The interview with Paul continues with a discussion of tournaments and tournament strategy.
Zelman: Do you dream of backgammon, do you dream of games in your sleep? Do you ever come home afterwards and sit down and think where you went wrong?
PM: In tournaments sometimes you get knocked out and you just can’t get a certain roll out of your mind. It’s like a nightmare and you just go over and over it.
Zelman: Do you have video equipment to tape all your games when you play people in tournaments?
PM: Sometimes I have people record my games and I go over them afterwards and try to figure out where I went wrong. I have lots of position cards, 3 by 5 cards which I take around with me all the time and scribble down the moves on them.
Zelman: I remember you wore reflecting glasses and a very, very vivid red tie in Chicago. Is this part of your backgammon psyche?
PM: In a sense if you want to look at it like that. I don’t think these factors are really that important. Playing the game skillfully is what really counts. But some players are intimidated by me in tournaments, so I let them be. I don’t let it be easy for them. Those glasses, sometimes it’s easier for me to concentrate. There’s a lot of concentration involved when you’re playing seriously and you really want to win and you really want to make the right moves.
Zelman: Do you feel you wear glasses because you don’t want anybody to see your eyes?
PM: It’s partly to help myself concentrate and also sort of the image of me as the computer that’s playing flawlessly. After a while people get ruffled, they think they’re playing a machine and also they feel they’re being scrutinized and they don’t get some of the human feedback and this is upsetting to some people. It’s disorienting to them. But as I say it helps out but it’s a minor thing. The main thing is to know the game.
Zelman: That was quite a controversy when you came out in that red tie, let me tell you. A lot of people in the audience were commenting. Tell me, do you like the Crawford Rule in tournament play?
PM: Do I like it? Yes, it’s a standard rule and it affects how you play matches very much.
Zelman: What other rules would you like to introduce or delete from tournament play?
PM: I’d like to have some tournaments at a championship level where there’s less luck involved than these 15-point or 17-point matches.
Zelman: How would you go about doing that?
PM: One possible way is instead of having a match you have what is sometimes called a “freeze-out”. In a 15-point freeze-out, instead of the first person to reach 15 points, you just score as you would normal money play and I have to get 15 points ahead of you.
Zelman: 15 points ahead. So instead of 15-12 it has to be 27-12 or whatever.
PM: Yes, in other words just like money play, until someone gets 15 points ahead of the other player. This would take longer.
Zelman: I don’t understand. I never heard of 15 points ahead on money play.
PM: It’s a freeze-out. In other words, suppose we play for a dollar a point and we each have $15. The first person to win all the other guy’s money wins and he wins just $15. If we had matches on that basis it would take longer and at some point there’s a definitive outcome.
See, you asked me earlier about ratings, who’s the best and who’s not. All the best players have at one time or another won major tournaments. Some have won two, some have won three, some have won four, but it’s hard to have a really consistent rating scale. This format would take much of the luck out of it.
There’s not really as much luck in backgammon as people think. In the World Chess Championship, they take a month to play and they play a 24-game match. In the world bridge championship, they don’t just play a few hands, they play hundreds and hundreds of deals. Now if we had anything close to this in backgammon, you would all of a sudden begin to realize that some of the people who might normally be considered great players are just not contenders and other people really were contenders.
The present tournaments are very well structured and they give everybody some chance. The better players have a better chance but everybody has some chance. But at some point I’d like to see a tournament where there will really be a test of skill just for the better players.
Zelman: From outside the United States, who do you feel are some of the better players?
PM: Philip Martyn and Joe Dwek.
Zelman: Have you ever played anybody from Canada, either for money or in a tournament?
PM: Just recently a kid cane down from Canada. [Jason Lester] There’s been a few. I don’t really have that much idea about players there. Backgammon is beginning to be played there and reasonable players will, I’m sure, come out of that. I really don’t know that much except that it is beginning to catch on there.
Zelman: What do you think of the National Backgammon Association and the World Backgammon Club?
PM: Well, the World Backgammon Club is kind of the primary organization. Prince Obolensky is the one who really began the World Backgammon Club, and they run most of the major tournaments. He’s the one who really began this whole thing. He had the first tournaments. He’s the one who popularized backgammon and is still popularizing it. A lot of credit is owed to him, because he was the one who built backgammon from a very private thing to its present mass popularity.
Zelman: What kind of board do you own?
PM: Well, I have a lot of boards.
Zelman: Are you a backgammon board freak?
PM: No, I feel the same way about backgammon boards as I do about chess in that there are all sorts of beautiful, expensive, fancy boards. But if you want to play seriously, the best boards to play on are the ones which are really functional, the ones which make everything stand out more clearly.
