i don't know if it has been posted yet, but i think i like the rules of No Chance Backgammon

read the explanation here : http://www.bkgm.com/variants/NoChanceBG/index.html

has anyone ever played it ?

HISTORY OF BACKGAMMON

Digs have exposed that backgammon conventionally was played on top of wood Backgammon History facades, by stones as pointers, and dice prepared as of bones. The ancient recognized relics supposed to have been utilized in favor of a backgammon-like game date back to 3000 B.C.

ANCESTORS OF BACKGAMMON

Senat

The earliest side of what would afterward turn out to be backgammon is the Egyptian game of Senat, recognized as Thirty Squares as well (employed date back to 3000 B.C.) small is identified on the rules of the game however the boards that have been discovered contain 3x10, 3x12, plus 3x6 squares.

The Royal Games of Ur

At what time the imperial grave of the Ur al Chaldees, the hub of Sumer, was exposed archeologist discovered wooden backgammon boards old back to approximately 2600 B.C.

Ludus Duodecim Scriptorum

The Romans named their side of backgammon Ludus Duodecim Scriptorum (The Game of 12 Lines). The game, supposed to be a straight successor to the Egyptian Senat, was taken part on top of a leather plank by means of 30 markers, 15 ebony as well as 15 ivory.

Tabula

The Romans fetched backgammon toward Northern Europe after it attacked Britain during the 1st Century. Next to the moment the game was usually known by Tabula.

Alea

Semi a millennium afterward it acquired the name Alea and began to appear progressively similar to the backgammon we play nowadays.

Nard

Near 800 A.D. a backgammon-resembling game had attained Asia plus the Persian Empire. Nard was extremely close to Alea through 2 die accustomed to shift the 30 markers.

The game too turned out to be accepted in China below the name T’Shu-p’u and within Japan where it was known by Sugoroku.

Modern Backgammon

The start of modern backgammon is marked by the introduction of the doubling cube, first used in the 1920s in New York City. In 1931 the backgammon rules were modified to what basically governs the game today.

Prince Alexis Obolensky, or "Oby", is usually accredited by means of the fast expansion of backgammon participants several 30 years ago. Oby prearranged the foremost backgammon World Championships in Bahamas.

During 1970s backgammon obtained numerous notices within the media and numerous newspapers faceted backgammon columns.

Next to the 1980s the younger invention twisted toward video games and the game of backgammon found its fame reducing.

Online backgammon

During recent years, but, that drift has been upturned due to online backgammon on web. Participants can currently discover decent rivals by each and every hours of the day just by logging on top of your computers. You can play backgammon by download backgammon from internet
The history of backgammon in two parts
Part 1: Origins
Backgammon is one of the oldest games in existence alongside Go and Chess. It is probably about 5,000 years old and may well have originated in what today is Iraq – previously Mesopotamia. Recent evidence supporting this was found when these very early dice (made of human bones) were discovered in the area:

Mesopotamian Backgammon


The board with its twenty-four points and thirty checkers (or pieces or men) has been around for a long time but the game has not always been called backgammon. Other games which used the same board were Senet and Mancala. The Romans were the first to make it truly popular with their version called “Duodecum Scripta et Tabulae” or “Tables” for short.

Frescoes in many a Roman villa depict the game in progress (the players were not always completely clothed)! Here is an example (clothed version) from Pompeii:


Pompeii Backgammon


The Emperor Claudius was a keen player – he had a special board built on the back of his chariot to relieve the tedium of long journeys. Emperor Nero was a prodigious gambler. He played for today’s equivalent of $10,000 a game. History does not record what happened to his opponents if they lost!

For many years there were different rules depending upon one’s level in society – true of many pastimes.. Whilst the officers wagered large stakes it became so popular during the Crusades that soldiers below a certain rank were barred from playing.

The history of any game can be tracked by looking for references in both art and literature. It is mentioned in early literature, both in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales:

“They daucen, and they pleyen at ches and tables.”

and by Shakespeare in Love’s Labour’s Lost.

The word backgammon first appeared in print in 1645. No one knows for sure where the name came from, but most scholars agree that in all likelihood it comes from the Middle English ‘baec’ = back and ‘gamen’ = game.

Backgammon appears consistently in art throughout the second millennium, most famously in “The Garden of Earthly Delights” by Hieronymus Bosch and “The Triumph of Death” by Pieter Brueghel. Quite frequently it appears in tavern scenes and often there is a brawl going on - I wonder why that could be? Here it is in Steen’s “Backgammon Fight”:


Backgammon Fight


The game continued to be played throughout the latter stages of the last millennium but it had constant battles with authorities and the church who wanted to ban it because of the gambling element – not too dissimilar to some areas of the world today, particularly since America brought in its crass and ludicrous Internet gambling laws (surely they are not long for this world??)

