Czuch Chuckers: you know, internet access is quite cheap these days. If you really like using your TV as a "computer" monitor for internet surfing, on most modern TVs, you can run a coaxial cable from your hard drive to the TV to make it your monitor, that would be a natural transition for you WEBTV users. With that capability and WEBTV's costs, I really can't see it having any advantages anymore.

OK， new question. In this game:

1) would you play the double hit on the 6-4 roll?
i didn't, because without the cube, i didn't feel that taking the risk of "squandering" a 10 roll for no chance of the increased reward of a gammon was worth it...leading to the second question...

2. could this be one of the situations where you'd play differently based on a cube or not? If it's not, what's the most striking opening example you can think of?

Also, playbunny, i don't understand the terminology of "gaining blocks", hoping for something didactic here!

http://brainking.com/cn/ShowGame?g=1406288

Hrqls: wellllll...i knew you were nervous about experimenting! I really didn't want to double, that game was fun! But..i like points too..

playBunny: "I wouldn't have doubled in that position - unless I had hopes of frightening you off. ;-)."-Playbunny

Couldn't agree more!

Read that again for anyone who dares compare BG to chess!!

grenv: i can tell you ONE reason...less clicking!

back/gammons still don't count for cubeless games, do they??

pentejr is right, i have noticed that when playing a series of separate games against a similarly rated opponent, if we end up splitting, we both gain a few points in the end. i don't really have a problem with this as it rewards people for playing more and not sitting on a rating like I..er..I mean..some people do in chess.

As for Loop/Pahtum, that's easy. Pahtum seems to have an insane advantage for the starting player (maybe it's even a forced win with perfect play?), so playing both colors will shave the ratings down since if there's no or not enough skill involved, the cream will have trouble rising to the top. on the other hand, while loop does confer an advantage to white, like chess, it is not insurmountable and one can play a great game from either side.

Pythagoras: that does it, in order to unify the rules, I'm going to start an international backgammon governing body. By "an", of course I mean either one or more than one. Tongue in cheek.

grenv: i totally agree, and the different decisions required in the different phases of the game also contributes to skill being more important. For example, in hyper, one can play many games without capturing or even having the opportunity to capture. It makes the skill set far more limited. In race, you need more of a repetoire.

not sure about the middle, but to me BG race must have the least luck involved since the games take the longest on average and therefore have the higher number of rolls, giving luck a chance to equal out.

playBunny: good point about infinite vs. finite series, an important difference! I could roll the dice a million times and never roll a 7. But infinitely, I know the texts say one should get perfect distribution, but I have trouble intellectualizing that one, because i can't see a practical way to prove it.

I, too, would like to know EXACTLY what trips the payoff and % payout adjustors, does anyone know who's an insider?

grenv: by definition, pure randomness cannot guarantee a certain %age, because there are no guarantees in a purely random system. Craps also should approach mathematically pure distribution in the long run, but it is not programmed. The slots program gives the guarantee through short run appearance of randomness that in the long run is skewed towards a guaranteed payoff, a number which is predetermined and is not random in itself, and can be manipulated by the slot programmer.

grenv: hmm..how do i put this..it does change the odds, but not in a way that is measurable or useful for the player. It is known only to the computer.

Walter Montego:
It doesn't matter how much money they've taken in or how long it's been since they've paid out.

But of course it does matter how much they're taken in, many modern chip slots are programmed to pay off as a percentage of take. By definition, the amount of money taken in is an essential factor. Read the part about payback percentages:
http://www.goingtovegas.com/kpv-slot.htm

alanback: i think she's going by the "feel" that if she hasn't doubled for a long time, it's certainly gotta happen. I know we can probably all remember a situation where we felt we were due and we got a double. But the ones we usually gloss over in our memories are the many times we felt were due and rolled 1-2 as usual and lost the game...i know i've selectively forgotten those a lot, simply bc i'm no masochist.

I don't want this to turn polemical, but I can't see a way of comparing a physical bat whose structure changes, at least at a quantum level, every time it encounters an outside force. If you throw enough balls at 100 mph at a bat, it'll break eventually, and we can't predict when or how, since the grooves of wooden bats can cause premature fractures.

Slot machines, too, ARE programmed to pay off based on a pre-programmed factor, some as a % of the total take when a discrete number is reached, some chronologically. But the time-based ones are on such a wide time frame that i've never heard of anyone successfully timing one to the extent that they've made more money than they wasted in the interim. So the odds do change with every try, albeit not to the extent we can take advantage of it.

