danoschek: I think I'd rather not play that rule. It eliminates choice and makes the game almost robot style when bearing off. At least it seems that why just from hearing you guys describe it. Kind of like being forced to trump in Pinochle. It doesn't seem like a good rule, but it is what makes Pinochle the game that it is. Perhaps, I'll try this other bearing off rule and see it makes the game better for me or just different. It will certainly affect the strategy toward just about having all of your checkers home. I could see delaying getting the last one or two just to advance some of the others in before you get them all in. Sometimes I want to move an interior checker and others I'd bring the higher point in.

Vikings : I've never heard of playing Acey-Duecey that way. Least way the few times I've played we didn't do that. Next time I talk to my brother I'll bring it up and see what he says. Amazingly I've never played him Acey-Duecey or Backgammon and likes both games. I suppose I'd better get me a Backgammon set, eh?

Vikings: No mention of that rule at the following rules site: http://www.bkgm.com/variants/AceyDeucey-American.html

However, I'm willing to bet that there are many, many variations of acey-deucey that can claim legitimacy. There is no international standard for acey-deucey as there is for backgammon, I don't think.

I derogate that so called standard ...
here you got to play according to our standard rules or
to stay out of the standard tournaments - fully free choice. ~*~

danoschek: Except for a few remaining glitches, and with the notable exception of the doubling cube, the rules played here are the standard international tournament rules.

some call even 'miles' standard - but even iterative insisting won't make it true. ~*~

danoschek: Well, there is a certain geographical factor -- miles are standard in the US, but just about nowhere else. If you wanted to speak of an international standard for measuring distances, you would refer to the metric system. Similarly, the rules which are used in international tournaments are "standard" for that very reason. It's not that they are better than other rules; some rules had to be picked, and these are the ones. "Standard" does not mean "best", it means "most commonly used or accepted" - and that is not a subjective matter but a matter of objective fact. This is why I qualified my statement be referring to tournaments only -- in casual or money play, the rules are what you make them, and there is no standard.

Another test for whether a rule is "standard" is whether you are expected to follow it without prior agreement. Most people who play for money in the US use the Jacoby Rule. In some clubs, Jacoby rule is "standard" so that if you sit down to play and don't agree otherwise, the rule is in force. This often takes me by surprise, since in my home club Jacoby was not followed unless the players agreed upon it in advance.

There is no standard without context -- "miles" is a standard unit of measurement, but only in the US. Similarly, in international tournaments, we play backgammon by the accepted international rules, including those that allow "fiddling"!

I shall comply with the rules of the tournament I choose to sign up for - very easy.
and although it's almost alienmath for me to make milespergallon from liters per
hundred kilometers I shall do it whenever an american friend needs a favour. ~*~

danoschek: "Miles are standard, but just about nowhere else"
alanback: "miles" is a standard unit of measurement, but only in the US."

lolol. Excuse me!! And just who gave the Yanks the miles in the first place, may I ask??!! Britain is "just about nowhere else", lolol. Damn cheek!!

Aah, that felt good. So how was that for a fine display of nationalistic indignance, eh? ;-)

----------------------
Now, to the backgammon.

Walter mentioned two situations where a player cannot move, one being when a man is dancing on the bar because of a closed table. He says that the other "has probably never occured in Backgammon" so I'm inclined to wonder what he envisages. This gives us the third possibility of a player having one or more men stuck behind a 6-prime while all the rest are either on the ace point or have already been borne off. The first of these is uncommon but not rare while the latter is rare. (And the times when the trailing player actually wins from that position are *hugely* rare but *most* satisfying, lol. One of the backgammon book authors - sorry, can't remember who - witnessed this once and uses it to illustrate the never-give-up! principle.

I've only just joined here so I don't know whether an autopass rule would help or hinder the game flow. Certainly at Vog (www.VogClub.com), where I play regularly, the dice will always be rolled and a message shown for a second or two stating that I cannot move. Although this adds a delay to the game, it keeps intact the my-turn-your-turn aspect and I prefer that. Without this delay the board can change unrecognisably in a flash and I then have to spend much time working through the sequence of moves to get my mental board caught up with the real one. It's actually quicker to suffer the non-turn delay and keep my brain on track.

One thing that would be lost if an autopass rule were implemented and that's the ability of the stuck player sending an "Aaaggh!!" message or some such. ;-) Another thing lost (from autopass in a no-point-rolling situation) is the ability to see how many 6-6 rolls you've lost out on while stuck, lol, though this needn't be the case if those rolls are made on your behalf but without requiring the moving player to pause in their own playing.

