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“Reading every word, slowly studying each diagram and following your analysis was invaluable to strengthening not only my checker play but my understanding of fundamental backgammon.”
Bill Robertie welcomes the opportunity to share his knowledge of backgammon with experienced players and beginners alike.
On his blog, Robertie publishes set and equipment reviews, creates quiz contests and provides free lessons. He would be remiss not to include his Robertie’s Rules! He also educates readers of the Gammon Press blog on the history of the game, offers backgammon instruction and more.
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Last time we talked about the history of backgammon chouettes and why they’re so popular. We also looked at three common situations that occur in chouettes and how they should be handled.
This time we’ll finish the discussion of chouette variations, and I’ll make some more recommendations about how chouettes should be structured and what rules work well in practice.
Back in the 1920s, backgammon went through its first great revival. After decades of stagnation, the game suddenly blossomed in popularity. Clubs were formed, books were written, and thousands of new people learned the game and started to play. It was a mini-version of the backgammon craze that started in the 1960s and 1970s.
Conventional wisdom holds that the source of the first backgammon boom was the invention of the doubling cube by some unknown New Yorker in the early 1920s. And indeed, it’s hard to imagine backgammon catching on in the modern world without the excitement of a bouncing cube ratcheting up the stakes. But there was another factor at work, at least as important as the doubling cube in making backgammon the gambling game of choice among the chic set of the Roaring Twenties: the invention of the chouette.
If you Google ‘World Backgammon Champions’ you’ll find a number of lists scattered around the web. For the years after 1979, when the tournament moved to Monte Carlo, the lists basically agree except for some minor points like the actual score of the final match. Prior to 1979, however, the lists differ in a number of respects. In this post I’m going to lay out what I think is an accurate list for the period 1967 to 1979, based on printed sources of the time and some conversations with players who were then active. I’ll also explain how some of the discrepancies between the various lists came to be.
Black on roll owning a 2-cube, leading 11-3 in a 15-point match.
Black’s Pip Count = 100
You’re playing a 15-point match, and you’ve got a very comfortable lead, 11-3. You were doubled to two early on, and you took. Now you’ve broken contact, and you’ve got a big lead in the race, 26 pips.
You’d like to redouble, but you don’t know exactly when it’s right to do so. Clearly it’s right at some point, but – are you there yet?
