idea for tournament..
hi..
what if there was a tournament where dice rolls are the same for all players?
1) lets say, tournament director rolls black and white dice for opening roll and depending on the outcome, players with white or black checkers play first..
2) after all players played their move, t. director rolls second roll and the game continues..
-how much would this kind of structure reduce luck factor?
-would it be suitable for some new info regarding preciseness of backgammon software?
for example: could we take win probabilities of all positions of all black checkers and also for white, then
make average win probabilities for black and white and then compare it with empirical data?
lets say at the end in the field of 200 participants, we have a result of 20 wins and 80 loses for black and 80
wins and 20 loses for white..
..so 80% empirical win for white and at the same time we have software average wining probability for white
at lets say 45%... wouldn't that be interesting? remember, rolls are equal for all players..
disclaimer: i am recreational player and do not own a software.. anyway, love the game..
7 Replies
in that imaginary tournament scenario i would also like to see comparison between avg. pr of losing black group vs. avg. pr of wining black group and same for white..
i think I am on to something haha..
because what if we would get next info from software:
1) black field: avg. pr of 80% black field which lost is better than avg. pr of 20% black field which won
2) white field: avg. pr of 20% white field which lost is better than avg. pr of 80% white field which won
in that case scenario i would give software 100% blunder since 100% of the field with worse pr is winning! ha!
and last point following logic from last post:
what if 100 of these "field-shared dice rolls" tournaments are played and the software of our choosing shows up with 0.7 blunder?!
would that mean that it is 70% "inaccurate" in a sense that, on average, 70% of the time, winning portion of white or black field has worse pr then losing portion of the respective field?
while playing same rolls!
edit: well who needs a pr then?! haha
am i on to something or is just the plant that i inhaled? haha, fun times!
It implies that a roll of dice is inherently good or bad. Assume a game where two moves are equally good. one player choose A another chooses B. Now the quality of the next identical rolls maybe vastly different.
so, no that wont reduce luck.
It implies that a roll of dice is inherently good or bad. Assume a game where two moves are equally good. one player choose A another chooses B. Now the quality of the next identical rolls maybe vastly different.
so, no that wont reduce luck.
This is a good point. One could easily imagine positions where most players would make a correct or nearly correct play and wind up losing while someone who makes a blunder would then capitalize on a later “lucky” roll that only was lucky because of their blunder. Just a simple example - suppose white has a 5 point board with blots on his opponents 2 and 3 points. Black has two checkers on his 8 point, one on his seven point, five on his 6, two on his 5 and the rest on his midpoint. Black rolls 63. The correct play is likely something like 13/7 13/10, covering the direct shot and leaving an indirect. Instead he chooses 8/2* 6/3*!
Now the dice give 66 for white, then 54 for black, allowing him to cover both inner board blots and have a 4 point board with two checkers on the bar - a vastly better position than anyone who made the correct play.
Luck still exists in this format. IÂ’m not sure why everyone is so gung ho to try to remove luck from bg anyway. That would make it an entirely different game. The skill in bg (just like poker) is learning how to deal with the random element and put yourself in the best possible position to win. There are plenty of games out there where randomness is not an essential element; why is everyone always trying to make backgammon one of them?
Well I understand the wish to reduce/remove luck from BG quite well (especially after an evening where the dice gods hated me), but I agree it would be a different game.
BMAB/UBC tournament are a lot in that direction so there is a way. Another aspect I met some top 10 players and all are very friendly and humble guys. I guess this is different in chess and might be different in BG then as well.
