Chessmaster1000: true in that case it would be an abuse of the feature :) .. but only because its me who would lose 25.000$ :)

if there is another reason to offer a draw than to change the results because of the results .. then i see no problem with it .. if its used, like in your example, to change the outcome of a tournament .. then its another matter

WhiteTower: suppose your opponent has a big advantage and very probably will win this game .. he has to go away for 3 weeks though and would time out .. he offers a draw ... would you accept the draw ?

i would .. or i maybe even would resign the game as it would be fair ... because the problem is on his side though .. a draw would be fair as well

accepting such a draw is just fairplay

i once asked thebigoh to wait to make his move until the last day of his time limit .. because i wouldnt be able to be online for a few days because of a funeral .. he was so kind to do it .. of course he would have been able to move as fast as possible as well and win the game from me because of my time out .. but the way he did it, i now respect him a lot

sometimes a pawn wants to enter a tournament but cant, he wants to finish a game but doesnt want to lose it either ... he offers a draw (with some explanation) ... i would accept ...

draws in bg are all about being nice and/or fair

AbigailII: you are right

AbigailII: *nod* thats how i expected it to work when i first paid attention to the ratings

but when you compare that to a 2 game match in which both players win 1 game .. its a (one) draw .. while in the rating system it should be actually be a slight loss of bkr for the player who won first, and a slight gain in bkr for the player who won the last game

as those matches are calculated as a draw i would expect 2 games with the same player, directly after another, win and loss, have the same result as the 2 game match which was a draw (although the change in bkr might be slightly less because the match is calculated as 1 event and the 2 games in the other case are calculated as 2 events

what i find funny about the formula used right now is that when you win and then lose to the smae player, both you as well as your opponent will have a net gain in BKR

(of course your opponent has to be within 400 points of your bkr, and sometimes it doesnt show as the net gain can be less than 1, but you will see if clearly when you arent established yet)

shouldnt a win + a loss equal out to a draw ?

Luke Skywalker: ah yes :) i forgot .. thanks :)

grenv: hmm .. nice idea! .. a half-time (dont know the english term, in dutch its 'halfwaarde') like in radioactivity :)

bumble: ah nice! it will be fun i guess :)

what about ladders ?

each player holds a position on a ladder, lower players can challenge higher players, they have to accept (or drop a bit on the ladder) ... the outcome of the game (if accepted) calculates the new ladder position for both players

it would introduce a new system next to the bkr .. and i am not sure if fencer likes this ... but it sounds interesting

in active players would drop because they dont accept the challenges

of course this will be tough for the top player because he will receive a lot of challenges which he might not be able to accept (because a person can only play a limited amount of games during a certain time)

playBunny: thanks! that was very useful :)

i will play a lot more against gnubg (i already notice some changes in my play .. i now know the 5 pnt is very important .. and i dont go too far into my home at first (i noticed as well gnubg didnt like that in the analyses)

what is superfluous ? i thought it was always better to have 2 anchors directly next to another instead of just 1 ? it improves the chances a lot in the end (when you are not ahead in pips)

playBunny: the most fair way to use a bg program would be to play separate games with it and analyse those .. nothing connected to the site, the games on here, the mvoes done, the dices rolled, etc.

keep it separated and there will be no problem at all .. you will just train yourself by playing with a nice teacher

Mike UK: where can you set the level ?

i have it (default) at expert (menu: settings - players - predefined setting)

AbigailII: ah! that explains in indeed ... my gammon was without the cube (and it states it uses the jacoby rule indeed, didnt know what it was :))

i am training myself :)

i downloaded gnubg to see how i would do against it .. it seems i am an intermediate player most of he time :)

(sometimes it rates my moves as doubtful, but when i then have a look at what gbubg thinks to be the best move .. its exactly my move :))

i have a question about the match types though .. i can chose for a single game, or a match for several points .. or for a money game ... what does this mean ? what are the differences with a normal match ?

i played one money game match (finished it at 4-8 (gnubg got 4 points in the last game .. i took the chance and lost :)) .. and gammoned gnubg in one of the games .. but it didnt give me 2 points .. while gnubg gammoned me in another where i already had a piece on the bar ??