Zelman: Do you feel cork is the best surface to play on?
PM: I like playing on cork but I don’t have any great preferences as long as the points are clear and the pieces are clear.
Zelman: Do you like those new felt ones that are sewn on?
PM: It depends; some of them are good and some of them are cheap.
Zelman: But do you have a wooden board, a flat table board?
PM: I have a board which I use in my home when I give my lessons. I also have a few travelling boards.
Zelman: Do you have any boards or other products that you would endorse? Is there a “Paul Magriel” something?
PM: Only when I endorse my book.
Zelman: Nothing else? For instance, Tim Holland has “Auto Backgammon”.
PM: No. Of course I do endorse the Doral Hotel. Great hotel.
Zelman: We’re going to talk a little bit about the doubling cube in tournaments. Is there any form of psychology in using the doubles?
PM: There’s a lot of very sophisticated strategy with the doubling cube in tournaments. I already said that the big difference between tournament play and money play is the doubling cube. The doubling strategy has to be a lot more precise and a lot of times it’s very, very different from money play. Many times in tournaments you double when you’re behind, you pass when you’re ahead, you double as the position gets worse instead of getting better, all sorts of extraordinary, very weird things happen in tournament play that don’t happen in money play.
Of course there’s some psychology. If you know your opponent’s going to try and pass you try to figure out where that pressure point is and what they’re thinking about the position.
Zelman: Would you accept or refuse the doubler in a tournament match? Sorry if that’s a loaded question.
PM: It’s not loaded, just hopelessly vague. It depends upon the position and the opponent.
Zelman: If you feel that he’s a weak player but he has a good board?
PM: For a much weaker player, I’ll try and keep the cube lower just so they’ll be more games. I don’t want the whole match to swing upon one game. In other words, if I think I’m a big favorite, I’d rather take my chances on playing out the rest of the match. Basically I’ll try to keep the cube at a lower level.
Zelman: You want to get it over with as quickly as possible?
PM: Not necessarily. You’ve got to wait until you’ve got the correct percentage point. Everything depends too on whether you’re ahead or behind in the match. If you’re ahead in the match you want to play, generally speaking, more conservatively, and try to trade off points until you win. When you’re behind in the match you have to take more chances to try and catch up because you run out of luck. At some points you have to take calculated risks that you might not otherwise take.
Zelman: When you sit down with someone do you have an idea basically how you’re going to be playing the game or is it basically how he opens the dice up?
PM: Well, usually I know the player or I know something about him. I mean the dice dictate the type of game you’re going to play.
Zelman: But if you don’t know me and I sit down across from you, you have no idea how I play, we’re playing in a tournament now, do you feel that you should go to one particular type of game?
PM: Well, the fact that I don’t know you, I would tend to assume probably that you’re not a very strong player.
Zelman: But I must be pretty good if I’ve advanced to the level in the tournament that you are, so would you plan “He’s going to go into a backgame” and try to break that or do you respond basically to the opening moves?
PM: No, the rolls and the position of the pieces dictate the type of plan you’re going to go into, and so if you’re a much weaker player I’ll try to confuse the issue.
Zelman: How often do you participate in tournament play?
PM: Fairly frequently. It depends. There are lots of big international tournaments. I go to many of these and occasionally to smaller tournaments, local tournaments, if it’s been a while since I’ve played. But I’d say once every month or two there’s probably some big international tournament.
Zelman: So you travel to all tournaments?
PM: Most of them.
Zelman: What do you think the ‘backgammon jetsetter scene’ has contributed to the glamour of the game? I didn’t see you doing that whole ‘scene’ type of thing. You were very quiet, to yourself, you had a couple of friends from New York with you and you played and you went to your hotel room, and you had your own discussions and suppers and other things.
PM: It depends on where the tournament is. A lot of tournament have very different natures in terms of who’s invited and who’s there. But I enjoy travelling.
Zelman: Are you a part of any type of clique?
PM: I wouldn’t want to classify myself.
Zelman: Are there any people you hang around with more on the tournament scene, any of the players?
PM: Well, I’m good friends with most of the top players.
Zelman: So after a match you just get together …
PM: And have a few drinks or whatever.
Zelman: How would you compare head-to-head gambling to tournament play?
PM: Well, in tournament play everything is over in a very fixed amount of time. It’s all very tame, it’s just one match after another. Head-to-head sometimes can go on a lot longer. In a sense there’s more psychology involved, you know. Who’s going to crack first, how long you’re going to play for. Some people are good for an hour or two and then stop, other people are good for long distances, they play for long times. Sometimes I play very long sessions – several times I’ve played 60-hour non-stop backgammon sessions.
