I have played backgammon on and off for years, and only recently realized that the game is far deeper than it first appears. I have purchased Robertie's books, and will make my way through those, and am playing GNU on grandmaster setting with tutor set to inform me of the slightest error. These are getting less as time goes by.

Despite being a longtime member of 2+2, I have never read the backgammon section until now, and to my surprise I have noticed that GNU is not as highly regarded as I assumed it to be. Will playing GNU alone teach me bad habits? Should I be looking at extreme gammon as well?

Anyway, before this gets too long, I would like to ask the experienced backgammoners here - if you were just starting on the road to mastering the game, what would you do? Just play Gnu a million times? Read the books first? Learn to pip count immediately?

Ay advice appreciated.

Sorry, just to add to that...

Bill, I notice that you particularly don't rate Gnu, is that just because of the virus alert that I saw you mention in a thread, or are there other issues?

First of all GNU is great, but extreme gammon (XG) is better. I refer to ease of use rather than playing strength. GNU is plenty strong, but XG is just more user friendly. Spend the $60 it is well worth it.

On mastering the game, when you figure it out please share with the rest of us!! Most of us here would like to improve yet are stuck.

There is plenty to learn, so just study what interests you, and go from there.

I would recommend simply a combination of playing and studying. And when you play, you can keep an eye towards improvement if you like.

In your live games for example, you could focus on practicing pip counting, or on the opening replies, or on race formulas, or whatever. Take pictures of checker plays or cube decisions that confuse you and examine them in the computer later. Learn from your friends in the chouette.

In tournament play, you can record your match to video and input to the computer later. You can also take pictures of tough decisions for later review.

If you play online, you can load the match file to the computer very easily for instant analysis.

If you prefer to play the computer by yourself, you can setup certain position types and practice them over and over; or you could simply play against a class opponent and look at your blunders afterword.

Another possibility I like is to play a consulting doubles match against the computer. I like the back and forth of discussing strategy with a friend, and learning from each other in areas of the game we each know better than the other.

For serious study, Robertie recommends keeping a notebook of positions organized by theme. I've never tried it. Seems like a great idea but a hell of a lot of work.

Similarly, Stick recommends keeping a working file of 10-20 blunder positions. Work with a specific blunder until you feel you really understand it and then discard it from the working file. This is another one of those great ideas that is really hard work.

If you prefer reading, there are plenty of good backs on study. Of course anything by Robertie is first-rate, but there are others too.

Maybe there is no shortcut to mastering this game.

Finally, here is a lesson list from professional teacher Phil Simborg. This may give some ideas of topics to explore.

Enjoy


1. Opening Moves—you simply have to learn and memorize the best moves
2. Backgammon odds—the basic odds of the game including odds of hitting, odds of making points, odds of winning, and why it is important to understand those odds
3. Pip Counting—the importance of the race and learning how to count pips
4. Early Checker play—the second and third moves, and basic checker strategy
5. Duplication—when it applies and how to use it.
6. The Doubling Cube for money games—we start with money games because the take point and cost of gammons is always the same and it’s the easiest to learn.
7. The Doubling Cube for match play—we get into match equity and take points, but I also believe that for beginner and intermediates, there are strategies that don’t use the pure mathematic approach that will work better at that level
8. Rules of thumb—simply memorizing and understanding some basic rules of thumb of the game that I have compiled over the years
9. DMP and 2-away/2-away cube and checker play strategy
10. Crawford and post Crawford cube and checker play strategy
11. Giving the Cube—basic thought process and strategies when thinking about giving the cube
12. Taking the Cube—basic thought process and strategies when thinking about taking the cube
13. Bearing your checkers in to your inner board
14. Bearing checkers off
15. Playing back games
16. Defending back games
17. Playing holding games
18. Defending holding games
19. Going for gammons and backgammons
20. Preventing gammons and backgammons
21. Prime vs. Prime games
22. Market Losers…how they affect cube decisions
23. Communication—keeping your checkers in range of each other
24. Off-balance hitting…hitting at times that may seem counter-intuitive
25. Using the bots—how to best use Extremegammon as a learning tool
26. Key reference positions and key numbers—some positions and numbers you simply need to have in your memory bank that will help you make better decisions over the board
27. Playing your opponent—how to adjust your game for the different skill levels and individual traits of your opponents
28. Tournament play—strategies and ideas to help do better at tournaments
29. Money play and chouette play—strategies that apply specifically for money play
30. Applying ROT and MCV theory
31. Applying Robertie’s Law of Market Losers
32. Applying Simborg’s Law
33. Applying Woolsey’s Law
34. When to go for the gammon and when to cash
35. Shortcuts to remember take points and price of gammons
36. Major game plans, strategies, and methodology for decision-making
37. Pip counting techniques
38. Trice Formula
39. Keith Count
40. DMP play
41. Gammon Save play
42. Gammon Go play
43. Attitude and psychology to optimize performance and enjoyment