My vote at this time would be for autopass to be an option that *both* players must select. And, if it can be explained easily enough (your explanation made perfect sense to me, Walter), to have two autopass options - for there *is* a valid distinction. I might accept a no-point-rolling autopass but would never want a your-roll-goes-nowhere autopass; it would be experienced as a disconcerting "jump" in the game.

----------------------
No doubling cube? Ah, well I can live without it. My apprenticeship consisted of learning how to beat an aggressive bot in 3-point matches. I would never have learnt proper chequer play if the cube was a factor unless I accepted everything - and then I'd have got hammered. Once I got to a decent rating I decided to take up the cube. Then Wham! Bam! my rating took a hell of a knock, lol. I'm still getting the hang of the cube. Maths of cubing?? Ha ha. I'll just use intuition for now thanks; I'll do the maths in a year or so ... maybe.

I thoroughly recommend learning the game without the cube until you reach a stable level and then introducing it. You'll reach game states that you'd otherwise rarely reach - because either you or the opponent drops before you get the chance to explore. Or you have to suffer, as I did when I first came up against players who knew a decent backgame, from having to accept the cube and an almost certain loss - just to find out how the game situation will pan out.

But gammons and backgammons don't count? No chance to smell the SIZZLE?? This ain't real backgammon yet, then. :-((

----------------------
alanback: You guys seem quite worried about someone missing their chance to double while sitting on the bar with the opponent's home base closed. It's hard for me to imagine that this would happen as this is a very disadvantagous type of position to find one's self in

Grenv gave the example of when you have borne off most of your men and one of the last few gets hit and stuck on the bar. Then, doubling from the bar will win the game unless the trailing player wants to pay the price of risking you escaping too soon and racing home to a win.

Another situation is in prime-vs-prime games where you have the better timing - *because* you have a man stuck on the bar - and you know your opponent's table is going to have to collapse. You may collect another blot or two if the table collapses untidily and you certainly get free and home to bear off before having to release your opponent. It's often a no-brainer drop if you're the player with the collapsing table.

----------------------
Non-backgammon point. What's with the poxy little message box that's only three lines deep and 60 characters wide. That's using about 2.5% of the available screen space - and that's on the smaller monitor! Jeez. It's a most annoying and yet common web design blunder, well that and marquees, and Flash graphics, and putting the [Move] button at the bottom of the page below a load of stuff that doesn't change so I have to scroll down to make each move, and .... oops, I'm about to go off on one .... better stop now. ;-))

after you started your msg by misquoting
I didn't see it worthwhile reading entirely.
on the 2nd day already on blocked and hide, great ~*~

.

______________________________
For beginners
Paul Money has written four articles.
Backbacker Backgammon has an tutorial. (Click the purple button at the top)
______________________________
Interesting BrainKing games
Examples of strategy and tactics have been added to this message.
______________________________
The Opening Moves.
Rollouts of the opening moves.
______________________________
Sites
Backgammon Galore - Hugely informative.
Peter Max Friis Jensen's Backgammon pages. A previous Danish champion, some pages are very technical.
Greg Cattenach's Backgammon pages including a question-and-answer forum.
Ric Gerace's Backgammon pages. Plenty of links.
Douglas Zare's Backgammon pages including an article on Luck
Mind Sports. And old site but has some interesting articles.
gammoned.com. Sponsored by Gammon Empire.
______________________________
Matches
gammoned.com - Expert Matches
Backgammon Galore - Kit Woolsey vs. Jeremy Bagai
GammOnLine - World Cup Match #1 and other stuff
______________________________
Quizzes
Backgammon Blunder of the Week
Ed's Backgammon Problems
Webby's Backgammon Quiz
Danish BG Fed Forum Quiz
Backgammon Brainbusters
Backgammon Problems
______________________________
Programs
Play online, right now, against Motif, a decent robot. (Java applet)
GnuBg - FREE, world class, comprehensive feature list
BGBlitz - World class, limited version free

I quoted him from the alanback message of 22.May 2005, 01:21:17. Was I wrong to lift a quote from Alan's quote? Yes? Perhaps I've misunderstood how this message board works? That's enough for Darnosock to dismiss me?

He can't be bothered to skip the humour - which is a poke tongue at Alan anyway (who strikes me as having a better sense of humour and doesn't have his head stuck up his ..) - and move on to the backgammon bits? But then I gather he's not that interested in backgammon anyway.

