Let's get something out the way immediately: using XG and PR calculations are an invaluable study tool, for anyone wanting to improve his/her backgammon skills. No debate.

Let's get something else out of the way next: what Marc Olsen et al do at Galaxy and with the UBC tournaments is tremendous, and they are shaking and promoting the game in so many ways, this too is invaluable to the game community. And the world. And I told them repeatedly.

However I do believe that the emphasis on PR during matches has gone too far, and maybe this should take a step back.

For non-grand-masters, it removes one of the main reasons backgammon is the most social of the classic games: anybody can beat anybody, aka the best player does not ALWAYS win. So although I almost exclusively play on Galaxy these days, I think the use of PR for ranking is not necessary at all: just trusting statistics should be enough, anyone who plays enough matches will bubble up higher if he/she plays better, all very naturally.

For grand-masters, maybe it is more relevant to allocate PR points, but at that level you start to hear more and more how players "game" the PR calculations to their advantage. Then rules or etiquette points are being devised to counter that. Plus XG is amazing, but it has its own limitations too (read: makes errors too, albeit in corner cases and/or in the small decimal points).

(side note: does XG have a future ?...)

So all in all, for all levels, I feel this gets in the way of enjoying (suffering ?) the game, emotion swings and all, in all its glory.

I think PR results should at best result in side prizes, or just remain interesting statistics to look at.

Maybe a sports analogy to illustrate (and backgammon *IS* a sport by the way): take tennis. The tennis equivalent to using PR calculations in matches would be to decide matches not just by points/games/sets, but to add into the mix technical stats like average centering of the ball on the racket head, speed of serve and return, distance to the lines of ball landings, etc. I'm sure Novak Djokovic would benefit, he's the tennis equivalent to Mochy ! But you get the point.

I would absolutely love to hear your thoughts on this, this has been nagging me for quite a while now.

Well I like the PR stuff for this reasons:

• higher chance that in a (UBC) tourney the better player wins
• you measure the luck involved

I always felt that for a world championship the results were to much random. Don't remember exactly when, but a couple of years a non world class player made it to the final. Therefore I like UBC and it helps at "you were just lucky" discussions.

What I dislike is what you already mentioned XG is not perfect. In the recent UBC event they introduced a draw when the PR diff is in 0.02 range (don't know whether this is new or it didn't happen in the past). I think that is in the right direction but what if the diff is 0.03? And the evaluation might be different on another setting, so this adds some arbitrariness. Something like you get that point proportional to the PR-diff when it is smaller than 1 or so might be better.

just my 2 pennies
Frank

Honestly it really depends on what the motivation of top backgammon players is. If the primary motivation is to win money, then going with traditional results is best. Going with just the results allows those who are lesser players an opportunity to get lucky and win. With more lesser players in the field, the top players become more likely to win larger amounts of money when they do win. This is the model for poker - top poker players are primarily playing for profit.

If the alternative is that top players are primarily motivated by the challenge of playing other top players and demonstrating that they are the best player, then the PR format is preferable. This seems to me to be more the thinking of top BG players now. Obviously removing the luck factor as much as possible is necessary to determine who the best player is, so while it has its imperfections, using PR to determine the winner gets you closer to determining objectively who the best player is. The downside is that lesser players who know that they cannot truly hope to compete with the top players will no longer enter tournaments where PR determines the winner, and therefore fields and prize money will shrink.

And this is a great point indeed.

On one hand, it is spectacular to see these top players play as good as they do. But on the long run, I think you are right, people might not bother entering big tournaments when they know they stand no chance.

We need to grow the backgammon community by a factor 100, so that might not be the way...

I feel the UBC tourneys are well balanced (1 point for win, 1 for better PR). You still can beat a better player but the PR will mostly give him the well deserved edge.

It is balanced and fair for the better player.

That being said, long term it basically turns backgammon into chess and it's not necessarily good to attract new players.

I do feel like PR has taken some of the mystique out of the game (not that I ever played in the pre-XG days). eg on most of these streamed tournament matches you don’t really get to hear arguments between strong players about why one play or the other is best, the transcriber just punches it into XG and the commentators go “huh ok” and the conversation basically ends there.

I also think focusing on PR too much has reduced my own enjoyment of the game. (This is a me problem but seems pretty universal). Yes, it feels good to see the PR line trend downward over dozens/hundreds of matches, but now it feels like every match is just me playing a one-player game vs XG where I care more about the PR than the actual match result. I had a very good run/cash in Texas this year, but I submitted all my matches to BMAB and honestly found that the few really bad matches I played almost ruined the weekend for me and I would have enjoyed it more if I didn’t analyze them.

I don’t have a solution really.

I think as long as the UBC tournament remains an exception, a "showcase for the elite" if you will, this is perfectly fine.

But I believe if similar PR-based match decisions slip into other tournaments, it becomes a problem. Indeed the "mystique" as you point out is a huge reason why backgammon is different, and attractive, and I suspect that if the World Championship used a similar formula, the field would be 30 players, not 300. For example.

Concerning commentators at the UBC, it was interesting this year to see Justin Nowell and Dirk Schiemann insisting to do commentary without having the XG panel in front of them. Just for the reason you say: "if we have XG at all times, what's the point for us being here !"

Great question! I think that it's pretty much universally accepted that the PR-based scoring system has little place in main events. Wouldn't expect to see that become mainstream outside of UBC or similar events ("Dual-Duel" as it used to be called in San Antonio). The fact that "anyone can beat anyone" is what keeps us playing.

That being said, PR is making its way into the game in other ways, and I don't think that it's a bad thing. For example, BMAB is great for a lot of reasons. One poster above mentions having a great run in San Antonio but disappointing PR results that put a damper on things. There is of course, my opposite experience. I've gone through a pretty rough patch of results with ABT events, but by recording, transcribing, and submitting to BMAB, I was able to earn a Master title. If something like that didn't exist, I'd be convinced that I was a massive fish that didn't belong in the Open division.

Speaking of divisions, I notice that in the U.S., there seems to be a divergence with trends on this front with Europe. Overseas, multiple divisions are falling out of favor with a preference toward a very large "Open" division that has nearly everyone, and a very small "Intermediate" field. In some cases, there is no Intermediate division at all -- this to me is a clear signal that some parts of the world are taking the "anyone can beat anyone" philosophy to heart. The U.S. is adding more divisions (not that uncommon to see four divisions now at major tournaments) so that folks can get acclimated to playing a tournament environment. That being said, I'm on the USBGF Eligibility Committee and our main focus right now is on cleaning up the middle division so that it can function as a training ground for new players. This means that one should expect to see much larger Open division fields in the coming years, with Advanced and Intermediate division events getting smaller (stricter requirements for entry to these, based mainly on PR and somewhat on results) and mainly existing as a "training ground", not a lifetime designation.

As for commentary on matches -- I think that the best approach is having the commentators go without XG so that we can hear their insights a debate over what the best play is. If someone transcribing is off to the side providing the answer after the fact, that makes for a fun dynamic, but it should not be the main source of commentary. I've stepped into the commentary booth a handful of times at ABT events (since I'm always knocked out early lol) and wouldn't like it nearly as much if I were just reading XG's output.