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The art of playing backgammon is often in how fluid you decide to make your plans for playing from the very start of the game. Often if you have been playing an inexperienced player then they often start the game in a defensive pattern and may not even make the most of very good doubles. The attacking game in backgammon is often called a “blitz” because it places your opponent on the back foot and into an even more defensive position.

For example let us say that you throw 5-4,many novice players look to run with that from their opponents inner board but that is in fact a very weak move that doesn’t really build your position all that much. You have several key objectives in backgammon and the first one is to make it as hard as possible for your opponent to play an easy game.

In principle then this is a lot like poker because your moves in a poker game can often make life harder or easier for your opponent. In fact you need to ask this question as a poker player all the time because if you are making life easy for your opponent then their playing decisions become easier and your profit potential drops. But if their decisions by definition become easier then yours must get harder……it is the law of the jungle.

This principle applies perfectly to backgammon as well and before you make your move then you have to assess if your move makes life easier or harder for your opponent. If your move does nothing to make life harder for them then you may want to consider making another move.

There is an old saying in poker and it is that “why do the pushing when the donkey will do the pulling”. The meaning behind this statement is that weak players will beat themselves and this applies to any sport or game. It certainly applies to Chess where simply moving your pieces around and placing them into semi-threatening positions can be enough to beat a novice.

In backgammon then weak players will tend to beat themselves by their own weak strategies. By this I am referring to either leaving shots when they don’t need to simply because they have missed obvious moves, not realising strategic concepts or simply not allowing their position to have fluidity. This is the biggest error committed by a novice where many believe that leaving shots is not the correct thing to do.

So novice players basically defeat themselves and you can often build up a dominant position by around the 7th-8th role. However there is luck in backgammon and any player however poor can win games. Novices also fail to capitalise on their equity when they have it and also take poor doubles. You do not need to play a world class game to beat them and in fact doing so could be counter-productive if in doing so it allows the novice counter-play. This in principle is a bit like trying to bluff weak poker players who are calling stations. If they are going to call you down simply because they see a pair and think that it is strong then your complex play has done nothing more than make them inadvertently make the correct play.

In a game of backgammon then it is pretty clear how a game is sometimes flowing and in what direction. If you start off with a strong series of moves then the game really starts to flow in the direction of you attacking and your opponent either defending or trying to counter attack. It is imperative that you understand your position in order to maximise your chances of doing very well and to maximise your equity in the position.

This is a mistake that many novice players make, if they start well and they have an edge then they do not push that edge aggressively enough. This can allow an experienced player to get back into the game rather than them really going for the jugular. An example game may go something like this, a novice starts off with a lucky few rolls and gets ahead both in the pip count and the strategic nature of the position and this happens during the opening four rolls. An experienced player may double at this stage but our novice not only doesn’t double but he plays on and becomes negative in his tactics.

So the experienced player manages to balance the position during the next half a dozen rolls and suddenly the position is even. From here then the novice can get lucky again and regain the initiative although they probably will double more in this instance because it is nearer the end of the game. The novice though makes the huge mistake of only doubling in crushing positions where his opponent is likely to drop anyway.

Having played Backgammon to a fair level, Chess to a fair level and also poker and blackjack then I think I am well versed in being able to answer the question of which is the most skilful game. I think in terms of difficulty rating then Chess figures to be higher than any of the others. In fact I recall reading some time ago that Chess was second only to Go in terms of game complexity.

However I think there are certain problems in games like poker and blackjack that are not relevant to playing Chess. In Chess then there is no variance to speak of. If you are playing Chess against a vastly inferior opponent then you are going to beat them…….it is that simple! There are no bad beats or unexpected outdraws and a novice player would never beat a Grandmaster even over a series of games. If a Grandmaster played a novice over 100 games then the score would be 100-0……there are no flukes in Chess.

In poker though then a world class player may win 60% of the pots played and in backgammon then a top player may win something like 75% of the games played against a novice but in Chess then it is 100% until the skill difference narrows. So despite Chess having a much higher complexity level, there are many factors in poker that make the game far more difficult to master than Chess or Go.

I started playing some small stakes games last week for money and it felt sort of weird because I haven’t played backgammon for money for quite some time. It all started over a dinner evening with a few friends but the subject came around to what I did for a living and ultimately to games and then to backgammon. As it turned out one of the guys was a keen player and he knew a couple of other players who were also keen players and so we arranged a backgammon evening playing for small stakes at £0.10 per point. Although the largest possible loss would have been £19.20 if a gammon was secured with the dice on 64 then this was never going to happen.

In fact the largest win all evening was when two of the other players contested a game for £1.60. As it turned out I was the best player of the four and I could tell from the checker and cube decisions that were being made. However the overall difference wasn’t substantial enough to give me a huge edge. By the end of the evening I had played in games with a combined points total of 28pts and was behind by 2pts at 13-15 and so suffered the huge loss of £0.20.

We have arranged to play again and I managed to talk them into upping the stakes to £0.50 to make it more interesting. I figure that I am due a change of luck but variance is far more severe in backgammon than people think. When your edge is reduced then the swings increase and this means that losses occur more frequently even when you are the better player. In this instance then backgammon is so much like poker in many ways.

