First off let me say how much I enjoyed this book.  It is a wonderful mixture of match analysis, history, seminars, impressions of people attending the event and a whole lot more.  It is well worth the price and I would encourage any backgammon player to buy this book.

What I have chosen to do in this short article is look at four of the positions in this book and add my own thoughts to the analysis given.  It in no way should this detract from the original analysis I merely wish to illuminate some of the positions that I think deserve a little bit more attention.  I have deliberately tried to keep the analysis that I give reasonably short and to the point.

Page 10 Second Position

In this position Peter doesn't state exactly what the best move is.  Computers are not infallible so this is a reasonable approach.  Looking at this position I believe that bar/22 24/22 is indeed the correct solution.  This creates a stumbling block that will trip white up for the rest of the game.  Indeed I feel a lot happier having two anchors then having one.  It is important to note that White has not made any additional points and some of his play after the move may not be that easy whereas we will not be trying to turn this game into a race and so we can attack and play quite purely because of our anchors.

6. Rollout          bar/23 13/10         Eq.:  -0.329 ( -0.086)

Page 12 Second Position

This is the really interesting position.  No analysis was given of this position in the book.  Black has more men back, Black has an advanced anchor and Black has the better board.  These are the majority of criteria of the Magriel's safe versus bold play criteria.  Okay so we need to play boldly -- but what does that entail?  Attacking 8/3*?  I admit that this was my initial thought but breaking the eight point to hit loose is not a good idea.  Also I don't have enough men in the zone due to having so many men back.  As for the chosen play -- this would be okay if we were ahead in the race but we are behind.  Therefore we want to stay back as far as possible to make it awkward for white to safety his men.  Moving 24/13 keeps one man back thus making it awkward for white to play men behind our anchor while also restocking our midpoint.  Compare this to the first position we examined where we did make another anchor.  In the previous position that anchor was quite a way back into White's home board.  If we could make an anchor that was not so advanced that I would be keen to do this -- unfortunately the dice didn't cooperate.

    1. Rollout          24/13                     Eq.:  -0.234

    6. Rollout          13/7 8/3*               Eq.:  -0.366 ( -0.132)

Page17 B

The players chose to play 8/5 8/4.  This would not have been my first choice but when I did the rollout indeed this was marginally the best choice.  I would simply have abandoned the midpoint with 13/10 13/9 and kept all my men focused on making the five point.  The problem I have with the suggested play 13/9 8/5 is it does give white the opportunity to put us on the bar when by just waiting our position should improve at no risk.  One of the reasons that I would bring the men down from the midpoint is that we will not be getting a shot this turn anyway so we will properly have to give up the midpoint so let's do it now when we can use those men as builders for the five point.  Anyhow the rollout is so close that any one of the three solutions is perfectly acceptable.

3. Rollout          13/9 8/5                    Eq.:  -0.497 ( -0.014)

Page 62

The tie-breaker.  How does one play 33 in this position?  My initial thoughts when I looked that this was I don't care what any rollout says I had to play 8/2* 8/5(2).  Then I did the rollout and found that the move I had chosen was the one that the computer preferred.  So why?  This is a money game, therefore I want to score Gammon or a backgammon if I can.  To score a Gammon I need to do a number of things:

1) put the man in my home board on the bar -- my move does this.

2) close my board -- my move starts doing this

3) hit a second checker -- although my move does not do this it may stop white from getting the white man on Whites bar point to safety.  Thus giving me more time to be able to hit it.  So although my move does not directly hit that man it moves in that direction.

If I close out two men I will have a 40% chance of scoring a Gammon.

2. Rollout          8/5(2) 6/3(2)               Eq.:  +0.554 ( -0.063)

So in conclusion I would like to wish all the organisers of the event that it goes well in the future and hope that one day I will be able to attend. Also the people who contributed to the book for a job well done.

Grant and his wife Jackie are Computer programmers currently living in New Zealand with strong ties to England. Jackie’s parents were born there and emigrated to New Zealand. Grant and Jackie resided in the UK for a year. They can be contacted through their website www.magellan.net.nz

Many thanx to Grant Hoffman for this review - published 15th August 2008