Wow, that's a fantastic response, many thanks!

I had no idea there was so much to think about. I'll need to read it a couple of times just to get an idea of where to start.

Thanks again.

Read everything you can, think about it, and play a lot. Keep reading and playing, and do some of both each day.

When playing against a bot, play money game sessions for the most part. Checker and cube decisions in money games are the fundamentals of backgammon. When you have a good understanding of cash game cube action, start to play tournament matches. You'll find that it's not too hard to adapt your cash game background into good decisions at different scores.

If you start with match play (which most beginners are inclined to do) you'll confuse yourself because cube decisions vary wildly at different scores. You won't know if a cube is a cube because the underlying position is very strong, or if it's just a function of the match score.

Regarding the bots: Extreme Gammon is great and not expensive. Support the developer who's done a great job and buy it. I don't use Gnu because I downloaded it twice and each time got a virus warning from my anti-virus program. That was enough for me. If developers can't take care of something as basic as that, what else is going wrong?

What Mr. Robertie fails to mention is that at no time has any 'executable' of GNUBG been infected with a virus or trojan. So much so that every release of GNUBG on the website is how it has been since first published.

What Mr. Roberties fails to mention is that his virus software was to blame for false positives. In particular Norton is an ongoing problem in that regard. Earlier in the year Norton actually flagged GNUBG with a "reputation" hit. It wasn't even that our software had a virus, it was just not known to be trusted software.

Since the issue earlier in the year to the "reputation" service within Norton flagging our product, we actually go out of our way now - specifically with Norton to use their white listing service to avoid such issues. We literally send them our install program, along with a hash and they verify the installer to be free of viruses or malware. This doesn't mean they endorse the product but the white listing very much reduces the likelihood of false positives.

Who you should blame are the virus and trojan makers who created an industry of anti-virus tools that are fraught with finding false positives.

We take the issue seriously, but we can't be accountable to every antivirus maker out there who has an imperfect system.

Gerald Tesauro the creator of TD-Gammon also did a research paper on the subject of Neural Nets and anti-Virus software over 15 years ago. Also discussed are the trade off with such software between false positives and user security. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login...rnumber=511768 . anti-virus today doesn't just rely on signatures to make a decision.

*If* we follow Mr. Robertie's way of thinking, I could conclude you shouldn't come to this site because the management and the staff didn't care enough to protect your information and data. just a reminder of what happened last year: http://uk.pokernews.com/news/2012/04/two-plus-two-forums-hacked-8351.htm

Whenever sites use dynamic content (forums, content management systems) etc, there is a risk of exploits. Even if you keep up to date hackers can use zero day exploits to attack sites before there are patches for the holes.

Even companies like Oracle (and there are a lot of examples) have such issues. Does it mean they didn't care? No, sometimes sh*t happens and the best you can do as a software developer or website maintainer is to deal with the issues as they come along.

I'm using the free trial at the moment of Extreme Gammon. I've used Gnu for several years without any virus issues at all, and I think you may be doing it a disservice Bill. I'd be very interested to hear what you thought of it if you tried again, operating on the assumption that it is indeed a false positive. i am very grateful that such great software exists for free.