[shrug]

His loss. No more of my words will be wasted on him.

The message below was supposed to go to Darnosock, not to the board. Lol. Still geting the hang of this here site. ;-)

[Edit: As you can see I've since appropriated that message as a repository for links relevant to Backgammon. A much better use ]

http://www.zerlett.de/uc.htm
The Unknown Cases . . "Stop The Madness" from the album 'Cuba' ... ~*~ .

It's just occurred to me that gammons and the doubling cube can be made part of the game here without Fencer having to lift a finger. It would just require a bit of cooperation between the players.

All it takes is a gentleman's/lady's agreement for the loser of a gammon or doubled cube to resign as many subsequent games within a match as required. A dropped 1-cube would mean resignation of the current game and a 2-cube the following game as well, etc. A gammon loss would similarly mean resigning the next game.

Messages would be sent to signal intent to double and then acceptance or rejection. I don't yet know whether a note can be sent as part of the game record without a move being made. If not then the message would have to be sent via the envelope system. The receiving player would then send it back as a note on the next move so that it becomes part of the game record - makes it official in the case of dispute. But that's only a procedure that need be done if you wanted to be strict about it.

Dishonourable players could be posted here and as much hot air expanded over the issue as anyone likes and/or can stand.

One interesting angle from this method that sites with built-in doubling cannot offer - the ability to continue the game after dropping the cube and the chance to say "Phew!" or "Doh!" when the result becomes known. ;-)

Hope this is useful to those who like the cube. I'd certainly like to use this system for gammon wins.

:-))

that newbees should have an approbation time and completed some games
before they get the privilege of unveiling what they are here for, on the boards .
check also my prophecy from 2ds ago on mem-only, advising how to set up filters . .. ~*~

Howdy. Best to read the message "Gammons and Doubling Cube - Now possible" first.

The gammon idea's fine but I've just tried to do the doubling cube thing and discovered the fatal flaw. The doubler gets to see their dice first. Lol, what an advantage; you could never accept a double!!

It could only work if each player sent their move by message, in advance, so the opponent could consider doubling kning the position but without knowing their dice. Then they'd have to send a message back ("Double" or "No dDouble") which the mover *must* wait for but only open after they've sent the move off. (This is so that the appearance of a message doesn't come to imply doubling). And this message thing has to be done by each player between each move.

Confused?? Try it, it's ...


... worse, lolol. *Nobody's* going to do all that! ;-)

.. back to the drawing board unless, maybe, you've got some better ideas ... ?

playBunny: My apologies. I was under the apparently mistaken impression that Britain had gone metric :)

alanback: that's neglectable - go figure some ppl even think
200 years of anti-royal sulking would make a nation already ... ... ~*~

Really shows how unaware of my surroundings I can be, since I spent 4 weeks in London last fall without noticing that miles were still "standard" in the mother country. Of course, I did nothing but walk around the City and go to the office. I did learn to look to the right before crossing the street, at least.

and you learned also that we have a lift-off each elevator malfunction I bet ... ~*~

Lol. No apologies necessary, that was fake offense-taking there. :-))

And you're right to say "apparently" mistaken because we *have* gone metric. Sort of. But we've gone to great lengths to do so in a British on-our-own-terms kind of weigh. Which is to say that we keep the miles but use metres and centimetres - except for people's heights which are in feet and inches if you prefer. We now have litres instead of gallons but you can still buy pints of milk and beer. And you can buy a pound of apples and a kilogram of sugar. Plenty of packaged foods come as 300g, 800g, etc. but some weigh exactly a pound and are labelled as 454g.

My 2000+ variants tourney is ready to go, except there is one more place in the 8-player field for Crowded Backgammon -- who will get there first??

alanback: Go! :)

Hi, everybody!
During a backgammon match, a score is indicated for each player. Can anyone explain how these scores are calculated?
Thanks in advance!

martinbr: During a backgammon match, a score is indicated for each player.

If you are referring to the Points followed by the players name, it's the number of pips required to bear off all the remaining stones.

martinbr: If you are referring to a score in backgammon games with a doubling cube, you must wait until it's implemented here.

martinbr: If you are referring to the line score of finished games: This is a running total of games of this type aginst this person and who has won lost.