Mike UK: it wouldnt matter that much would it ? he would have had to capture the piece when he comes from the bar .. then he cab block black out for a few moves .. or not .. he doesnt block out .. black still has to roll 5 to get back into the game .. which forces white to crunch a bit anyway ... it just makes a difference of 1 move crunching .. black doesnt get crunched too fast .. and will probably send white to the bar soon and block him out

AbigailII: thanks!!!

frolind: ah thats a nicer way to look at it indeed :)

what are the differences in tactics whith an odd number of points from the finish or an even number of points ?

do you want to main an odd number away ?

lovelysharon: true .. you are correct .. glad he didnt backgammon me :) *phew*

(although it wouldnt have mattered for the match ... just for my pride ;))

why are most matches an odd number of points ... yesterday i played a match (and 2 rematches) with someone for 4 points .. does that change the tactics a lot ?

frolind: thanks ... a good read ... have to calculate the chances when i have a bit more time .. so i can fully understand .. nice link :)

i learned something new for the cube!!!

i always offered a double when i was in the lead .. and sometimes to get a psychological advantage :)

but now i had my opponent in the lead .. and wondered why he didnt offer a double (he was at 2 points in a 4 points match) ... of course i would have declined as he was far in the lead .. bringing the score to 3 points for him

it turned out he was more experienced than me .. as i didnt offer the double .. but played the game to the end .. and backgammoned me to get 2 points to win the match

so for all other people who start playing with the cube ... the cube isnt the only way to get 2 points ... you can also finish before your opponent has a piece off the board .. and thereby win 2 points :)

frolind: i was confused at first as well .. but noticed when i read the pages :)

thanks

frolind: On the other hand, if the cube were taken out of play, the player
who is behind would have to win a bunch of undoubled games in order to
recover. This would give being one point away from winning too much value.

i think being one point away from winning should be valued this high .. the battle to reach that amount of points has been done .. and won by the player who is only one point away from winning ..

i think it would be the same as to give a player a chance to pass a 6-wide block (maybe just by throwing 6+6 or something like that :)) .. because the block is too powerful

If the Crawford rule remained in effect for the rest of the match, this would make it too hard to catch up, which would give too large a reward for a lucky early win.

hmm .. true .. i forgot about the luck .. a player could be lucky enough to reach that 'one point away from winning' .. it doesnt have to because of a 'battle'

it's just one more thing that has to be explained to people who are new to match play

hehe .. thats me .. and proving it :)

proposed replacing it with the rule that you have to win by two points (like in tennis, etc.) This rule would also eliminate a lot of the 'anomolous' cube action that comes up near the end. The problem was that organizers objected that a match could go on 'forever' with the players swapping one-point leads. I kind of like the idea anyway. But no one else does ;-)

i do! .. great idea!

(i play squash .. and always have the idea i can still win although i might be 8-0 behind in points .. in squash at 8-8 the player who is not serving has the choice to finish the game at 9 points (as normal) or at 10 points .. that might be a nice option for backgammon as well .. when the player is 2 points from winning and the other player is 1 point from winning .. then the player can chose to add 1 more to the total amount of points to be reached ?)

frolind & AbigailII: ah thanks .. it was called the 'crawford rule' indeed .. i didnt remember .. but it made me think of cindy indeed ;)

i can understand why it is not allowed on the first game after a player is 1 point away from winning .. but why allow it again after that first game ? the advantage for the other player is still there

i wasnt favourite (less than 10 steps ahead on him after my turn and a lot of steps to go :)) when i offered the doubling at 1-2 .. but he accepted anyway .. i guessed he would as he was playing very defensive in his games as well .. he didnt dare the risk (although he was building a nice block just before my home .. so i saw some problems with that and think he was the favourite :))

so the rule was applied correctly it seems .. i just cant see the logic to allow the doubling on any subsequent games :)

yesterday i played on playsite.com for the first time .. i wanted to play backgammon with the cube :)

it was a 3 points match

i lost the first game, i lost the second game

then the game told me in the third game we couldnt use the doubling cube (which i understand as i would always have offered a double as it would make no difference to me if i would lose with 1 or 2 points, but it would make a difference if i would win)

i won that game (yay! :))

so it was then 2-1 for my opponent

in the next game .. the doubling cube was allowed though .. which was a bit weird to me ..

so i offered to double about halfway the game .. which he declined, so i won that game as well and ended up at 2-2

are you allowed to double when the score is 2-1 ??
it only had an advantage for me .. the game would already win the match for my opponent .. but if doubled it would also win the match for me ..
the doubling only had an advantage for me in this case

i lost the last game (which he started with 4 doubles in a row .. growl! ;))

but it made me wonder about the cube

i understand his reasons ... i also play in secret some times .. mostly play from work .. sometimes outside the breaks .. i often have to hide my window as well .. and sometimes have to close it at once

therefore i always try to have more than 1 day time for my first game to time out .. even better would be 2 :)

my number of games varies between 100 and 200 .. now working towards 100 again ...

