BrainKing - Discussion boards (Backgammon)

Moderator: SueQ

Backgammon

Backgammon and variants.

Backgammon Links

List of discussion boards
You are not allowed to post messages to this board. Minimum level of membership required for posting on this board is Brain Pawn.

Mode: Everyone can post

16. June 2008, 17:07:33

nabla

show this user posts | show thread | link

Subject: Re: Resigning and backgammons

alanback: It is the only one as far as I can see. I can't think of any position where there is contact and a backgammon cannot possibly be lost.

But thinking again about single games vs gammons I now see that "one checker off" is not a necessary criteria for gammons to be impossible. If all your checkers are one away from bearing off, and the opponent has more than 5 checkers on the board, one will manage to bear at least two checkers off whatever happens.

So awarding a gammon unless there is one checker off is not 100% conceptually clean after all. It is still probably the best see-in-one-glance estimate. Who would like a sophisticated software to decide about the result of a game ?

16. June 2008, 17:14:52

alanback

show this user posts | show thread | link

Subject: Re: Resigning and backgammons

nabla: Not worth the effort IMHO. The contact issue should not be too hard to resolve, but the rest would be difficult and likely error-prone. Not to mention hard to explain to newcomers.

Except in Triple Gammon, which I don't think should be played here except with long timeout periods, the differences among backgammon, gammon and single game adversely affect only the losing player. A player can avoid losing too many points by delaying his resignation. A player who times out doesn't deserve too much sympathy.