my backgammon

[a.mlw.walker]

Hi, I have been playing backgammon now for about 6 months, and fell i have hit a brick wall. I play against players who are definately my standard but do not nearly read as much about the game as me, and yet i still struggle to beat them more than they beat me.

I am trying to find out what my next step is, but its difficult.

I have no problems around the board, understand pip counting, basic doubling cube, good probabilites, in other words probably an intermediate player.

I find though i lose when i have a tough move to make and dont know which one is the correct one, it then all goes wrong. I understand time and experience will help this but, if i keep not knowing how to work this out, it will never get better.

I often play against GNU, and use the tutor mode, but it is too easy to do the move it tells you and not understand why, so i use the game analysis. Does anyone know how to get it to analyse your moves immediately rather than at the end of a game? It would be more productive.

So anyone any ideas on how i can take the next step?

I am young, keen sometimes frustrated, and have lots to learn

Ta

[puzzle_t0rico]

Hi there

Dude, I have the same problem as you. I read, I read, I play, I try to understand and I keep losing. well, at least, I do not blame the dice

Though, I sometimes win. Then I check what has been different: the player, the time, the weather, the focus, the drink, the tiredness... and it always comes the same thing: the focus in the game. Dude, as Phil says in his advises, you can not play BG while watching TV or babysitting or...
And you can not focus if you are tired and if you think you have already lost the game.
You have to focus in the game and over all DO NOT THINK THE GAME IS OVER until the last checker is out.
I have noticed that I lose some games because I let it go either by boredom or by bad attitude. I sit at the table or at my PC with the bad attitude, as if the game was already lost.
I am proud to say that I won a 7pt match after being led by 6-0. Obviously the dice are important but the attitude was more important. I told myself that he still had to get a point to win and I tried to play the best I could. Won Crawford, gammon with a game doubled and won the last one after sending a 2 cube.
What I also feel is that a single move can make me lose the match. I try to note those ones and get them analysed to see what I should have done.
Also note when there is a cube decision. Sometimes we lose a match because we get gammonned with a 2 cube that we should have dropped or we do not or forget to double when we should. The cube is a powerful arm that can save us a lot from later problems in tricky positions. And it is really, really really hard to master. I think that even master players have problems with it.
Do not try to play perfectly at the beginning. That provokes too much stress and panic. I analyse my matches and I only check the blue and red ones. I know that the green ones are also important but those are too high level for me now. For a Master player the green ones are like red ones for us but we must remove first the red ones, then the blue and finally the green. One step at a time.

At the same time, beware of books. There are very good ones and others that can lead you into big errors. I have bought from Carol Joy ("http://www.flintbg.com/boutique.html") what I find an excellent book: "Classic Backgammon Revisited" by Jeremy Bagai
and I really feel I am improving. The concepts are crystal clear, well indexed and it is really easy to understand the analyse. The positions are those from classic books from the biggest players where the authors have done big analyse errors. Read those books where the fundamentals are explained (especially Magriel) and then clean up with Bagai.

Anyhow, it is only 6 months since you have started playing. It is early to say you have blocked. Play cool, relaxed and the concepts will come when needed.

Well, that is my two cents and I am not a very good player (just an intermediate one) but maybe that was useful for you.

For GnuBG, you have to click on the move you have just made and go to menu "Analyse -> Analyse Move"
The problem is that GnuBG analyses the move, tells you which he thinks is the best (sometimes is better to make a rollout) but it does not tell you why.
_________________
If the brain were simple enough to be understood, we would be too stupid to understand it.

[a.mlw.walker]

That was a really good reply, thank you.

I also find that there is one move in every game i lose that was the reason for the loss, but it would take hundreds of the same or very similar situations to learn what to do in that situation incase it comes up again, but what is the most annoying thing is when i play people who are no better than me, based on a huge tally, we have all stayed withiin 10 games of each other, and i am losing more and more because i am not sure what move to play then after that, everything goes down hill...

I am an mechanical engineer, and I am thinking about designing a realboard that logs the game as you play, then uses gnubg to analyse it for you...would be cool...

I am going to buy that book you gave me the link to thank you

Alex