What is the yardstick for belonging to the best of the best in backgammon? As our moderator admitted in a recent post, a lot of information gets lost in short matches, and in my opinion the same can be said about games. Besides, an issue that will remain a topic of debate is that players can be more lucky than others for a certain period of time. How strong a factor these are we don't know, but it brings up the question whether the no. 100 in reality can be the number one. And what about performance rating? Getting into a lot of backgames and 3point backgames will throw you to the bottom of the list, no matter how well you play.

In order to compose the 32 giant list, international tournament players are asked to cast their vote for their favourite player. What i like about this concept is that it probably stimulates top players to contribute to a good atmosphere (a thing which distinguishes backgammon from poker and chess). They can profile themselves by writing outstanding analytical articles or books, and can show the world that they are not only very good at backgammon. However, also this concept has some flaws: votes can be motivated by nationalistic prejudice; players who waste their whole life for the sake of professional backgammon will likely draw a feeling of sympathy; the day that the very best player that ever roamed this planet announces on the twoplustwo forum that he does believe in hot streaks, he for sure never ever will get on that list.

To find a yardstick is very difficult, because to be a very good player there are several faculties involved:
-strategic skill
strategic checker skill is based on raw math related intelligence, memory (reference positions) and a lot of experience
-cunningness
how to influence and anticipate the opponent's cube behaviour
-discipline and poise
a brilliant mind that collapses under pressure is not so usefull; however, this can be enhanced by the use of drugs (as with the other two faculties).


A giant in backgammon in my opinion should at least do very well in a difficult problems test, and should be able to give good argumentation. As the world's topplayers will be of about the same "quality", the parameters of stimulant use, general intelligence, amount of experience and philosophical horizon will get into my equation.

Maybe it is better for the health of the game that the real yardstick will remain untraceable.

thats a great post, and observation


IMO BG is not like the 100 yard dash. The fastest guy is the best-thats a clear cut thing. In BG its difficult to say who is best for many reasons. As my dad used to say "How high is up?". who knows?

Being basically a gambling game nobody really cares about ranking in backgammon. It's the same as in poker.

If you really want a ranking system in BG you have necessarely build "skill categories". It's not close. I try to explain, because once I thought about it.

0) It has to be clear that a rating sistem in BG simply doesn't work well as in chess because of luck involved. Clearly it's not so absurd, but IMO there's better one. So it's important to discard that idea quickly.

1) You set say 10 leagues at the beginning of 2015, the most valuable is the 1-League and the "worst" is the 10-League. It's under the dome of the WBA.

2) At the beginning of the year the WBA schedules some international tournaments all over the main playing places and any new player have to subscribe the 10 league, and can play only that kind of tournament.

3) If you win or runner up at least one 10- league tournament (with a minimum of X players, with X well chosen) you are promoted to the 9 league, and you can play 9-league tournaments.

4) Now to be promoted to say 8 league you have to win or runnerup at least a 9-league tournament and so on up to 1- league.

5) Obviosly number can be changed (say the first 3 are promoted or you have to win or runner-up two times a x-league tournament or instead of 10 leagues we choose 8 leagues) etc the main idea is to weight skills over time: nobody can be lucky in all leagues.

6) It's should be clear that if you reach 1-league anytime with proper number of opponents (clearly needed this) you are really in the élite, and if you are like Bill, Mochy, Falafel etc over time you surely reach it.

Now this way you balance luck and skill, because if you are an average player you may win a tournament but you will never win too many tournaments over time.

But all this is not needed because, as I said, simply gambling players doesn't care about ranking they only cares about money. And that's sick because it's seems that we care ONLY about money than the beauty of the game. Moreover not so many people plays backgammon, and may be very difficult to divide players in some places like europe.

Backgammon and poker are not GO or CHESS. Never.

Really?

FatBoy has a point, winning matters more than ranking. Of course in a game of percentages, you have to look a the long haul, but winning money and titles is still the yardstick.

Really this is true in every sort of competition. When Caroline Wozniacki reached the #1 ranking without winning a grand slam tournament, few people thought much of that. If you asked her, I bet a mint she would trade that rank for a Wimbledon title without blinking.

Even in chess, when Magnus Carlsen "only" held the No. 1 ranking plus the highest ELO rating ever in the history, people still refrained from declaring him the "best ever" until he owned the World Championship title too.

But is he still the best? Consider Caruana's performance at the Sinquefield Cup. 8.5/10 in that field is the most wtf result in the history of chess.

That's not completely true.

Don't want to go massively OT, but Carlsen it's the first chess player in chess history that it's considered the best even if you don't count the WC title.

Nowadays IMO the WC chess title is not the WC title as it were in '60 or '70 or '80, basically because chess is now less mixed with politics. Now it's only important to win big tournaments (tata steel etc) and big prizes, the WC is treated as a honorific title, nobody cares about the WC match, and you see for example that Anand-Gelfand was a disgusting match full of short draw etc, completely different from kasparov karpov 1990 or say Spassky Fischer 1972.

So Carlsen, as in backgammon Falafel and Mochy are considered the best simply because they play "very way better than other top players", whatever that means, and they would be considered the best with or without the WC title.