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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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An Introduction to Backgammon Notation

Mar 5, 2015 | Backgammon Tips for Beginners, Learning Backgammon

Backgammon notation is a way of describing dice rolls and moves on a backgammon board. Prior to 1976, notation wasn’t standardized; backgammon writers would invent their own notation systems, and readers would have to learn a new notation system when they picked up a new book. In 1976, Paul Magriel published his classic book Backgammon, using a notation system that was simple and appealing. Almost overnight, this system became a de facto standard, and almost every book published since then has used it. Let’s see how it works.

Comparing Games of Skill and Chance

Sep 30, 2014 | Backgammon Generally

Two questions:

(1) What percentage of backgammon is skill and what percentage is luck?

(2) How does backgammon compare to other games in this respect?

Question (1) comes up a lot, but it’s a bad question. Backgammon is a game that combines luck and skill, but there’s no simple way to separate the two. If I said, for instance, that backgammon was 80% luck and 20% skill, what exactly would I mean? If someone else said that backgammon was 90% luck and 10% skill, could we devise an experiment that would prove one statement was more accurate than the other? I don’t see how.