolls for each side. Its just one funny aspect of the game.

Under the old style chess clocks that we used in the 1990s this would work, but using the modern clocks with a base time plus a move increment I don't see how this would help. The player trapped behind an outside prime would easily be able to roll and play before using up his per-move time increment.

After a while of this I think a good director would need to step in and require the backgame player to start playing real backgammon or be forfeited.

I don't disagree with this idea, but if I were the director, I would only forfeit the match on the grounds that too much time was being used. I would grant victory to whoever was ahead in the match when I deemed that time had lapsed.

Following the rules of backgammon is "real backgammon." As when a football team protests that the opponent is "running up the score," the solution is not to make a new rule. Rather, it is to stop the other side! If you cannot make them stop, that's your fault, not theirs. I can imagine that the first time a backgame was played (way back when!), there was probably someone around who complained that that was not "real backgammon."

Perhaps, if he felt the need, our hypothetical director could add a new rule for next year's tournament. In the absence of a rule, however, I would feel cheated if I were following the rules of the game, and then had a director declare arbitrarily that I was not playing "real backgammon."

Nice that they have such rule these days ( with added time per move making impossible to run out of time if you have a fast pace of decision) . I guess i was deriving my experience from online BG never having played in a real live tournament.

I also agree that there is absolutely nothing unethical about playing a time delay mode of avoiding a loss and not advancing to win either . This is part of the game . Nothing inside a game is unethical if it follows the rules and the rules dictate you play based on dice rolls without telling you what move to play . Obviously i can play whatever i like then. If as is often online there is a clock i find this way to defeat the opponent very intelligent and legitimate. In that sense one may actually play a backgame for this very reason if they are behind and the opponent has very little time left (a backgame even if it fails to hit certainly on average takes more time to conclude) . In that sense it is their fault that they used more time than i did. If some director protested this kind of play i would go to the highest court to defend it as a matter if profound principle. The unreasonable thing in fact is to postulate a certain way to play. I mean where does one draw the line then between delay and play to win. Every "error" is delay then! Of course when you see it you know it. Clearly so. But there should be absolutely no fundamental rule against playing whatever moves you like.

I will tell you what is unethical though. To know someone is bad player and gambling addict and easily tilted and to do your best to constantly force them to play you and lose money by a variety of psychological manipulations. And i can assure you there is absolutely no law against it. And this my friends is the ultimate failure of LAW, a reason our world is eventually to a rendezvous trajectory with a day of remorse in many other unrelated to gambling activities where the letter of the law is used constantly to violate its spirit and to hurt the core of common utility, a notion upon which our society is founded.