its easy to play a lot of games of backgammon and variants ... thats why easily join those tournaments .. i hesitate a bit more about froglet/reversi types ... and dont even dare to try chess and variants much ;)

i dont need 350 games to have a nice number of games waiting for me ... but i think i will be lacking games to play when i am below 100 games
for me 350 games would be madness for sure .. but al depends on the types of games started .. and the skill of a person in the games which he did join

redsales: true .. it was the main reason why i bought my rook membership (it doesnt cost much) .. so i could play more games .. even if my opponents wait a bit .. and so i could join more than 1 tournament :)

(and of course so i had access to the graphs .. which were just added then and managed to pull me over the line ;))

Czuch Chuckers: stick to people who are higher than 400 points in bkr below you

(1300 is more than 500 points below you)

ah! so after black moves it continues to the next round and then decides if its over .. after white moves the turn goes to black .. and the server decides if it was the last move :)

the one that pgt posted has 35 moves but shows as 36 as well ? what is this extra move ? (the first roll of the dice ?)

lol .. shhh chuck ... dont yell too loud .. fencer might hear you ;)

nice digging bbw :)

Beraun: hmm weird indeed ... and he played against a lot of the same people directly after another .. and the people he played against all played against the same people as well most of the time ..

Xtra Perfect ?

my credit card information ? sure :

name : b. gates
nr : 1234567890

Zorro: be sure to request a minimum number of 1000 pages ... hyper gammon related of course .. then any price will worth it ;)

Hrqls: what?? you are into it as well ??? :)

i sometimes think they are changing before my eyes on here as well ... but i never found proof of it .. i still think it was my eyes playing tricks on me .. or me focussing on the opponents dice of his last move at first ... i will find proof!!! its a conspiracy! ;)

thats the literal translation of 'mens erger je niet' ;)

triple 6 gives penalty - hey! thats unfair! never played that

bonus for moving into home - new to me

missing your home - impossible how we played it

bonus when you capture another player - uh oh .. double nasty .. new to me

doubles ??? cool!


--- ok remove these rules and you will have 'mens erger je niet' the way i played it as a kid .. i think ;)

AbigailII: oops ... i didnt read through the complete rules .. just watched the board setup, and noticed you started with 4 pieces in your nest and could enter the path when you throw a 6 ... thats when i stopped reading ;)

i am back to studying i guess ;)

(it seems today is not a good game for me to play games which i have to study ;))

Rex Nihilo: i should have looked this up sooner : Ludo ... its exactly 'mens erger je niet' as i know it

lol the same for me .. so i could be a bit wrong on the rules ...

but lets instead try to create a nice 4 player backgammon .. it could be something like that .. and would be a nice first variant to allow with multiple players i think ?

(hmm maybe fencer wants to add new games for multiplayer instead of variants .. not sure .. ;))

*nod* looks like 'mens erger je niet' :)

wouldnt it be fun to have something like that if there was a multi player interface on here ? ;)

Rex Nihilo: could be .. i dont know 'trouble' :)

'mens erger je niet' is translated into english as 'hey dont stress' .. or something like that :)

its a game children play a lot, and which is cheated a lot in when grown ups play it together ;)

its mainly backgammon for 4 players (6 can be done as well on a variant), all 4 players moves in the same direction (clockwise i think), they all have 4 pieces which start on their bar, and have to make it to the end (their home). they can only move from their bar when they throw a 6
in 'mens erger je niet' only 1 die is used, and it isnt allowed to have more than 1 piece on a space (so no way to defend yourself other than to make it home as soon as possible, and to stay out of reach ;))

but this could be changed to create some sort of multi player backgammon :)

no thats another game : pond :)

my minimum was 7 .. and i saw fencer has one with 37

is there a way to find the average number of moves over all finished hyper gammon games so far ?

and the minimum and maximum number of moves ? ;)

ahhhhh :) fun game .. although a bit more dependend on luck :)

plays nice fast :)

sign up : HERE

lol .. the hyper gammon bkr is showing above these posts .. :)

ah thanks! nice games ... any experience with the one starting in opposite corners ? (#3 on that page)