But virtual dice? If they are perfectly random, by definition there can't be any change in the odds because there is no physical wear and the same algorithm "starts fresh" every roll. Some have argued that the BK dice have a "boolean flaw" and that no dice algorithm can be perfectly random to begin with. Nevertheless, I'd sure like to see the proof. Maybe Fencer would show us the source of his randomizer, but honestly I wouldn't even bother to look at it!

playBunny: I agree that doubling requires a different way of thinking, but in your original post you mentioned additional skills. Yes, it takes additional skills to attack a king that has the ability to castle over one that can't in the rules. This imbalance is exasperated in Fischer and CRC, where no set starting position exists, but castling and the ability to prevent it plays a far more significant role than in conventional chess. I've personally found that in CRC and Gothic/Janus chess, due to the width of the board, castling can significantly alter the course of the game by necessitating a redirection of the attack. Of course the cube requires additional skills too, but you're still playing backgammon!

playBunny: castling significantly changed the method of attacking the king in the middle vs. the flank. Also, the lack of a 2-square escape move for the king resulted in more of a disadvantage for black. That's more akin to the cube. en passant, you're right, it's not much at all.

playing gammon without the cube is chronologically similar to playing chess without en passant or castling; both were introduced to liven up the game, whether for gambling purposes or not. So to further alanback's analogy, separate ratings to me would be like castling/en passantless chess vs. chess: sometimes a significant difference in game play, but in the end it's still chess. I'll be happy just to wait for ladders.

i'd love to!

i'll miss the sportsmanship discussion...but apparently, it is still an issue with bid fixing in ponds.

grenv: right, as English and backgammon prove, and maybe the past dramas with FIDE and Kasparov also, that a governing body can do more harm than good. Shakespeare used grammar that is unusual or even just plain wrong today, yet he's the immortal bard. Nice paradox. Grammar is ridiculous anyway; it's simply a retroactive way to try and explain what a society knows intuitively.

this needs unification then. It would be a great pyramid scheme.

alanback: so who runs those US-based gammon tourney sites I chanced upon online? The unabomber, I guess? He does have access 3 hours a day, I could see it.

grenv:
I've never played a single game of backgammon outside of BK, either in real life or on another site, so the incorrectness of the playability on BK comes as a bit of a shock, bc I know nothing else to compare it to. But I'll take your word that BK is against the norm.

As an aside, English DOESN'T have official grammar in some cases, such as split infinitives, which were considered grammatically incorrect 150 years ago, but generally accepted today. Unclear usage is dealt with through a board of grammarians, who much like backgammon, are not the "official word" anyway. you can find more information on the process of debating new grammar at www.dictionary.com. What can you expect with such a bastardized language?

So there is no FIDE-like backgammon organization?

good point Vikings, I meant backgammon

grenv: huh! must play the larger one! well, that's a pretty arbitrary rule.

But all this is moot, since there is no governing body in badminton like there is in chess? The idea seems to be that through convention and habit, most people on the site seem to want to use both dice when possible, but it's not based on anything "official"?

so can anyone give me a link to an "official" backgammon body so I can read this so-called maximum dice usage rule? I scroogled the term (www.scroogle.org) but it didn't come up even once.

neither one really suits my tastes, but google is much more invasive. You can access common ISP mail from anywhere in the world if you know how to configure the settings, but it's good to have a backup just in case of a change.

http://www.google-watch.org/

with a TV card and/or a simple cable, you can use your TV as a monitor for a computer too. It's quite a trip seeing BK on a 60 " projection TV. Likewise, you can watch TV on your monitor too with the same features. But I don't know of a computer in the world that's virus proof with all those ports open out there, thought they rarely bother me. Does WEBTV have some sort of email feature too?

You just have to know that the rules on BK differ than some other "accepted" rules. If it bothers you, I guess you shouldn't play gammon or else try a gentleman's agreement before the game. But if both players play by these rules, morally or morally right, the games, like the dice, should theoretically even out in the end.

it's actually not too bad, i played a 300 mover with qusar but it can get nuts. I heard there's one over on IYT that started in 2003 and is over 1000 moves, ongoing.

here's a good example, Walter is the top rated dark player and I had lost 20 games in a row to him before I lucked out. Our chats were equally cordial no matter when he won or lost. After awhile, you get to find the right opponents. Most are good, but there are bad apples out there.

in defense of Chessmaster, he is an honorable opponent and extremely talented many variants. I think he may have got himself in over his head with all the games he's playing. I played him first when I was a pawn and he annoyed me to hell. But after awhile, I realized it wasn't just him and, like grenv, I only take games with under 3 day/move limits. It could be a lot worse. There is a famous game on BK where one of the top ranked chess players is going to lose a game (down a bishop in an otherwise symmetrical endgame). Not only did he message his opponent saying that in revenge for having his draw offer spurned, he will move at the last minute every move in their 5 day/move game to prolong the game more than a year, but also is offering a draw every move as a further annoyance. It is shameful when so-called top players resort to those tactics. I guess you can see someone's true colors by how they behave when they lose. Chessmaster has never done anything like that, to my knowledge. So just take it as a lesson, as I did, to selectively play games with the proper time limit.

Yup, very few free rides in this life!

I was a pawn for about 6 months and a rook for 6. Trust me, it's worth it. In any case, you can create your own invites.

it's bc of all the available tourneys.

if they time out within 2 moves, it's not counted for BKR, but otherwise a win or a timeout have the same effect on the ratings.

i think the universe would implode, just as my brain is from contemplating that. It's the same feeling I got as at work today when I asked someone, in English (a big mistake in Korea), what the date was today. The reply: yesterday. *poof*

nice call rod...let's beta test it on HG!