I'm only on day one of the trial, so as yet I won't venture an opinion. Thanks again for the responses.

Thanks for the tip on match play and the cube. I was doing exactly that, so I'll change straight away!

Bill, I have to take issue with you here.

You have had the facts regarding the false positives generated by Norton Antivirus for some time now. For you to give the sort of partial explanation that you do above, which allows readers to infer that GnuBg could have been infected by a virus, is wholly irresponsible.

The most telling statement you make is this: "If developers can't take care of something as basic as that, what else is going wrong?" It applies to Norton, however, not GnuBg, and it's a serious question. You should be asking what else is wrong with NAV.

Furthermore, there is a large group of casual players who are not invested enough in playing backgammon to shell out even the very modest purchase price of XG. GnuBg gives them a wonderful opportunity to experience the game. We need these novice players, Bill. We both want the game to grow, and GnuBg has an important role to play in the process.

Just my two cents.

Mike

The most telling statement you quote is the whole point. it is an easy situation to fix and wasn't. But according to mpetch they now have done something about it.

The GNUBG team takes such reports seriously, when we know about them. That is the problem. With about 30+ commercial anti virus programs on the market we must rely on feedback when there is an issue. I asked around privately to a few people and checked the mailing lists and bug system. No one seems to have any correspondence from Bill for either of his two complaints. But we did have others that have informed us of false positives and we have dealt with them over the years.

The GNUBG team also can't be on all the forums across the planet in all different languages to see reports by user. People like Mike Mannon (Taper_Mike) do the correct thing and contact us directly if they see an issue. Case in point in the first quarter of 2013, Mike sent me a personal email about a report on twoplustwo about the GNUBG site being hacked. I wasn't a follower of this forum until then. Our team was already aware of the issue at the time, but Mike at least gave us a heads up in the event we didn't know. So kudos there.

Mike Mannon pointed out in another thread on twoplustwo (somewhere) about a false positive report earlier in the year that someone properly put into our bug tracking system. It was the reputation hit in Norton Anti Virus that gets flagged as what appears to be yet another virus. You'll learn that with such reports we do what we can as fast as possible. I personally contacted Norton letting them know of that false positive, and they responded via email within 24 hour confirming it. I posted Norton's response that they would update their database and the fix would be pushed out in their software. The person reported the next day that Norton had cleared the problem and that the download was no longer an issue. Norton (Symantec) also recommended using their white list service for all our new releases to help alleviate the issue. Since then I have done just that.

Why do I know so much about what viruses are in our installers? Because I am the person who actually builds each release, makes sure the build systems are virus free, and puts them on the website. I'm also the one who during our last website hack was asked to deal with the issue. I had to download every file and scan them for viruses. In 15 years we have had our site attacked twice (the last incident had the attack that spanned a couple weeks until I got full domain privileges to properly secure gnubg.org). Since then I am also tasked with maintaining the website, and making sure the component software we use is up to date etc. One thing I did do to reduce headaches for myself was to split the content management system (CMS) from our download pages. We now have two independent webhosts for our domain. One carries the CMS (which like twoplustwo is often the main point of attack for hackers) and the other is our download media directories. If the CMS is attacked it doesn't influence the downloads.

I'd like to know exactly what Bill thinks we are suppose to do when 3rd party software screws up, and people take it on blind faith that their anti-virus software is infallible. In one case a few years ago, antivirus software declared a component of MS Windows as a problem, and for some it made their systems non functional. One can read this article . Even better is when Microsoft Security Essentials flags files in Google Chrome as suspicion forcing users to re-install Chrome as is discussed in this article

Bill is a very intelligent person, and he understands Backgammon but I think he has a misconception about Anti-Virus software in general, and just how wide spread the idea of false positives is. I finally drew the line after his commentary about the GNUBG staff implying that we were incompetent and don't care about such issues. It is one thing to say "Hey I don't use GnUBG because I had this particular experience", it is another to imply that the GNUBG team doesn't take this type of thing seriously when it is patently false.

