Fairly new returnee to the game so I see that there are some new tricks to be learned.

Matches for rating points and even results for tournaments need some strategy revision because of the new pr system.

Playing out lost positions (or for sure gammons) til the end. Watching the tournament on BackgammonGalaxy feed, I noticed that rather than conceding the gammon some players will play on even though it is not longer possible to save the gammon. Why - more error free moves lowering your pr.

I would suppose that playing out no longer winable bearoffs would have the same result?

If you want to lower your PR just play against World Class opponents! LOL less decisions.

After playing in eXtreme Gammon2 I'm low Middle Expert vs. World Class. High Middle vs. Beginner. Ya just gotta be fair to yourself. I've changed and now play ALL the Computer levels to ge a fair idea of my actual PR against all levels.

When all plays have the same equity, BackgammonGalaxy doesn't count it as a decision, thus playing out a sure gammon doesn't lower your PR on Galaxy. This is a difference between XG analysis (which Galaxy uses) and GnuBG analysis. It would lower your error rate in GnuBG.

You cannot resign a gammon on Galaxy. You can only resign the match, or resign a single game (but only if you have a checker off already).

Though there is a "stupid PR trick" you can do on Galaxy sometimes where you delay saving the gammon or backgammon until you absolutely have to. That can result in XG crediting you with an extra decision, though it doesn't come up a lot and it's not worth a lot.

Yes.
I actually saw that in one of the streamed matches. The player left a checker in his opponents home until it was the last chance to avoid the backgammon. I figured out that this was a deliberate attempt to lower the pr.

Didn't know that playing out sure gammon didnt count towards pr. Thanks

I’d have to know the actual position, but keeping a checker in your opponent’s home board until the last possible moment might well be the highest equity play. For example, suppose you have a closed board with one checker on opponents 1 point. Your opponent has 3 checkers on his two point. If you roll a number that gives a choice, you should leave your checker on the one point risking losing a backgammon if your opponent rolls a double other than 11. The reason is that your opponent might roll a 1 allowing you a chance to hit and avoid gammon. If you’re really lucky, you might even hit your opponent’s last two checkers and pull off the coup classique and actually win the game.

You are lowering your PR by staying back in my example, but it’s not a trick. It’s the better move. That might well be true in the positions you’re talking about as well.

Here's a better explanation of the "stupid PR trick".



All plays are equal, so it doesn't matter what you do, XG won't count it as a decision. And if you do the normal thing of running the last checker from your opponent's home board, all plays will be equal on the next roll too.

But if you don't run that back checker, on the next roll all plays won't be equal, as some get you backgammoned. So XG will count that as a decision. It also comes up when saving the gammon sometimes.

So it's pretty silly but a player might do it to lower their PR by a few hundredths of a point or something.

No.

I'm talking about a position as shown in the post that follows

Why would someone be so anal to want to lower his PR in some mindless exercise. Why not be fair to yourself.

What I do is like a golf handicap. I take the top 15 games of my last 20. This way when I want to play but JUST NOT at the top of my game for various reasons don't really count. I don't get depressed at my dumb play or a dice roll JUST when I see a bone head blunder.

Plus my PR seems to go up vs. the Champ. It's an easier game. I lose more often but my PR gets a lift. Play against ALL the competition if you want to be fair to your self.