My favourite hobby. I'm not particular good at it and it doesn't really suit my temperament (I cant stand losing due to opponents lucky rolls :) but it keeps me sane at times. I contribute regularly to the backgammon newsgroup and lurking within these pages, if you haven't just come from there, are various web pages as part of my own Backgammon site "Webby's Backgammon Site". I play off line every Tuesday with 3 or 4 other BG enthusiasts in the "Lister Cafe" in List Hannover. The club is just being formed by myself and Bernd Kaiser (One_Pointer in Fibs). It is good fun and I find I learn a lot more live than online.

I started the game when I was around 15 if I remember correctly, although in those days it was like one game per year :) I suppose really you can say I have only been playing for the past 2 years. I have a wide variety of ratings from 1900+ in Yahoo, 1850+ in Zone, 1600 odd in Gamesgrid and Fibs I've only just started a new account with. I don't take the ratings very seriously at all and I am perhaps one of few who is quite happy to play most my games with a guest account in Gamesgrid (AlanWebb).

My backgammon "library" so far consists of:

Backgammon for winners... Bill Robertie
Backgammon for serious players... Bill Robertie
Backgammon... Paul Magriel
New ideas in backgammon... Kit Woolsey / Hal Heinrich

Purchased in that order. I'm half way through New ideas... at the moment, and it is a very useful book with excellent analysis of problem positions.

Here is an example of a problem position taken from my quiz if you haven't seen it yet.
Blue is moving clockwise and has rolled 3-1. He can hit and cover by moving from the 5 to 2 point (hitting) and 3 to 2 point (covering) or take his men off (checker from the 3 point off and checker from the 1 point off). He could also hit and run (5/2* 2/1).

pip count Blue 52: White 59

Blue to play 3-1

If you think 3 off / 1 off is correct then think again :)

It is positions like this that fascinate me. Quite an optical illusion this one. If you didn't hit white then just look across the board at whites ideal bear off position. White could still win this game even though he has 1 checker way back and blue already has 2 checkers off. The correct move is 5/2* 3/2.

Many non-backgammon players truly believe backgammon is a game of "Whoever chucks the most doubles will win the game" kind of game. Not so, high doubles can be bad but I'm not going to go into issues of timing with you here :) Best thing to do is look under my study category in my BG Links page.

Be warned, should you wish to try the game out, It can be addictive as hell. I had to wean myself off it for a month or so once as it truly takes over if you let it. It was like going through cold turkey :)

If you haven't just come from my Backgammon pages then you may want to visit. Click on BGHome below or here to take you to "Webby's Backgammon Site".

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