Backgammon Book Suggestions

Book Suggestions

Which book by Chris Bray should I buy?

From:   Timothy Chow
Address:   tchow8@hotmail.com
Date:   9 July 2012
Subject:   Which book by Chris Bray should I buy?
Forum:   BGonline.org Forums

I'm thinking about buying one of Chris Bray's books. Here are some of the things I look for in a backgammon book. 1. Lots of interesting positions. It's not so critical to me how good the answers and analysis are, since I tend to supply that myself anyway, but of course good analysis is a plus. 2. Interesting random facts. For example, on the strength of Tom Keith's recent recommendation, I'm planning to buy Ray Kershaw's book for this reason. Given my above preferences, does one of Chris's books stand out as the one I should buy? (I might eventually buy more than one but only if I like the first one enough.)

Chris Bray writes:

Let me offer a mildly biased view! Two of my books are for beginners, "Backgammon for Dummies" and "Backgammon to Win". I wouldn't expect readers of this site to require either except as presents for friends or colleagues. Please note that a revised and updated version of "BG to Win" will be published in about four weeks time. My other four books are mainly anthologies of my newspaper column articles for "The Indepemdent" in the UK . The column recently celebrated its 18th birthday so has definitely come of age. It is written for a relatively broad audience so combines.instruction at different levels with reviews, tournament analysis, occasional pieces of history and pure whimsy. An imaginary cast of characters (just possibly based on some real life characters) do battle in the chouette. Wanting to give the chouette a touch of class the Dowgager Duchess joined the cast a few years ago and has been very popular. The three 'wind' books (in chronological order): What Colour is the Wind?"; "Second Wind" and "Wind Assisted" each cover a number of years of the column. I would start with "WA" and work backwards. "WA" has the advantage that for the first time I published full rollout data for the more serious players to study. The next book in the series, "The Wind of Change", will be published in early 2013. All of my books except 'Dummies' can be obtained from http://www.lulu.com. Hope this helps. Regards, Chris

Timothy Chow writes:

At Chris's own recommendation, I recently purchased "Wind Assisted." So far I am happy with my purchase. Each page has an interesting position at the top followed by some discussion of it. Rollout data may be found at the back of the book. The nature of the book means that some of the positions are geared towards beginners and intermediates and are not so interesting to a more advanced player, but there are plenty of difficult decisions to chew on, which is what I was looking for. There is only one major flaw from my perspective: Sometimes it's not possible to determine what the decision is just from looking at the diagram. Crucially, the match score is not presented with the diagram; you have to read the text to determine it, and the process of doing so may expose you to spoilers. Also, for cube decisions, it's not always clear who's on roll. Usually the player on the near side is on roll, but I believe I've already encountered some positions where this is not the case. I think I even encountered one position where the diagram showed Black owning the cube, yet the interesting decision was not "Black on roll; cube action?" Instead, the diagram showed White on roll just after Black had taken White's cube, and the interesting cube decision was the one that had just occurred. I strongly recommend to Chris that if he publishes another book in this series, he should make it clear what the decision of interest is from the diagram alone, without forcing the reader to read the text to determine the match score or who is on roll. Even if Black is always the player with the cube decision, it can't hurt to indicate this in every diagram. > Where is the best place to purchase "Wind Assisted"? The best price also. I don't know, but I bought my copy from Carol Joy Cole, http://www.flintbg.com/boutique.html. If you are happy with an electronic version then you can get it more cheaply at http://www.lulu.com.

Chris ray writes:

First the easy bit. All of my books are available from http://www.lulu.com, most of them in digital format. CJC also stocks all my books and for those resident in the US I would suggest you contact her. As to Timothy's comments I always appreciate feedback from readers and this is an interesting spin. However, as he comments, the book is targeted at a wider range of readers than a book such as "What's your GAME PLAN?" and it is an anthology of articles and not a workbook. Structuring it as a workbook would not endear me to the vast majority of my readers and so I do not intend to change the style. That is the reason the rollouts do not appear on the same page as the problem as many hundreds of readers just don't study rollouts - this may come as a surprise to some readers of this website! I do intend to write a very technical book on the middle game once I retire from my day job in a couple of years time and that will have a very different style. FYI - In the problems it is always Black who has the basic decision to make although White occasionally has to do some work as well.

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