Its popularity continued through Victorian times (see the tranquil image below) and it was very popular at country house weekend parties.


Victorian Backgammon Parties


However by the early 1920’s the game was losing its appeal. In the Roaring Twenties in New York City the games were just taking too long to play and it was difficult to wager (and therefore win) large amounts of money.
The Backgammon history (the advent of doubling)
As we saw in the previous article, backgammon was losing its appeal in the fast-paced society of the 1920’s because the games took too long and it was difficult to wager large amounts of money.

Whether the game would have survived we can only surmise but some time around 1925 or 1926 two things that would change the game forever happened at almost the same time.

The first and most important event occurred when some genius (or it may have been a group of them) in either New York or Boston came up with the idea of being able to double the stakes. We must assume that redoubling was invented at the same time and there is no contrary evidence to suggest otherwise. Sadly, despite extensive research, we do not know exactly who invented the concept so all we can do is give a heartfelt thank you to whoever it was!

The doubling cube did not arrive for some years and initially matchsticks were used to record the stakes. The first type of doubling device was a dial. An example – which I was lucky enough to buy on eBay - is shown here:

backgammon doubling dial.


This device lasted for some time as evidenced by this photo of Douglas Fairbanks Jnr. and Joan Crawford (they were married from 1929 to 1933):

Douglas Fairbanks Jnr. and Joan Crawford playing backgammon

Exactly when the doubling cube arrived is not recorded.

The second event was the arrival of the multi-player version of the game that has always been known, even in the 1920’s, as a chouette. Chouette is the French for screech owl, a bird that is set upon by many of its own kind so we can see how apt the name is! It was originally used in the card game Picquet.

Now not only could the stakes be doubled but with more players in the game winnings and losses rose exponentially! Backgammon became the perfect game for the 1920’s.

It is safe to say that doubling, whilst it solved the backgammon problems of the day and introduced a whole new level of skill, was initially very poorly understood. If you read any of the books from that era you will find some very dubious advice indeed. The basic concept of the 25% take-point was not explained in any book until Crawford and Jacoby published “The Backgammon Book” in 1970!

Georges Mabardi, author of Vanity Fair’s “Backgammon to Win” (1930) had this view of Doubling: “If two absolutely perfect players engaged in a match, there would never be an accepted double.” Close, but no cigar!

Chris Bray
Sep 07

Carl: Oh thanks a lot Carl for letting me know.... so that COULD mean that the mentioned games are saved with the missing graphics also on the Brainking-servers.... i wonder what Filip Fencer says to that...

speachless: Now I look again i see i was wrong.There is one piece missing in each example,strange.

pedestrian: you're right...

speachless: If the problem is that some image files are missing, then old games will look wrong when we play through them today. That doesn't mean they were affected when they were played.

playBunny: your links shows the same problem... missing pieces even under small sized boards... as your links are old games it means it is not a new problem but it appears already since years....

playBunny: You may have missed part of the conversation, as it started on the other board. They were already told to use small pieces to avoid it. However, this is something new, as it seems to be this way even in small pieces.

However, it would be interesting to know what is different about Carl as he has seemingly said it looks normal to him.

2011 - http://brainking.com/en/ReadBug?bgi=2164&utf=plakoto


2011 - http://brainking.com/en/ReadBug?bgi=2129&utf=plakoto


2008! - http://brainking.com/en/ReadBug?bgi=1602&utf=plakoto

Carl: so on the second link you see a black and a white one? ...interesting.

would like to know what makes the difference...

thx for the info

thx a lot for your reviews :-) interesting ...

i'v tried with safari, firefox under mac- and win-os and i always see an incorrect graphic, even if i use the small sized board...
and of course i have all software updates done.

a statistic of plakoto gamer about what they see when they look to the links using small sized boards would be really interesting... :-)

thx again

rod03801: I see the same, one piece each time (incorrectly).
For both board sizes.
Using Safari on iPad

pedestrian: Wow, absolutely correct. I have never had this problem.

pedestrian: I see both examples as they should be.

pedestrian: I see the same as you, Pedestrian.

One white piece on #9 on first link
One black piece on #9 on 2nd link

And if you count the pieces in that 2nd link, there are 14 white pieces, and 15 black pieces. Obviously one has "disappeared."

