Backgammon Learning

Learning

Lowering your error rate

From:   Stick Rice
Address:   checkmugged@yahoo.com
Date:   23 April 2009
Subject:   Response to Frank_N_Stein - improving
Forum:   BGonline.org Forums

One of the first things I believe any player trying to improve from anything higher than a 4 ER should do is play the bots on their highest ply over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. You will learn without learning. Plays will become secondary to you even if you don't know why you're making them. Now, that may not be ideal, you'll want to understand the 'why' behind moves ideally, but that comprehension will come with time. If the worst that happens is you end up playing like a bot, well, it's not bad being compared to the best players in the world. Once you've hardened the bot game into your head you can start playing the bot on a lower ply, 0 ply on GNU v. the standard WC 2 ply, or 1 ply with SW v. its standard 3 ply. This will give you a more human element overblitzing, doubling early, taking passes, etc... I do not think you should play the bot on its lower plies first and form bad habits that you may later have to break. If there's one thing I hate it's relearning something because I was taught wrong to begin with. Something else I also did along the way was to play Snowie v. GNU thousands of games and I often watched. They were playing on their highest settings so I'd have time to think of my reflex move and later go back to the position if we disagreed somewhat violently. You may also be surprised that I might suggest studying the opening phase of the game. Many of these themes repeat down the road into the middle or even end game. I also sleep all warm at night knowing when I'm awake that I'm outplaying everyone in the world on the first 3 rolls, including Snowie and GNU. Adding small chunks of reference positions to your repetoire is the best route. Constantly seeing and experiencing new positions and adding them as reference positions to your long term memory never knowing when they come in handy is a good thing. You can't learn it all at once. You should pick apart some aspect of the game until you're content with it whether it be the opening part of the game, holding games, blitzes, containment, bearoff, whatever keeps your interest the most. Playing positions out you don't understand can be an enormous help. You'll come to understand why you should have passed when you see GNU beat you into the ground game after game noting how the position developed and what you failed to initially understand. You can do this with anything, if you're going through a book and don't see the merit of Play A over Play B, plug it in to GNU or SW and play it out a while, see what comes of it. Play it out, analyze your play, see where the bots' thoughts and your own diverge, and ask yourself why it thinks its way of thinking is correct. Stick

Bob Koca writes:

Here is a study technique. Play a match against the bot to go over later. Don't have the hint feature on and don't check anything during the play. You are not allowed to do that in a tournament and it may give you clues for subsequent plays. For each move write down what confidence you have in your assessment (low, medium , or high) and if you think the choice was clear or close. If you think the decision is very close and make a .01 error but knew it was close do not worry about that. The big ones to look at are errors you made even when you had high confidence. If there was a play you thought was crystal clear but actually was very close include it as an error for purposes of the exercise.

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