I was apparently backgammoned in my second game this round. I actually didn't know the rules for it, apparently, and thought I just had to have no pieces on the bar, so I was ignoring my pieces in my "home" field. We played it as a gammon anyway and I still managed to lose two consecutive rounds thereafter.
The game really is just as any other. Only randomly determinate between players of relative skill. No offense to past opponents but I feel they were blatantly misplaying certain rolls. This effects not only your strategy and options going forward but affords a skilled player the chance to capitalize on the miscues of others. Same as you and Rym would do to any of us in T&E given how much you've played it.
No offense to past opponents but I feel they were blatantly misplaying certain rolls. This effects not only your strategy and options going forward but affords a skilled player the chance to capitalize on the miscues of others.
Indeed. The hardest part for me is that I have a constant struggle to tell them what they're doing wrong so they can get better but my desire to win tamps it back down.
I looks as though stradgy/skill is trumping the random element of the games.
You should still be able to score at least 1 point. In that many games you should at least get one stroke of luck with a bunch of doubles.
First of all, although it is true that one would typically expect both players to score points, it's not as unprecedented as you might think. One significant contributor is that "that many games" is often actually a relatively small number, because once you consider doubling and gammons, matches can in fact end in a relatively small number of games.
I'd guess that even among players of equal skill, the chance of a blowout in a first-to-5 match is upwards of 10%. As such, as a simple matter of chance you'd expect a couple of them to happen every round.
However, differences in skill are also likely to have been a major contributor. This would primarily be due to bad players rather than good ones - although it is harder to bridge the gap between intermediate and advanced than it is between beginner and intermediate, the payoff for the latter is, in fact, greater.
Basically, this is because a couple of simple heuristics are enough to avoid many of the biggest blunders you can make in this game. That's not to say that there isn't much room to be good at this game - there is plenty - but the payoff is much lower towards the top end.
I got blown out in the first round, but had connection issues that were 100% my fault, causing me to drop out of two games were I was hands down going to win. Since it was my fault, I treated the first game as a forfeit, and b/c my opponent had mercy, we replayed the second game. We also wound up playing w/o the doubling cube. This was my first time playing backgammon ever, and underestimated how important it was to the game. If I had been doubling when I saw myself start to get an edge, I surely would have gotten a point or two.
Can you give the details as to how it worked out to 16 points?
I was thinking about it, they can't've been 4-0 due to Crawford. Can't have been a backgammon, because 16 or 14 isn't dividable by 3.
They doubled thrice during that game, and then won with a gammon.
Good point; I missed some of that line of reasoning. The only other possibility would be doubling four times (which is not necessarily pointless, depending on Scott's ranking system).
Although four would be even weirder, three doublings in one game is very strange; it sounds quite likely to me that one or both players doubled with too slight an advantage.
In any case, this may not be a very high scoring game compared to what we'll see later in the tournament, assuming Scott still wants to use score-sum as a tiebreaker.
Why are there so many blowouts? You think in a game where dice and luck is such a huge factor there would not be all these shutouts.
I think the dice are the reason there are so many blowouts.
In my case we played 4 games and Creamsteak got more doubles then me every game. But if we were to play 20 or 30 games then the luck factor would drop and chance would give more equal doubles to each person and skill might matter more. On a per-game basis tough, skill does more matter against a disparity in doubles.
However I am glad we are only playing to 5 points each match. I have seen the person behind most of the game win because of a series of doubles too many times to think of this game as a competition of skill anymore. To me this is a luck based game and it just depends on if you get your doubles.
Why are there so many blowouts? You think in a game where dice and luck is such a huge factor there would not be all these shutouts.
I think the dice are the reason there are so many blowouts.
The dice play a role in the blowouts, but without that randomness blowouts would be even more common. An increase in randomness leads to fewer blowouts, not more.
The dice play a role in the blowouts, but without that randomness blowouts would be even more common. An increase in randomness leads to fewer blowouts, not more.
What I am saying is that on a small scale randomness does not look random (flip a coin 5 times you could easily get 5 heads). Someone may have a series of good rolls across a few games, and that would lead to a blowout. I think what we are seeing now games where the players are close in skill, but a couple higher rolls from one over the other over a few games negating skill. However if were were playing more games (like 10 or 15) the dice might start to even out more. I am not recommending this because this tournament round is long already, I am just pointing out what I have seen in my experiences with this game so far.
I agree. There are a *very* limited set of formulaic strategies, after which winning is a matter of luck. While poker strategy is similarly formulaic, it at least involves imperfect information and meta-gaming. For me, backgammon is as stimulating as sudoku.
This matches my feel. There's probably a statistically better move than whatever arbitrary one I take at any given point, but I can't be bothered to care.
Comments
I'd guess that even among players of equal skill, the chance of a blowout in a first-to-5 match is upwards of 10%. As such, as a simple matter of chance you'd expect a couple of them to happen every round.
However, differences in skill are also likely to have been a major contributor. This would primarily be due to bad players rather than good ones - although it is harder to bridge the gap between intermediate and advanced than it is between beginner and intermediate, the payoff for the latter is, in fact, greater.
Basically, this is because a couple of simple heuristics are enough to avoid many of the biggest blunders you can make in this game. That's not to say that there isn't much room to be good at this game - there is plenty - but the payoff is much lower towards the top end.
waited for half an hour, no show :-(
Anyway I was going big and it backfired (read three double sixes); Snickety-Snake beat me 16-0.
Can you give the details as to how it worked out to 16 points?
They doubled thrice during that game, and then won with a gammon.
Although four would be even weirder, three doublings in one game is very strange; it sounds quite likely to me that one or both players doubled with too slight an advantage.
In any case, this may not be a very high scoring game compared to what we'll see later in the tournament, assuming Scott still wants to use score-sum as a tiebreaker.
In my case we played 4 games and Creamsteak got more doubles then me every game. But if we were to play 20 or 30 games then the luck factor would drop and chance would give more equal doubles to each person and skill might matter more. On a per-game basis tough, skill does more matter against a disparity in doubles.
However I am glad we are only playing to 5 points each match. I have seen the person behind most of the game win because of a series of doubles too many times to think of this game as a competition of skill anymore. To me this is a luck based game and it just depends on if you get your doubles.
No passion.