Hey all,

Not new to poker but just starting to learn BG. Friend and I were debating how long it would take to go from scratch to world class. Thoughts?

What level on Snowie would you have to beat to reach this level?

Thanks for the help guys,
Mariogs

It depends quite a bit on whether you are talking about tournament play or cash play. In tournament format the cube decisions are much more complex then money play, because you must have a deep understanding of how cube decisions are influenced by match score. This involves a lot of work, and memorization which is time consuming and tedius. In cash play you are strictly concerned with evaluating the equity of the position in a single game. much more strightforward.

I think that truly world class players have an ER of under 3.0. If we are talking strictly about cash play I believe it will take several years of dilligent study and many, many hours of play. Even then, I dont think that everybody has it in them to get there. most dont ever come close. even those that play and study a lot. However, I think to go from scratch to a solid club player with an ER of 5-6 could be achieved by the right person in about a year. obviously you would have to get in a lot of hours and study the right material dilligently. Understand that the diffrence between 3 ER and 5 ER is huge.

Also, this is just very hard to say because it depends so much on the individual. A person that has a very sharp memory could go through a book like the backgammon encyclopedia, remember a lot of reference positions and get good with the cube in most normalish positions pretty quick. Similarily, a player that has a bunch of experience with strategy games and gambling would have a big head start. I have seen very good chess players pick up BG and get pretty accurate with the checker play quickly.

I will assume Snowie's ER is the same as XG's PR (there is a difference, but I'm not sure by how much).



To have an average PR under 3,0 is really hard achievement, even for the best players in the world!

I would say that average PR under 5,0 should be considered world-class (just as XG reports), and average PR under 4,0 should be considered very good world-class player.


How hard is that and how long will it take?
I don't know as I'm not there (yet) and I have hard time lowering my current PR.
And I have a friend who plays 5,0 on average and he practices really a lot and still he can't go below that after one year of 5,0 playing.


(I'm talking about *average* PR over long period of time - not just few matches where you played at some level)

Probably about 10 players in the world currently averaging under 3.0 in live play (Mochy, Falafel, Stick and a few more.) There are quite a few more who average below 4.0 (but most of these guys have worked very hard to reach this level and many are quite well-known in the backgammon world) and this is where I would set the current line at world class, perhaps slightly lower depending on your definition (Robertie suggested 3.5 in a similar thread here), 5 however is too easy to achieve to be characterized as world class imo, I know so many people who play below a 5 and I don't consider them world class. I also agree that there is a huge difference between playing 5 something and 3 something, it might be easier to improve from say 10 to 5, than from 5 to 3.

It really depends on just how many people you want to consider 'World Class'. If you want the top-25, then probably an ER averaging under 3.5 will get you there. There's no sharp demarcation line that separates a world-class group from the group just below them.

Put another way, if you looked carefully at a player with an average ER of 3.5 and compared him with one averaging 4.0, you would have to look at a lot of matches to discern much of a difference.

You probably also need to weigh a big part of it with steam control etc to gain a really thorough picture of a question like this.

Someone who can nail an error rate of 1 all year but blows up every blue moon and loses the house trying to Martingale playing a tilt ridden 10 for a few hours might qualify under certain definitions of world class but lose on others, where as someone who grinds a completely in control rate of 5 for years may well end up a richer (and some might say, better) player.

I'm not sure their average is under PR 3,0. I would say they are in low 3's (under PR 3,5).
And I'm pretty sure 10 players don't play (on average!) with PR 2,x.



If we say that 1 PR ~ 1,1 ER, and this might be close to the truth because XG doesn't calculate forced moves in total moves count, ER 3,5 becomes PR 3,85.
And then I would agree - there are probably 20-25 players averaging under PR 3,85.

But IMO, that bar is set up too high, as there are many other players playing with PR 4,x who should be considered world class also.

About how many games should I play on Extreme Gammon to give me a PR rating that is accurate +/- 0.5 ?

I would think 1000+

The larger your sample size the more accurate it should be.

I think it also depends on the player. when i started playing my pr was all over the place session to session. in that case, it takes a larger number of games to get an accurate picture of your pr rating. these days my sessions are all relatively tightly grouped in pr rating, so fewer games are needed. but i think mike is right for most new players. 1000+.

I would say that 100 games should be enough to get a 10% confidence. So if you play at 5 PR, 100 game will give you about 0.5 accuracy.

PR converges amazingly fast in my experience.

What kind of odds would be fair for a newbie getting to under ER of 5 within 6-8 months? In a similar vein, would love to get a friendly prop bet where another player and I both try to attain a reasonable skill level and no money changes hands if we both succeed. If both newbies, something like under ER of 7 over 100 game sample played 6m from now...

Thoughts?

from total fish to 5 under? 100 to 1 is a steal unless you know something we don't

I'd concur with that. Keep in mind that most players never get to a PR/ER under 5, despite years of play and plenty of study. It's a harder game than you think.

Interesting...

Fwiw I've played around 300 games and have an ER of 10.4, though my elo is only 1470. Not sure what this says as far as the prop is concerned...

Also, when someone says ER is in "millipoints per move", what does that mean? On average, how many thousandths of a point I give up per move by playing suboptimally?

With my ER, that's 1/100th pt per move, so giving up .4 pts on average in a match where I make 40 moves?