Molatov, 1st place hyper gammon, multi nik Hamid..... check out this game, where Hamid had the win with double 5s but resigned the game instead!

http://brainking.com/game/ArchivedGame?g=844071

alanback: We've had a metrication program for about 40 years now. At one time wood was sold in metric lengths but imperial widths and depths or was it the other way round, can't remember. Great fun. Selling fruit and vegetables by the pound is now an offence. As for road signs and speeds, nobody has even thought about it as far as I know.

Mike UK: Alberta, Canada used to use the Imperial measuring system, but since they went metric they now use the U.S. gallon! Such confusion when I go there. Took me awhile to discover that the fluid ounces of the Imperial system and U.S. standard are not equal. Then there's miles per liter instead of miles per gallon.

I believe the metric system has been the standard of the United States since the 1880's, yes 1880's. Amazing how fast it's been adopted by us regular people. The metric system is no better than what we have now and has a lot of drawbacks, why change?

Walter Montego: The metric system is no better than what we have now
15 secends, no calculator: how many 16th of an inch are there in a mile?

Luke Skywalker: lots LOL

Luke Skywalker: Yes, this argument about the superiority of the metric system goes wearing upon me. Though I am one of the few people that can multiply 16 X 12 X 5280 in my head or use a calculator, I see no reason to. Looks like a little more than 960,000, make it 1,013,760. And before you whip out how many millimeters in a kilometer to show how easy the metric system is, just how often would one need to make such a calculation in real use? Let's take something a little more practical. Exactly how much is a third of a yard? A foot? A meter? See, we usually only use three decimal points, but in the standard system a lot of fraction are eliminated because it has so many prime divisors. Even the mile can be divided evenly by 11! Which will give you 480 feet or 160 yards. Try that in your metric system.

A third of a meter is 33.33 centimeters, 10-yo kid is able to compute that. Kilometer divided by 11 = 90.9 meters...very easy also...

Walter Montego: From a practical standpoint a third of a meter is 30cm. Or 33. depends on the application how many digits you need.
I agree that the metric system is not the best for these kinds of calculation, but then no system is. A better system would be based on 12 (but you would need to change the number system as well to make it consitent. Powers of 12 have lots of zeros), exactly for the reason you state. Guess why the babylonians used 60

Pedro Martínez: You meant to say in each case -- "approximately" ;-)

I think it cannot be infirmed that the decimal system fits the nowaday's people the best...

Luke Skywalker: A better system would be based on 12

You mean, a system with 12 inches in a foot, and 12 * 440 foot in a mile? Or with 12 pence in a shilling? Or 12 troy ounces in a troy pound? Or 12 (US) gallon in a winekeg? Or 12 points in a pica?

I prefer the metric system not because 10 is preferable over 12 (probably not), but because it's consistent. It's based on 10, and only 10. And it has just one system of weights, and just one system of volumes.

Now, back to discussing backgammon.

... and how many "standard" backgammon boards in a mile?

Let's get back on topic, please :)

Pedro Martínez: A third of a meter is not 33.33 centimeters. It is 33 and 1/3 centimeters. An eleventh of a kilometer is 90 and 10/11 meters.
Engineer you are I take it? :)

Luke Skywalker: I'll argee that the standard system is nothing if it's not illogical, arbitary, and confusing, but it works. The United States did adopt decimal money in the late 1700's. All on powers of tens: mils, cents, dimes, dollars, and eagles, though just dollars and cents are commonly used. I have heard the English had some wild way of doing their money that probably had its adherents like I am for the standard system and yet it looks like I'm nuts to someone that only uses the metric system. Money is different though. One can go from cents to millions in the same account and all the digits are used. Having different units for each part of the Sterling Pound must've made for a lot of confusion. When one is using inches or millimeters, you rarely need to be taking miles or kilometers into account. And nowadays we have calculators.
I use both systems, since they're both in use here. Beer's in ounces, liquor is sold in milliliters. Hospitals have cc's and grams for most things.

It's easy to convert one system to the other. Calling it a mile or 1.6 kilometers doesn't change how far away something is. The difficult part of converting is the hard conversions. Instead of 12 ounces to 355 millliters we'll make it 300 or 400 milliliters. This type of change requires a lot of money and of course customer acceptance of the different size. I remember when Canada had 300 milliliter size Coca Cola cans. They went metric and now it's 355 milliliters!

<b/>Let's make a Backgammon game based on powers of ten. We can call it Metric Backgammon. Each table will have ten points in it. So the board will have 40 points total. Of course we'll have to use a pair decahedron shaped dice numbered 1 through 10. Wouldn't matter on an internet game site. Should we leave it at 15 checkers per side?