Marshmud: I have the same problem as speachless. Just to clarify, let's take speachless' first example.

speachless: I have played over 200 games in 4+ years and this is the 1st time I ever heard of a problem. I have never changed anything in my settings as well so I may be on original settings by default.

hi to all
does anyone else also have problems with the plakoto boards? sometimes when an opponent piece is trapped, the trapped one can't anymore be displayed, but only at some boards and at some trapped pieces.... when the one who traps moves on, then it appears again...

i have the problem on 6 of around 12 running plakoto games...

AND THE GAME BOARD SETTINGS ARE ALREADY SET AT

SMALL BOARD SIZE so that's not the problem

PLAKOTO_BOARD 5731651
the black piece goes from 20 to 9, at 9 a white one is..... but after the move my white one at position 9 disappears:
Plakoto (speachless vs. Luciano672)
Plakoto (speachless vs. Luciano672)

PLAKOTO-BOARD 5739043
pieces here disappears at position 12:
Plakoto (speachless vs. Dry Martini)
Plakoto (speachless vs. Dry Martini)

PLAKOTO-BOARD 5742361
here another game, at position 15 one disappears:
Plakoto (speachless vs. steve21)
Plakoto (speachless vs. steve21)

PLAKOTOBOARD 5740557
here another game, at position 5 one disappears:
Plakoto (rybczynski vs. speachless)
Plakoto (rybczynski vs. speachless)

PLAKOTO-BOARD 5741042
another, position 3 disappears:
Plakoto (speachless vs. indigo cat)
Plakoto (speachless vs. indigo cat)

PLAKOTO-BOARD 5739601
another game at position 5:
Plakoto (speachless vs. petrj)
Plakoto (speachless vs. petrj)

pedestrian: Well I guess you are right, but it's very confusing, and I have not figured out a way of seeing the details of games within a match to confirm it to my satisfaction. But we're not playing for cattle ranches, so let's forget it,

But I agree with grenv - we don't need messages for each game of a multi-game match.

pedestrian: we don't really need these notifications until the end of the match IMO

pgt: Look at the game ID in that message: 5710553 is in fact the game ID of game 4 in that match. So the message that you quote is not the message for the final game, it's the message for game 4.

pedestrian: Here is the message text for the final game (the game in question) which says that I am the winner. but the text says "Blue Sky is the winner". The game has disappeared, but does not appear in my "completed games" list.

Read message(back to the list of messages)
Date and time: 16. May 2012, 11:14:57
Subject: You moved all your pieces out (blue sky, Hyper Backgammon)


Game ID: 5710553

Game type: Hyper Backgammon
The game is a part of a multi game match which is not finished.

Aganju: I have done that a couple of days ago and it has not been acknowledged.

pgt: The game you link to is game four of the match. You won that game, but your opponent won the match.

pgt: you are right this is very strange. Send a message to Fencer, he will probably fix it.

Hyper Backgammon (pgt vs. blue sky)

Can anybody explain why the Event Message told me "You moved all your pieces out" yet the game was awarded to my opponent? The game (wrongly) shows that he won the match, but it was clearly ME who won the match.

joshi tm: I realize it would be rare, hence asking... since it may not have been noticed but still not work. Hopefully the code is in one place and it's broken everywhere and will be fixed everywhere :)

grenv: In regular old backgammon it should count as a captured piece which is extremely rare, but in the Backgammon Race or the Crowded Gammon variant the same problem could occur. Anyone want to try out?

Oh, by the way, of course this had to be counted as Backgammon.

grenv: Although backgammon from a man on the bar is a rare phenomenon, a million games(*) suggests that it's happened more than a few times and so I imagine that it would have been reported by now if it were in the regular variant. I suspect that the bug occurs in variants which have bar pieces where entry is optional. ... but you might be right. Who can know but the man with the code.

(*) Although the scoring of gammons and backgammons wouldn't be applicable in quite a proportion of that million.

playBunny: Wonder is it works in regular old backgammon... would be rare but possible.

Aganju: The piece on the bar is a "race piece", which your opponent can bring in at any time. Presumably Fencer forgot to include those in the is-a-backgammon calculation.

In this game, I would have expected to get a 'backgammon' meaning three points, multiplied by the cube of 2, resulting in 6 points. However, I got four. Can someone explain me why?
He has not borne off anything, he has a piece still on the home bar, the doubling cube was used and accepted. So what is missing??

playBunny: moneygame.

gogul: important win‽ yes or no.

