Backgammon Strategy--Backgames

Strategy--Backgames

But they're so much fun!

From:   Laury Chizlett
Address:   laury@trpdata.demon.co.uk
Date:   4 October 2000
Subject:   Backgames
Forum:   rec.games.backgammon
Google:   UfeTHRAg7z25Ew$4@trpdata.demon.co.uk

I've played hundreds of matches with Jellyfish and many times I've noticed a strong reluctance for it to get into a backgame. (I mean here a strict backgame, rather than a holding one: holding two or more points, keeping good timing, while building up a strong forward position, without making inner-board points, and waiting until your opponent is home before hitting.) The general advice, which I try to follow, is to only accept such a strategy as a last resort when there is no other defence. They are so much fun, however, that I suspect I am not alone in accepting a full backgame rather sooner than I should. But the acceptance point of Jellyfish seems vanishingly low. Magriel says of a position demonstrating the backgame that (I'm quoting from memory) " ... at this point it would be a mistake to adopt any other strategy". One of Robertie's books is almost totally made up of backgames. I remember one game on FIBS where I had a backgame going and we ended up collaborating, discussing each move, helping each other out, totally fascinated by the varying problems each throw gave us. It was the most enjoyable game I've had there! All this seems to make backgames an enjoyable and acceptable strategy to humans - and yet the bots hate them. Indeed their play against them plays into the backgame player's hands, hitting men regularly and allowing recycling for no reason that I can see. Is it the way they are trained? Given that we all trust Jellyfish and Snowie rollouts, does this mean the backgame is dead; a faulty strategy only kept alive in human v human games by unconcious collusion between human players? Laury Chizlett

Bob Meixner writes:

The problem is picking the appropriate situation to play for a backgame. Some players enjoy them so much that they steer to them at every chance. When they win it is pretty; but the number of gammons(and backgammons) they lose more than offset the occasional glorious win. As Robertie puts it... "Back games are the goal-line stands of backgammon. A well-executed goal-line stand may indeed save a touchdown. But a team that plays a game from the shadow of its goalpost is bound to be a losing team." As you point out in your post they are a last resort. BTW, bots(especially Jellyfish) are not especially strong at backgames. I suspect the complexity of the positions does not lend itself well to neural nets. In fact, I believe the "use caution" option on JF is there because some experts were able to run the cube to extremely high values against JF and win large point swings because JF mis-evaluated back game equities. Don't get me wrong. There are good backgame situations but they are relatively rare, Imo. Bob(5K_Guy).

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