Why????

[DemonDeac]

Why are good backgammon players good at poker as well?
I don't understand where the math is in backgammon? Isn't it just rolling the dice and moving your pieces?
Like I know Dan Harrington, among others, used to be professional backgammon player, but then why does that impact his poker skills?

[LetYouDown]

There's a lot of luck involved in backgammon, but not nearly as much as it would appear. I have to believe there is an "optimum" strategy to the game, and a powerful computer could be almost unbeatable in the long run.

Any game where there are a number of different decisions you can make on every "turn" has a strategy. Using your argument...chess is just sliding pieces all over the board until someone wins.

[DemonDeac]

[ QUOTE ]

Using your argument...chess is just sliding pieces all over the board until someone wins.

[/ QUOTE ]

not really. u have many many options in chess while in backgammon ur options are restricted by the roll of the dice.

[LetYouDown]

The number of possible moves in backgammon on an individual roll can be much higher than the number of possible moves in chess on a particular board. Obviously the reverse is also true. The average isn't *that* far off.

[DemonDeac]

whatever
i just want someone to answer my question

[LetYouDown]

What kind of answer are you looking for? His backgammon skills don't directly affect his poker skills at all. They're both games of strategy, that involve multiple levels of thinking. He excels in that genre. Is there some underlying question that I'm missing? There's more to backgammon than rolling two dice and moving pieces wherever you please.

[chris_a]

[ QUOTE ]
I don't understand where the math is in backgammon?

[/ QUOTE ]

I assume by "math" you mean skill. The skill in backgammon is in placing your pieces so that less of your opponents rolls do good for him and more of your future rolls do good for you. Sometimes, such moves are obvious. Very often they are not. The best players know how to do it with most of their moves.

Every time you don't play the best move, you are giving your opponent some chunk of the equity (portions of a point).

Backgammon, like poker, is a game of mixed skill and chance. In fact, the relative balance of skill and chance are very similar in these two games when comparing similar length events timewise. This may have something to do with why good BG players have what it takes to be good at poker and vice versa. They have the mental toughness to handle the swings but also the knowledge that if they keep playing nearly optimally that they are going to be long term winners.

As a side note, there are games that are way more skill than chance, for instance, Go or Chess. There are also games that are way more chance than skill.

[LINES]

Ask Gus Hansen.

[carpe2k]

Gentlemen, if you have not played backgammon with the doubling cube, you would not understand. /images/graemlins/heart.gif

[pzhon]

[ QUOTE ]
I don't understand where the math is in backgammon? Isn't it just rolling the dice and moving your pieces?

[/ QUOTE ]
Backgammon involves skill and chance, just like poker. The main difference is that poker involves hidden information, but there is still a lot of depth to games with no hidden information.

Because of the doubling cube, modern backgammon players are used to judging objective probabilities in complicated situations. The idea of pot odds arises in match play, too. It is easier for decent backgammon players to ignore bad beats, to accept the idea that the right play may be punished by the dice. Players concentrate on making the right plays. Players believe there are right plays.

In poker, many people think the game is mostly psychology. Some don't believe there are correct plays, or that you can quantify the strength of a strategy. They ignore that there is a real game to learn. In addition to psychology, it is important to evaluate hands accurately, to interpret betting patterns, and to figure out the best way to make use of the possible actions.

Good habits of backgammon players carry over to poker.

[Robertie]

Skill in backgammon comes in a couple of varieties.

The first is checker moves. You roll the dice, and now have several moves to choose from. You are typically trying to do a bunch of things -- hit your opponent's blots, build points to block him in, and prevent him from doing those things to you on his next turn. About half the time, one play will be obviously right. The rest of the time, you'll have several choices and the right play will not be obvious at all. The stronger the player, the better the choices he will make.

The second source of skill is the doubling cube. If the cube is in the middle or if you own it, you can double, or not, on your turn. Knowing when to double is a skill very analogous to knowing when to bet in poker, except that the bluff element is pretty much gone. In general, you want to double when you're about a 70% favorite in the game, so you have to be able to look at backgammon positions and say things like "Oh, I'm only about 66% here, I probably don't have a double yet", or "Wow, my chances look like 72% or 73%, I'm doubling." Being able to look at a random position and get the percentages correct to within a percent or two (which good players do pretty easily) is tougher than it looks. Then, when you are offered a double, you have to know whether you should take it or not.

