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Since I'm not here to bite my tongue or pull any punches, and
with all due respect to the late Barclay Cooke, I'll state that
after some thought, I am convinced that of all the books I read
Cooke's did, by far, the most harm to my game when I was
developing as a strong player in the late 70's/early 80's.
How can I say such a thing and mean it, you may wonder?
Well, lets see:
1) Cooke's Paradoxes and Probabilities simply is full of so many
errors, overvaluing anchors, and, much worse, leaving far too
many shots and blots vs strongish home boards. Off course there
are timing misconceptions and errors of nearly every sort
(including the one match play cube problem).
2) Cooke's book analysing the match between him, Walter, Martin
and Dwek [Championship Backgammon] is chock-full of similar errors
supported by unjustifiably strong language.
3) I studied and studied these books and am 100% convinced that
they harmed my game for at least a decade since I clearly left
too many blots for not enough gain. Once I tightened up my play
and became more race oriented (thank you, Howard Ring) in the
early 90's I started winning more often. Cooke's books were
important in teaching players not to play ridiculously tight,
but they went way too far in the other direction. We had
Magriel's masterpiece along with others to teach us when to take
some chances and to teach us what was a justifiable chance.
To the student of BG I state, don't read Cooke's inaccuracies
unless accompanied by Bagai's masterpiece [Classic Backgammon
Revisited] which analyzes the many many errors and/or you are
prepared to run nearly every position thru GNU or Snowie for
rollouts. For players who want a good book to advance from
beginner to intermediate, I suggest 500 Essential BG problems by
Robertie and, off course, read Magriel (even though it has a few
errors).
..neilkaz..
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