Bill has been told by others on here about such issue and how they have been resolved, but it seems Bill completely disregards that, and continues with the disinformation. I do believe it is partially political in nature.

One final point about false positives. Since they are quite common there is a website that was designed to help people make more informed decisions about whether the report of malicious software may be a real threat or not. If you download software that you think is probably safe but is flagged, I recommend going to VirusTotal, upload the file (if it fits) and have it scanned. It takes more than 30 virus scanners and analyses the file with each. Although not full proof, in general you can get an idea of false positives when just one virus program flags the software and the others don't. In the case of Norton if it says the virus check failed because of Reputation it means the software isn't known to be trusted and it is flagged as potentially suspicious even if it is completely harmless.

This may not be widely known but the software developers of the major bots on the market these days actually have a good working relationship. In particular Xavier, Frank Berger, and I collaborate on projects that are of mutual interest for the Backgammon users in general whether it is about rollouts, Deprelli study, or discussions on open formats. The GNUBG team take no issue with people writing commercial proprietary software for Backgammon, nor do we see it as a threat since our product's target market is different.

You are wrong. No one that I could find at GNUBG has any record of Bill ever contacting us to fix anything. Neither in private correspondence or the official mailing list or bug report system. However, OTHER people have, and if you look closely at the bug tracker system they are dealt with promptly.

What you fail to realize is that every time virus definitions and heuristics are altered the process starts all over again. If we put a request in for a false positive there was no guarantee of it not being flagged again in a future version.

Originally Symantec only had the false positive reporting system. It wasn't until this year that they suggested their whitelisting service.

I can tell you this, we are likely to get reports again in the future, and when they are reported they will be fixed again.

Show me where we didn't resolve a virus issue that was brought to our attention.

Mike Mannon contacts me directly and maybe he can tell you that I try to respond in a rather timely fashion, and I do what I can to resolve issues. Maybe he can confirm that. The mailing list is constantly monitored as well, and it gets a lot of questions. The developers on the list try to respond to them all. Viruses/Malware, Hacking, trust me that is a red alert.

Consider this. If what you say is true networthy, then GNUBG team must have deliberately ignored Bill and only responded to other people's issues. Can you tell me the logic in GNUBG deliberately not deal with Bill a well known Backgammon player and author, but we deal with everyone else? If Bill had ever posted to Bug Tracker (which can be done anonymously if people choose) or the mailing list (as suggested on the gnubg.org website) I can tell you that it would have been dealt with immediately, given who he is.

I can guarantee you that we will get reports yet again, from possibly Norton or any of the other Anti-Virus manufacturers.

What the Anti-Virus community doesn't have is a global white list service. That white list service at Norton I mentioned previously, that is just Norton. What about the many dozens of other AV vendors?

As an example, I have decided to publicize Mike Mannon's report of something that he read on this form about a hack attack on our website that was discussed on this forum, and the main response I gave.

This was my detailed response to Mike. Since I wasn't a member of the forum, I gave him permission (at his request) to quote from my email, as I usually only issue announcements out on the official mailing list.

I spend 50% of the time studying and the rest of the time playing. Seems to work well.

For some reasons i believe Online backgammon is worse than backgammon in casinos facing flash and bones opponents half metter away from you. at play65 i was thinking i play with bots

Excuse my lack of knowledge here, but you have casinos where they play Backgammon? Sounds Great. We do not have such Casinos here, they play poker but never Backgammon. Who plays you? Is it just normal players and the house takes a rake?

I'm not aware of any casinos in the world where backgammon is offered. I suspect the poster hasn't played any live BG and believed that it was a casino game like poker.

A brief update:

I've purchased Extreme Gammon, and have discovered to my shock that I am ranked as a casual player, with a skill level of 20.9! I was playing match play in the beginning, so these results are just the cash game results.

To date I haven't really studied, and have just focused on playing with tutor mode on. My cube play is terrible, but I am getting a much better feel of when to double and when to accept. I find it harder to judge when to accept a double than when to offer one. I figure at this point the greatest improvement (and the most fun) is to be had by simply playing and taking advantage of the tutor. Once basic checker and cube play is to a reasonable standard, I reckon the time will have come to hit the books.