I'm not sure what the question is but it's obviously important enough for you to have posted about it.

important win‽ yes or no. ⁅game stuff⁆




Match type: Normal game
Tournament type (?): one game for each two players
Membership level:
Minimum number of players: 4
Maximum number of players: 7
Maximum number of players per section: 9
Final match type for two player section: 3 wins match
Time control (?): 6 days, standard vacation
Player rating: 100 <= BKR <= 4000
Unrated players: yes

<a href="Tournaments?tri=707626#1
">http://brainking.com/de/Tournaments?tri=707626#1
</a>

Backgammon (kid_game_2001 gegen gogul)


all or nothing or all except 1.



bunny？

playBunny: Well that changes everything. I was referring to the link previously posted. not this one. In that case,yes the opponent should have opened a slot

nikos: Actually you are missing something

Yes, he's missing the link to the exact move, having posted a link to the game itself, which just happened to be the correct move at the time of posting.

you need to have no legal moves left

Fevga game 5460931, move 60

qusar: This is indeed a situation where the one having the prime should unblock but it is a different position of pieces. You don't have to just be in a column, but you must NOT have a chance to move in order someone to unblock you

Aganju: Actually you are missing something. In order for Gammonator to unblock a piece in his prime, you need to have no legal moves left also. You could still make a move if you roll an ace.You should have collected them into the next point. Then, your opponent should have unblocked.

it is reported here 2 years ago and still not fixed

http://brainking.com/en/ReadBug?bgi=1640

and the game position

Fevga (Gror vs. Resher)

Is there a bug in site code, or do I miss something?
In Fevga game 5460931, I have collected all my pieces behind his block. The rules state:
"... If opponent has collected all his checkers onto the one point behind player's prime, the player must unblock a point in his prime to allow the opponent a chance to move..." (Fevga rules, next to last paragraph).
Still, my opponent made a move that did not unblock me - which should not have been allowed?
Am I wrong or is the code wrong?

grenv: And the theoretical question is what I asked. You both say nine is the least amount of turns even if we give the opponent any roll we want and have him move as we please? I think I will work on this myself, but nine seems very fast. I hadn't thought of it as grenv did, just figuring out each piece from where it starts. This makes sense as you can't use the roll just by the count as the number of pips needed may not divide evenly, 7 and 13 being good examples of this. Is my fifteen move game fairly exceptional, especially considering my opponent wasn't trying to help me?

Which point is what you are calling the midpoint? Is that the point in the outer table that starts with five pieces?

playBunny: Right, the back 2 need to land on the opponents midpoint. this is as likely as 2 move fools mate in chess, but still the answer to the theoretical question :)

grenv: 9 rolls

Yes, and it can be done with nine 6-6s, which wastes pips, or nine rolls which bear off exactly.

For example, if the opponent starts and makes obligingly awful moves (in particular, abandoning their midpoint), the player can roll 6-6, 6-6, 2-2, 6-6, 1-1, 6-5, 6-6, 6-6, 6-6 to finish having rolled exactly 167.

Avoiding errors on the part of the player would need an extra move and an opponent who obligingly misses any necessary blots caused by bearing off with doubles. It can be done as a blitz with 6-6, 5-5, 4-4, 6-6, 6-6, 1-1, 6-6, 5-5, 3-3, 1-1 if the opponent starts with 5-2 and splits the back men.

Walter Montego: Simple in theory.. how many moves minimum to get the pieces off.

2 farthest - 4 each
5 next farthest - 3 each
5 closest - 1 each
3 next closest - 2 each

total 8 + 15 + 5 + 6 = 34 moves

34/4 (assuming doubles) = 8.5, which is 9 turns.

Assuming 7 probably counted pips, however being 7 out cannot be borne off in 1.2 moves for example :)

I rolled six doubles in a row and nine in the fifteen moves I had in this game. Backgammon (Walter Montego vs. *HitMan*)
It's hard to imagine ever losing if the dice guy keeps the rolls coming like that.

I am curious. What is the fastest possible win in turns in Backgammon and what is anyone's best? Fifteen turns seems pretty fast and considering I've had Hyper Backgammon games last twice as long it really is crazy how a game can go. I am thinking in theory you could win in seven turns.

grenv: OK thanks for that, not sure I have come across it before

WellyWales: Because you can't use both numbers... and in this case you need to use the highest number. If you swapped you would move 1 but not be able to move 2, which is an illegal move.

Why can I not swop the dice in this game? Hyper Backgammon (vilikus72 vs. WellyWales)