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Robin
Clay 1996 244pp
Transatlantic ISBN:03303498133
"Backgammon: Winning Strategies" in my opinion is by far the strongest of the
three (of Clay's books). It is pretty much current (frequently referencing
Jellyfish 2.1 evaluations and rollouts and Scoyners database equities) and
generally presents reasonable alternatives modern players might consider and
gives a fair comparison of them. It touches many concepts without going into a
great deal of depth about them which is probably reasonable for a book of this
size (244 paperback pages) -- for instance it presents a match equity table
derived from Janowski's formula and analyses how it should affect match play,
without justifying the background of the table or formula itself. It makes a
good effort to address the discrepencies between generally accepted expert and
computer preferences ("...Jellyfish 2.1 prefers this move but many players
dislike placing a chequer on the 1 point so early in the game...", "surprisingly
Jellyfish thought that hitting was the best move, but when it rolled out the
position 1,296 times it established that move D was superior.")
It goes into
reasonable detail about many tactical situations (inspecting various possible
back game positions and explaining why the 5 point is weak bearing in against a
1,3 back game; walking a prime backwards to pick up an extra chequer, etc.) My
main criticism (not that I'm claiming that my opinion is in any way better than
the book -- just as an example of how a text should be critically considered
rather than accepted at face value) is that his treatment of cube handling is
weak. Clay claims that cube decisions should be made on three criteria: race,
position, and threat -- personally I think that's horribly overgeneralised: you
can't base decisions on just 3 factors, and even if you could, they would be
threat, threat, and threat. But never mind. I don't think he mentions volatility
at all, oversimplifying to the point of being wrong: "the ideal lead at which to
double is 70 per cent..." (admittedly he qualifies the assertion as dependent on
the match score and the claim appears restricted to races, but even so
presenting a number like that without justification ought to raise questions in
the mind of the reader). The quiz section of the book (100 questions) is well
done -- again I think it would be a shame if a reader was overly concerned about
choosing the "right" answer in the quiz, but thinking about a position,
selecting a move, and then reading the comments about the alternatives could be
valuable if Clay mentions factors you hadn't considered, or seen in the same
way. Overall I think most intermediate players could learn a lot from it, though
advanced readers would be frustrated at the lack of detail in many areas.
Gary Wong, GaryW on FIBS
Other book reviews welcome! Email them to DocMartin@Gammoned.com
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