The games in which I score terribly are the ones where I fail to understand what it is I am trying to do, normally involving games where several checkers have been sent back. I misstime the run, horribly, and then further compound the error by not realising that the position may have shifted and the cube should be looked at. I will post the next one that comes up for advice.

I'm off on a fishing trip next month, where backgammon plays a decent role. In the past I have always sat out, realising that I am outplayed. I'm hoping this time around to get more involved, and hopefully take a few points!

The game is both much harder, and more interesting, than I first thought.

Backgammon has always been a great heads-up gambling game for the reason you indicated in your post. It's possible to play the game casually and believe that you're a pretty good player, maybe not really top-class, but just short of that. When you meet a player who plays a different style from you, you look at his play and conclude that he must be pretty weak, because he's making all these plays that you think are mistakes. At the same time, he's making the same assessment about you! So two players who are on roughly the same level can play for a long time, eacg believing they're the clearly better player, but unlucky.

The advantage you have playing XG is that you know for sure you're playing an objectively better opponent, and now you can learn from your mistakes. Good luck and keep us posted.

I hear you. I would have relatively confidently ranked myself as advanced/intermediate, purely because I have played it for several years, on and off. It's a bit of a reassessment to realise that your best games are intermediate/advanced. Still, it's only been a couple of weeks, and already I can see changes, so we'll see where this ends up.

Thanks for the feedback.

I am buying XG thus would like to get some pointers on how to get most of it as a beginner.
Also, any idea what progress is possible in 30 days?
I made a bet with another casual ( rookie ) player for significant stakes and would like to improve as much for that match ( we will play 11 point match ).

Hello. Maybe you are from Lithuania? I ask because your nickname. "Stumbras" means Bison in lithuanian.

Here's a few suggestions for improving using XG.

1) Play long money game sessions against XG, somewhere between 20-50 games per session. (XG calls money games "unlimited games".) The reason for doing money games, even if you plan on playing matches, is that your plays won't be affected by the score. Money games are the basis of backgammon and if you have a firm grounding there, you'll be able to decide when you're playing a match if you want to be more or less aggressive depending on the score.

2) When you finish a game, save the session and then review the previous game. Look at all the moves, not just the ones where you made a mistake. This way your thought process will still be fresh in your mind. Remember why you made the play, then look at how XG ranks different plays. Was your play clearly right, or was it one of several plays that were equally good? If it was a mistake, can you see why it was a mistake? Was the right play one you never considered? (That will happen more often than you think.) Only move on to the next game when you've finished reviewing the game you just played.

3) If you can't figure out why a play was a mistake, post it here. You'll get plenty of opinions.

4) Rinse and repeat. As you play many sessions, look to see if your error rate is dropping. It should drop dramatically over the first 10 or so sessions as you learn what good backgammon looks like.

5) As you review a game, remember to look at XG's plays as well. You're getting a peek at nearly perfect backgammon, which will sink in over time.

Wow, I can't believe this thread is 6 years old.

Mastery still eludes me, although occasionally now I get games in the low single digits. PR is now hovering between 9 and 10, with the cube dragging this score up. Practice seems to vary, with periods of intense backgammon followed by breaks, but I keep coming back for more punishment.

I play on GridGammon, where I am involved in a running cash game with a friend. It's $5 a point, and we will pay out when one of us achieves a 50 point lead, currently we've played about 1700 points without this happening, although as we sit I'm 24 points down so the situation is tense. I am sure statistically that a winner is likely to emerge soon, and I have my eye on one of those decent online boards for $275, so a win would be helpful!

My largest errors still originate where I have misunderstood the game plan, and have the wrong idea in mind. When these games strike they can be brutal for PR, as several moves in a row are based on a poor assessment of the game. Getting a cube decision wrong, again through misunderstanding the position for several moves in a row has also contributed to a poor cube PR.

Watching backgammon videos with commentary has been helpful, but I think the majority of the improvement just comes through repeated play and review, otherwise known as practice!