Hacker News Reader

Comment by sramsay | Hacker News Reader

I absolutely love backgammon. I think people dismiss it as not being on the same level as chess or go because of the "chance element," but that element is probably better described as "management of risk" or "the calculation of risk," and it is remarkably deep.

And while it's true that a novice can beat a grandmaster in a single game, you can be sure that you would have been destroyed in six games by a player like Natanzon.

The other nice thing about it is that while two strong players can break each other's brains over it for hours, it's also a fantastic casual game that's just good fun with coffee and conversation (as it is throughout much of the Middle and Near East).

I'm always hoping it undergoes a resurgence one of these days. Stranger things have happened!

View on HN

My (now defunct) family's software company had a backgammon game with fairly good AI. We frequently got complaints from customers accusing the AI of cheating by getting favorable dice rolls. This wasn't possible, as the dice roll algorithm literally didn't know which player it was rolling for (let alone the context of the overall game). Instead, the complainers didn't understand that a chief strategy of backgammon is to set yourself up to be able to take advantage of as many different dice rolls as possible.

Got a kick out of seeing this post. If I am not leaping to the wrong conclusions from your user name, then I know who you are and I'm the original author of that backgammon game :). I worked with your Dad to publish it back in 1990 or 1991. And yes, we got complaints all the time about die rolls favoring the computer player. At least as of a few years ago you could still find some archived usenet threads where we tried to put those to rest by discussing the architectural features you alluded to, as well as publishing some multi-million roll statistical distributions. I recall that Joe Celko brought up the situation in one of his digressions on pseudo-randomness. Thanks for the walk down memory lane.

To save anybody else from having to do the research on this rabbit hole I believe the game in question is: https://www.mobygames.com/game/mvp-backgammon

Some fun background from 1996: https://bkgm.com/rgb/rgb.cgi?view+59

Yes, that's the game, and I am the author of the usenet post you linked. Thanks for digging it up! I haven't seen that in years.

Hey Mark!

Just saw this. You indeed have the right person. Here's an archived version of the MVP site (ugh that design was terrible, even for the early 2000s) that tried to deflect some of the angry phone calls: https://web.archive.org/web/20060325184439/http://www.mvpsof...

That's awesome :). I remember writing that defense. I was very young and certain of myself, apparently. Well the die rolls may not have been "as close to absolute randomness as is possible with a PC" but I still think they were pretty good. Thanks for digging that up. It was really an unexpected pleasure to run into you here and see your post on this.

"a chief strategy of backgammon is to set yourself up to be able to take advantage of as many different dice rolls as possible"

Exactly. I have many friends who refuse to play with me because I blundered into that when I was in high school and continued to refine it. I guess it just clicked for me but seems to be hard for many people to really understand.

That and managing risks too, as others point out.

And I just realized the misplaced modifier. My family is intact (though my father has passed away), but the company is defunct...

To me a major difference (besides dice) is that Backgammon has the concept of points which a player can double the value of during a game and if the opponent refuses then they forfeit. But once you’ve doubled then the opposing player gets the next opportunity to double. This is the part of the gave that really sets apart the good players I think? Over a series of games you have to calculate your advantage at certain points. I think this element makes it more a game of skill (like chess where there is no randomness and all game knowledge is shared at all times) than people give it credit for.

I can also see why gamblers like it so much. Nothing like a mid game “more action” button.

Right, the doubling cube is what sets apart the good players.

For every possible state, there is an expected value of your outcome, from the current state averaged over all possible continuations of the game or match, if you make perfect moves and your opponent also does. (This can be denominated in either cash/points value within one game, or in expected match-win value across a match of multiple games.)

The swing of backgammon is in the imperfect moves, and in how much expected value each one costs you. It's not that hard to study checker strategy well enough that you're rarely losing more than 1% or so of a game's value; even if you make imperfect moves, they're generally still pretty good. But the doubling cube can account for much greater swings; a mistake like doubling too early or incorrectly responding to your opponent's can easily cost 20% equity or more.

Same with Magic The Gathering, Poker, etc. over a few games you can win. Long term, nope. The best players at MTG have maybe a 60-65% win rate in a professional setting. And that is considered very good. But they can do it consistently. So really the game is about how much better than 50/50 you can get. The difference in adding 5-8% to your win rate is an astonishing amount of skill. It’s part of what makes magic fun. Complete novices have a shot. Maybe that rankles some people, but that’s the game :)

We just need a new awful Netflix series about a backgammon hustler.

Or a backgammon clone of https://lichess.org

That’d make a awesome anime.

The cracking sounds of the board, rigged dice, shady characters, a 40 something NEET with nothing left to lose, hell this thing writes itself!

Not exactly this, but close: Kakegurui.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakegurui_%E2%80%93_Compulsive...

I was thinking more along the lines of Prince of Tennis meets Kaiji but I’ll check that one out too!

>And while it's true that a novice can beat a grandmaster in a single game

This is what makes it so good for gambling. A wealthy novice is very unlikely to gamble against a grandmaster in a game of chess because its clear they have no chance to win. Backgammon (like poker) is another matter..

Reply on news.ycombinator.com