I played some online backgammon last night which I often do in the evenings when I am at a loose end and I want to expand on my earlier blog where I discussed strategy for doubling against weak players in short games. Here I want to look at longer games of say the first to 11 pts or the first to 21 pts. Here you can afford to double immediately as you clearly want to double vastly superior players as early as you possibly can. However there are two schools of thought here because as I said yesterday, really bad players are bad for a reason and part of that reason is because they take poor doubles.

So even in longer matches then I don’t see the advantage of doubling straight away. You will still win games at a higher rate than your opponent but why give them a lucky four points when you don’t need to? My strategy is a simple but effective one of waiting for maybe half a dozen moves or so into the game. I try and play my normal aggressive balanced game and build up an advantage as quickly as possible.

This leaves me in a situation where it is harder for my opponent to gain the advantage because in order to do that then they first have to equalise the position. So once again when you are playing against weak players and novices then it is in your interests to wait maybe six or seven moves or until the time comes where you have a fair sized advantage before you double.

I have written several times on this blog in recent weeks how backgammon is very similar to poker in many ways. One such area is in how aggressive doubling can be a great way of increasing the stakes of the game. If you feel that you have an advantage over your opponent in either skill or knowledge or both then it is in your interests to play for more money as soon as possible. If you only double when your advantage is clear then your opponent will surely drop if they have any sense.

This is exactly the same when in poker with nuts players who wait until they have a very powerful hand before they bet and raise. However many poker players have what is called a “loose aggressive” style where they are constantly raising the stakes and looking to take the initiative. It is amazing just how much money you can take from your weaker opponents when you play like this and is why the style of play is so effective in both poker and backgammon. Aggressive doubling at the start of the game is a good tactic even though it exposes you to a re-double.

Some players though wait until they get a little deeper into the game before they double and there is nothing wrong with being a little more selective either. The three main styles in poker of tight-aggressive…..loose-aggressive…..tight-passive and loose-passive also apply to the game of backgammon in equal measure but few people realise this.

Many novices who play the game of backgammon do so without the cube. This in my opinion is simply playing a watered down version of the game. At the end of the day backgammon is a gambling game in the same way that horse racing is a gambling sport. Although in the modern era then most sports are gambling sports these days. But I have often likened backgammon to chess and poker combined. In fact if you could merge chess and poker into one game then that game would be backgammon. Many people would argue of course that any game can be played without gambling because the key word in all of this is that it is a “game”.

This is all true of course and sometimes I am guilty of always looking at games from a purely gambling perspective. However a whole new world of understanding crops up in backgammon when you use the cube. The use of the cube is often seen as a quick way to end games that would have finished with the exact same result anyway. The best exponents of cube play know when to push marginal edges and they also know when to drop and save equity as well. Top players will simply have a higher average points score when they win games than lesser players. In fact two players could have exactly the same style in checker play and each win 50% of the games that they play.

But one player may win on average 1.20pts per game when averaged out while the other wins 1.8pts per game. Over a 100 game sequence then the weaker player wins 60pts for his 50 wins while the stronger player would win 90pts. So after 100 games then the score would be 90-60 to the stronger player despite each player winning 50 games.

There is a common tournament poker tactic that is used by many players of getting active and very busy very early into the event in order to take advantage of the so called “dead money” that is present at the beginning to middle stages of all large field poker tournaments. It is common knowledge for example that in a field of say 1000 runners that a very high percentage of these players would simply not be good enough to win the event.

The two biggest examples of this are when players have won into an event through satellites and are happy with a mediocre cash and because their shorthanded skills are lacking. Either way then these two factors make winning a big tournament very difficult and in many cases impossible if the player concerned has the wrong mind set. This is precisely why many players go after these weaker players at the outset and certainly when it gets close to cashing.

This is the same in backgammon where weaker players will not double when they should and play their moves weakly. This gives the better players opportunities to play far more aggressively at the beginning of the game than they otherwise would against players who were stronger. You have a big advantage in a game when you know that you are winning say 60% of the games but your opponent will not double until their advantage is obvious.

If you drop against obvious doubles with the cube on 2 then you are losing $80 per 100 games. However with a 60% strike ratio with the cube on 2 then you are making at least $120 over those 100 games. However you will be making gammons and backgammons and so your average points per win may be nearer 3 than 2 and so $180 and not $120. This means that you are making $100 in profit from your opponent per 100 games for $1 per game.

Is there a case for immediately doubling in backgammon if you are about to throw or your opponent has just thrown? Well you have to remember that releasing control of the cube is important in backgammon as your opponent now has the cube on 2 and can re-double at their discretion. However there are certain game situations where your edge over your opponent is crushing and you may feel that they may drop if your edge becomes all too clear during the game and so doubling now almost forces your opponent to play for bigger stakes.

Immediate doubling also means that you can get gammon and backgammons if the Jacoby rule is in force and this too is to a strong player’s advantage. Even a novice wouldn’t drop on the first throw and so any player in the world would accept the double even if they didn’t feel comfortable in doing so. When you are playing tight novices then they tend not to aggressively re-double in marginal situations through fear of uncontrolled escalation in the stakes.

So when they re-double then they tend to only do so when it is clearly an advantage to you to drop if they double. These situations lose 2pts but as the stronger player then you will be the one who will be gammoning and getting backgammons against your opponent with the cube on 2. So against tight and weak players then I feel that immediate doubling has merit even though it releases your grip of the cube.