Backgammon Resources

[Robertie]

In my view Snowie is a fabulous product, one of the truly great achievements in gaming programming. If you're serious about getting better quickly, you should read the literature and practice several hours a day with Snowie. Its ability to analyze an entire match at once and report back with all the errors and blunders highlighted is extremely useful. If backgammon were a non-gambling game, this program would still be a must. Considering that large sums are wagered at backgammon, it's an incredible bargain.

[amulet]

bill,

i get asked often about backgammon books. however, you can answer the questions much better then i can.

which books would you suggest a beginner read?

which books would you suggest an intermediate read?

[George Rice]

Even on a fast PC snowie isn't that fast in 3-ply mode, especially with something else also using cpu resources. Although it is must faster than a human opponent. So I can imagine how slow it could get in a non-windows based system. It will run faster in a lower level.

By "isn't that fast" I mean like you would normally expeirence playing a game against a computer. Snowie sometimes takes a few seconds to make a move. Not a long time but sometimes it kills the timiing when you're looking for a "quick" game.

[amulet]

had it for years, never found it to be a problem. maybe on an old computer with very little memor? but on 2 different machines, never noticed,

[Robertie]

Keeping in mind that I'm fond of my own books, here's my list:

Beginner:
Backgammon for Winners (Robertie) - written to be a simple, easy introduction.
Backgammon for Serious Players (ditto) - really on the same level as the previous book, but shows some complex games so the beginner gets a flavor of what good play looks like.
Backgammon (Magriel) - more work than either of my books, but also much more complete. Basically for the beginner who is ready to put in some serious work right from the start.

Intermediate:
Understanding BG (Woolsey & Jones) - a collection of problems that are a little more advanced, but still accessible for the inexperienced. The question and answer format is very helpful, according to a lot of the feedback we received.
Tournament BG (Woolsey) - good intro to the issues of tournament play. BG tournament play is closely related to poker tournament strategy, one reason BG players adapt to poker so quickly.
BG Encyclopedia Vol. 1 (Woolsey) - lots of good doubling cube examples. Will bring an intermediate up to speed on the cube very quickly.
501 Essential BG Problems (Robertie) - more good problems, mostly on checker play.

[Crispy86]

[ QUOTE ]
In my view Snowie is a fabulous product, one of the truly great achievements in gaming programming. If you're serious about getting better quickly, you should read the literature and practice several hours a day with Snowie. Its ability to analyze an entire match at once and report back with all the errors and blunders highlighted is extremely useful. If backgammon were a non-gambling game, this program would still be a must. Considering that large sums are wagered at backgammon, it's an incredible bargain.

[/ QUOTE ]

It IS a great product, but also quite a pointless expense considering that one can get GNU Backgammon which is as strong as Snowie 4, has more functionality, can play according to score in rollouts (which Snowie 4 cannot), and plays and analyzes much faster, all for free. I even got GNU Backgammon for my Pocket PC. [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

Albert

[George Rice]

Compare the 3-ply mode to a lower mode and I think you'll see what I mean.

I have a newer machine and I notice the difference. I wouldn't call it a problem. However it's worse if I'm runnung something else that is using the computers resources. Running a program that emulates windows in a non-windows based machine would probably use enough resources to cause more of a problem.

[Robertie]

Considering how buggy and unreliable GNU has always been, I stick to my opinion -- Snowie is a vastly superior product, although you do have to pay for it.