Match a beginner (who thinks the game is all luck) against a top player, with the cube in play, and the beginner gets slaughtered, losing 70-75% of the games and almost all the points (since the beginner wins games with the cube at 1 or 2, while the good players wins with the cube on 4 or 8.)

Still don't believe it? Download the free version of Jellyfish (one of the top-rated backgammon programs, on www.jellyfish.com (http://www.jellyfish.com)), set the skill level to 7 (the highest) and play a few games. Watch what happens.

[tpir90036]

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Still don't believe it? Download the free version of Jellyfish

[/ QUOTE ]
try http://www.jellyfish-backgammon.com/ instead. the first link goes to a site about actual jellyfish.

cheers,
tpir

[gergery]

Leaf thru Bill Robertie’s book in a bookstore. I just did this to get a sense of what backgammon is about – it’s helpful.

Both poker and backgammon are about your equity in a given situation. If a given scenario were to be played out a million times, what choice will be most correct? There are times where 2-3 choices are reasonable but where a more experienced player can choose one of those options which is slightly more correct. Both are also incredibly complex with dynamic situations involving different moves being correct based on how an opponent might play, and exponentially difficult calculations as the “decision tree” branches multiply quickly.

And you don’t have as many options as you think in Chess. There are many, many opening situations where you have no more than 3 realistic choices, and in some sharp openings like the Sicilian Dragon where 1 moderately incorrect move that an intermediate might make over a series of 10 moves is enough to lose vs. Grandmaster play.

--Greg

[Nottom]

[ QUOTE ]
whatever
i just want someone to answer my question

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't see how the conection between the 2 games insn't obvious to you. Both games involve incredible amounts of luck over the short term (rolling dice vs dealing cards) but in both cases skill ins out in the long run.

Serious backgammon is all about proper use of the doubling cube which is someone analogous to betting in poker.

Both games can be analyzed mathematically and appear very simple on the surface. It should be no surprise at all that there is a significane cross-over of players from one to the other.

[Buccaneer]

I play a good game of backgammon, or used to. I think that the reason that good backgammon players may make good poker players is that they have conditioned thier mind to accept randomness and mutual exclusivity of each roll of the die. As long as you think that it is impossible for your opponent to roll 66 five more times because he has rolled 66 five times allready then you can not approach the game properly. I do not think that this is an easy thing for the human mind to accept. Your mind wants to organize things but the dice are random.

I remember when I finally accepted that the dice owed me nothing. When I did that my game exploded. From what I have read on this board accepting, even embracing "runner, runner suck outs" as part of the game is very important to the decision making process in poker and insulates you from the tilt. Watch the tourneys on TV, when you see one of the wonder kids throw a tantrum it is because they think they can control those 52 sheets of plastic. They stomp around like thier anger and disgust can change the cards that have been dealt. The old geesers do not act out when they loose. They have accepted the randomness of the cards - in my oppinion.

I do not think that the use of the cube helps you play well. JMO! It is a great tilt device. If the cube is offered and you know that you can turn the game accept it, turn it over to x4 and slide it back to your opponent. If you win then you crush thier ability to think for a while and he is yours. Kind of like a check raise.

Sorry if I rambled.

[Buccaneer]

Just got done playing jelly fish. Plays a good game! I do suspect the randomess of the dice. I was getting whipped on level 2 but found where you can input you own dice rolls and Jellyfish didn't seem to get near the doubles and rolls and it did not seem to control the tempo of the game so much. FYI

[pzhon]

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Just got done playing jelly fish. Plays a good game! I do suspect the randomess of the dice. I was getting whipped on level 2

[/ QUOTE ]
Level 2 plays horribly. Watch it play an opening 5-1 8/2. It will take a 1-roll versus 1-roll position. If you can't crush Level 2 in the long run, you don't know the basics.

Jellyfish's random number generator is fine. People whine about every backgammon program, every backgammon server, every poker server, etc. Not everything is unfair. People complain about fair dice.

[Buccaneer]

Well I have not played in 10 years. It seems to play the run like hell and hit any blot type play. I am sure that I will be moving up a few skill levels. Will check it out on that play you pointed out.

[Octopus]

[ QUOTE ]
Still don't believe it? Download the free version of Jellyfish (one of the top-rated backgammon programs, on www.jellyfish.com (http://www.jellyfish.com)), set the skill level to 7 (the highest) and play a few games. Watch what happens.

[/ QUOTE ]

Wow, am I ever bad at backgammon.