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> I will strongly warn against reading it in an uncritical state of mind!
> The book includes some good stuff, but it also contains advice like
> "priming count", an extremely fascinating method for estimating equities
> in priming games, producing slightly worse than random results.
>
> Teppo
Absolutely right.
The good aspect of the books are i) it is well structured and organized,
things are explained clearly (even a bit repeatedly, but when it is good it
does not matter !!) ii) it really presents well the notion of take point,
value of cube ownership. Also, it explains very well how to determine when
to double, clarify very well what is the doubling point and the doubling
plane. When to play for the gammon when not.
But then, there is these formulae for backgammon position. Right, they are
NOT TO BE READ. Period. One should stick with the cube handling concepts in
this book.
Besides this, I do think that there is room for another book, missing up to
now :-). Bells does not address at all cube actions in match play. There is
a small text from Kit Woolsey on that (and Kit Woolsey is the top notch
backgammon writter to my opinion, this text is a must read too), but it is
not complete. Notions like early late (or "do you need lots of market
loosers or not to double at this score", cube ownership value at this
score, playing for the gammon at this score, etc, anyway lots fo things
could be analyzed and presented in a book...
Thansk for clarifying this teppo !! In fact, in a very old beta version of
Snowie, we had a menu item which would have given these numbers, a little
bit like the "Race formulae" one. But then, we realized (thanks to several
beta testers) that it was, well, let say, too young theories to be there.
André - Private Post
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