How Good Are You at Backgammon?: 50 Challenging Situations for You to Rate Your Ability with the Experts [Paperback]

Nicolaos Tzannes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 3, 2001

If you already play backgammon, don't you sometimes wonder how good you really are? Well, this book is your chance to really find out.The 50 situations presented here, cover most of the aspects of the game, from initial moves to bearing off strategies. Each problem is graded on the basis of 5 points for the optimum play and some partial credit for sub-optimum but adequate ones, if such exist.If you rack up a score of 225-250, you rank right up there with the expertsyou should think seriously of competing in Backgammon Tournaments. If you score 200-224, you are not an expert yet, but you are rapidly approaching this point. A score of 135-199 indicates that you are a good, sound player, probably the best in yourneighborhood. If you score less than 135 points, there is no need for despair. Study this book carefully. It can serve as a case studies tool for improving your game. Besides, the problems presented are not only mind-taxing, they are also entertaining. And the justifications for the optimum play are clearly explained, often culminating in various useful rules of thumb (the closer-closest rule, the rule of even, etc.) for difficult, but commonly occurring situations. Good luck!

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Dr. Nicolaos S. Tzannes, a Professor of Electrical Engineering, has authored many books/articles in his field, including "Communication and Radar Systems", reprinted recently by Authors Choice Press. Dr. B. Tzannes, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Patras, Greece, has authored many papers in his field of Topology. The brothers, well-known backgammon theoreticians, have also co-authored the book Backgammon Games and Strategies, published recently by iUniverse.com.

Product Details

• Paperback: 124 pages
• Publisher: iUniverse (April 3, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0595176429
• ISBN-13: 978-0595176427
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,168,757 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, August 26, 2003

By 

Bob Matthews "Dr. Bob" (Raleigh, NC United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: How Good Are You at Backgammon?: 50 Challenging Situations for You to Rate Your Ability with the Experts (Paperback)

The authors describe themselves as world champion backgammon players. I have no reason to doubt this claim. However as expositors of backgammon, they fall fairly far from championship status.

The book presents a series of backgammon positions. Given a board position, a roll, and the cube, the reader is asked to find the best move. The authors then assign from one to five points to the reader's selection (assuming that the reader decided upon one of the authors' preselected moves, of course.)

Most of the introductory positions are uncontroversial. The authors quickly move on to more complicated board positions however, and here is where the trouble begins. In many positions, they tend to favor the safe play. Certainly a recognized style, but stating that the safe play is the best play, without a discussion of the cube, the score, or any alternatives seems like hubris.

In one problem, the authors state that "black is far enough ahead to run in this position", but they make no attempt to quantify what they mean by "far enough ahead", nor is there even any discussion of how to determine when one player is ahead. In another position, where they also advocate a safe play, they make no mention of the possibility of playing for a gammon, and the pro's and con's of that decision.

The book doesn't present enough basic principles to be of use to the novice: There are no discussions of pip counts, very little of bearing off, and only a muddled mention of hitting probabilities. The experienced player will find himself disagreeing with the authors without gaining any insight from them.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not Really for Experts, March 29, 2010

By 

K. Collins (Denver, CO USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: How Good Are You at Backgammon?: 50 Challenging Situations for You to Rate Your Ability with the Experts (Paperback)

This collection of backgammon problems is really very basic, despite the subtitle "rate your ability with the experts." It's a good collection of problems for beginners, but won't challenge anyone who is anywhere close to expert status. It reads as though it was written in the 1970's (or earlier), before neural net computers modernized backgammon theory. Recommended only for beginners. The two Greek authors' other book, Backgammon Games and Strategies, is more interesting. It is one of the few books in English that contains strategy tips on the Backgammon variations, Plakato and Moultezim.

1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Nifty book, March 31, 2003

By 

Ronald Crimson (Washington, D.C.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: How Good Are You at Backgammon?: 50 Challenging Situations for You to Rate Your Ability with the Experts (Paperback)

I bought it and read it during a flight from Washington to LA. Entertaining, with many good and easy to remember rules on how to improve your game. It made the trip pleasant, even though my score was low.