I’m running for the Board of Directors of the United States Backgammon Federation, or USBGF. In connection with this, I’m hoping for a small influx of readers interested specifically in what this blog has to say about backgammon. This page provides a starting point.
The heavy influence of luck in backgammon is considered in Skill and Luck in Backgammon, All That Luck, and Learning Backgammon.
The influence of computer play is discussed in Your Cheatin’ Bot.
There’s a four part series on the way the dice are rolled in backgammon: Rolling the Bones, Part I (precision dice), Rolling the Bones, Part II (rules of how to roll, including the die-on-checker controversy), Rolling the Bones, Part III (dice cheating), and Rolling the Bones, Part IV (baffle boxes).
Calcutta auctions are discussed in Oh! Calcutta!
The unusual brackets used at the 2017 Michigan Summer Backgammon Championships were the subject of a series of posts. A Big, Peculiar Bracket discusses a planned format I was involved in creating. At the event, however, it was decided to use a different format, which I analyzed extensively in The Big, Peculiar Bracket, a Postmortem, Part I, The Big, Peculiar Bracket, a Postmortem: Part II, and The Big, Peculiar Bracket, a Postmortem, Part III.
In Follow the Money I analyze one of the brackets I drew for the 2017 Viking Classic tournament in Minnesota. The design of a small backgammon team tournament is discussed in A Little Round Robin. An analysis of a bracket used at the 2017 Florida State Backgammon Championship is in process.
The practice of shifting the lower bracket in a double-elimination or consolation format is not specific to backgammon, but it’s particularly appropriate for backgammon, and it’s no surprise that I first learned of it in a backgammon context. It’s discussed in Building a Better Bracket, Building a Better Bracket, Part II, Fairness and the Lopsided Bracket, and Shifting a 32 Bracket.
The contentious issue of how byes should be allocated in a bracket has been discussed chiefly as applied to backgammon tournaments. See Good Byes to All That, Bad Byes, More Bad Byes, More Better Bad Byes, and Pay Now or Pay Later.
A couple of early posts, Fairness, and The Four Goals in Tournament Design are important for understanding much of the subsequent discussion.
There is a more general A Guide to Tourneygeek. And one of the more useful features is the page of Printable Brackets.
tourneygeek.com 