Customer Reviews

Classic Backgammon Revisited, Second Edition

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have 3 gripes with this book in spite of the overall excellent content.

(1) It's a lot easier to reverse engineer the right analysis when you've got the Snowie rollouts in front of you. The difficult thing is to come up with consistently the correct analysis without a computer, which is what the authors that Bagai examines had to do. In my opinion he does not acknowlege that fact enough, and he uses mildy ad-hominem language to describe the pre-computer analyses of some of the most innovative thinkers the game ever had ("Amusingly, Robertie hallucinates a double-pass here..."). The tone is a bit condescending, which I think is odd, especially in contrast to point #2, below.

(2) There are some very weird tributes to Danny Kleinman (the author of the self-published Vision Laughs at Counting, among many others). For example: "Kleinman was the first to analyze these kinds of match cubes, naming them 'gammicidal.' But then, Kleinman was the first to analyze everything." Really. But possibly the greatest and most influential book on Backgammon ever written by Magriel was published before Kleinman's books. Perhaps Magriel didn't analyze anything? Absurd. Why Bagai is so fawning over Kleinman is perplexing. And his explanations of why he excuses Kleinman from the laser focus of his Snowie rollouts is unconvincing, especially given his constant reference to him.

(3) Bagai often includes secondary or tertiary positions to further drive home the point he's making. But in several places he isn't particulary clear about the correct play in the back-up diagrams! Frustrating. And yes, you can mostly figure out what the correct play is, but why not just come out and say it? Backgammon is hard enough without having to parse out what the author is implying is correct.

And as a tiny, tiny, final issue, I wish he had numbered the diagrams on the left hand pages by the edge of the page instead of by the binding. The way it is now is a bit awkward if you are flipping to an even-numbered position.

All of that being said, THIS BOOK IS GREAT. The gripes I've mentioned are stylistic. But the main issue for a book of this kind (it isn't a novel, after all) is *content* and the content is fantastic. It will improve your game. It will clean away all the nagging questions you've had as you read Magriel , Robertie, and the others as to what's correct.

I played a lot of backgammon in the boom of the 1980's and read all of the best literature at the time -- Paul Magriel, Barclay Cooke, etc. I started playing again in the past few years and found that the game had changed. A lot.

Sophisticated computer programs ("bots") such as Jellyfish, Snowie and gnubg have changed how top players think about backgammon.

Classic Backgammon Revisted explains which concepts have survived the "bot" revolution -- and more importantly, which have not. This was the first new backgammon book I bought since returning to backgammon. It has repaid me many times over.

Your opponents have read this book. You can't afford to be without it!

Hi folks. My name is Jerem... eh.. John Doe. I'm a lousy backgammon
player and a lousier writer. I have absolutely NOTHING to contribute
to the backgammon community, but I'm vain and I want to be known in
the community. So I decided to "write" a book slashing at the great players of the past, you know, those guys that played backgammon using only their grey matter(I wonder where I can buy that) without any help from bots, which didn't even exist then. Of course, as I told you, I'm mediocre but I'm a Snowie lackey, so I'll put down everything my master tells me to. So buy my book, ok? Go ahead, make my day!