501 Essential Backgammon Problems (Paperback)

Having rediscovered the joys of backgammon in the slightly hung-over aftermath of celebrating the millennium with friends in Scotland, I began a search for something that would help me improve my game and compete on equal terms with friends who had been playing for rather longer.

So far this book is at least as good as anything else I have read, and is probably of more use than all the others, because it is so comprehensive. The problems are laid out clearly and logically, and my only substantial gripe is that one has to keep turning back and forth between problem and solution, rather than them sharing the same page.

I could also wish it was a hardback for added durability.

Robertie's reasonings for his solutions are clearly expressed, and I have found that my game (mostly against the neural net program "Jellyfish") has improved consistently as I have worked through it. I look forward to progressing to more frequent human opponents when I get on-line at home and can play over the net.

I also have this author's "Backgammon for Serious Players", and I find this much the most practically useful of the two, although the other book is hardly without interest!

I would heartily recommend "501 Essential Backgammon Problems" to anyone who seriously wishes to improve their Backgammon and who is prepared to spend the time on working through it properly. I think the acid test is that my game gets noticably worse when I have been away from the book for a while - that must say something!

As the title suggests, it is a compilation of 501 problems, split 360 checker plays v 141 cube actions. (67 doubles 74 redoubles). After the introductory chapters covering notation/probability/basic doubling strategy etc, there are 26 chapters covering many of the important concepts in backgammon from the opening to the bearoff. These are:

The Opening, Flexibility, The Middle Game, The 5-point, One Man Back, Priming Games, Connectivity, Hit Or Not?, Crunch Positions, Action Doubles, Late Game Blitz, Post-Blitz Turnaround Games, Ace-Point Games Back Games, The Containment, Game Post-Ace-Point Games, Saving The Gammon, The Race, Various Endgames, Bearing Off Against Contact, The Blitz, Breaking Anchor, Too Good To Double?, Playing For A Gammon, The Bearoff, Holding Games,

The book manages to cram the 501 positions and analyses into 384 pages of a book measuring just 23x15cms. This is achieved by squashing the diagrams with the effect of making the checkers oval. The problems in each chapter are all bunched together first and the solutions at the end of the chapter hence cutting down on the need to avoid looking at the analysis.

It's target audience is everybody from beginner to expert level. The only group that maybe wouldn't find many parts of this book valuable would be world class players.

The problems are typical of positions that appear in everyday backgammon and not unusual or tricky positions that an expert may get wrong. The difficulty of the problems range from very easy to hard with the majority in the intermediate/advanced level. My guess is that the book would be suitable to players ranked up to elo 1900 on F.I.B.S. or Gamesgrid. Robertie has attempted to create a book of reference positions whose characteristics the reader can hopefully remember and apply and adapt over the board and for each problem, he typically gives a succinct 8-10 line analysis.

There are no references to any of the neural net backgammon programs in the book. I checked all the positions by rollout and did discover some disagreements between the bots' conclusions and Robertie's analysis. There were around 12 cube problems whose equity differed by more than 0.04 and also some checker play differences. Some of those positions would make good reading for the more expert players.

My only major criticism on the book is that in some of the checker play problems Robertie doesn't analyse all the potential choices or rejects one when in fact the equities are quite close. The reasoning behind this maybe that that the merits of that checker play do not fit in with the theme of the chapter or are too complex. And on a personal note I prefer to see the pip count in diagrams.

Overall an excellent book suitable for either beginners who have learned the very basics or a good refresher book for more advanced players. Marks out of ten 8.5.