Zelman: How do you find the odds affect the gambling game in general as compared to tournaments? Are there the same odds in both?
PM: No. There are differences in match play and tournament play, but it’s the same game.
Zelman: Do you use the same percentages and odds in both cases?
PM: Well, the percentages in basic things like being hit are the same. How you play is affected by the match score. There are differences in the play.
Zelman: You would take more chances in a gambling game because you know your money’s sitting there.
PM: No, no. It depends upon the score in the match. The score and who you’re playing dictates what’s happening. Sometimes you play more conservatively, sometimes you take more chances. It depends upon the score.
Zelman: Do you gamble? What was the largest gambling match you were involved in monetarily?
PM: I don’t know. Occasionally there are high stakes games.
Zelman: How high, figure-wise? $10,000 a match?
PM: Not really.
Zelman: I’ve heard of people going to $500 a point. What’s the highest game that you’ve ever played in?
PM: I’s really rather not talk about that.
Zelman: What was the highest gambling game you witnessed or heard about other than your own?
PM: I’ve heard of very high stakes games.
Zelman: What do you call a “very high stakes” game?
PM: People with money sometimes play for $500 or a thousand dollars a point.
Zelman: And over the whole period, what could a loser lose? $10,000? $20,000? I’ve heard of games with people losing $200,000.
PM: No comment.
Zelman: What was your most exciting tournament match?
PM: I’ve had a lot. Tournament matches have a kind of excitement that money play doesn’t even when it’s high-stakes play because there’s a sort of finality at being eliminated. I go watch the finals at all the major international tournaments and that’s always exciting. I played a match four or five years ago where the match kept on swinging back and forth every roll in incredible ways, and it was just very exciting. And of course just a function of being in a big international tournament, being in the finals and semifinals by itself makes it exciting.
Zelman: What was the largest purse you played for in a tournament?
PM: Well, I won last spring at a tournament in New York where the auction pool first prize was $26,000 or $27,000 and the players pool was about $5,000. [The 1975 Children’s Cancer Fund Tournament – Paul beat Chuck Papazian in the finals. He won the same tournament in 1974.]
Zelman: Have you ever hustled anyone?
PM: I’m not a hustler by nature. I’ve played for money sometimes.
Zelman: How do you spot a hustler?
PM: You see, the word ‘hustler’ is funny. It’s hard to define what’s a hustler and what’s not. I’m not a hustler in this sense. To be a hustler, the key is to actively misrepresent your abilities. You have to pretend you’ll play differently than you do. Right?
Now fortunately in backgammon this is not the case. In backgammon I can play my normal game and people just don’t recognize what they’re playing against. So I don’t misrepresent anything, which is a very important point. I don’t have to come on and pretend I’m something I’m not when I sometimes play for money. People still play. Usually when I play I have an edge. Now if you call this hustling – well, I don’t know. I don’t enjoy playing players who are hopeless while going out of my way to set them up.
Zelman: I know you’re not going to go and take someone’s money. But what I’m trying to say is if someone comes to you and wants to play for money and you know they’re not really a good player, do you take the game?
PM: It depends. Usually they’ll know who I am and they’ll know my international reputation so a lot of times they’ll be playing sort of for amusement and they’ll be prepared to lose.
Zelman: How do you spot a really good player? Is there a way?
PM: Well, I’ll tell you, you can’t spot a good player by how they dress or how they talk because skill and talent cuts over all socioeconomic classes. I spot a good player by how he plays. I watch him play.
An extraordinary part of the game is that I can go into a bar or somewhere like that and people don’t know me, they will not recognize that they are playing someone of top caliber. Of course after a while when they lose, and if they keep on losing, it will begin dawning on them somewhat. But basically they wouldn’t be able to tell. In other words, if they were playing Bobby Fischer they’d realize right away they didn’t have a chance but in backgammon you have to be good to recognize someone who’s good.
Zelman: Do you like Calcutta auctions?
PM: Yes.
Zelman: Then what changes would you like to see in the auction?
PM: No major changes. Some minor variations to rules and how they’re set up and things like that.
Zelman: Would you care to comment or are you going to get involved in that in your book?
PM: No, I don’t discuss that in my book. But no major changes anyway.
Zelman: What was the highest bid on you?
PM: Well, I think I probably one time sold for the highest price anyone ever sold for. In London at the Clermont Club I sold for 2,000 pounds.
Zelman: Two thousand pounds! That’s about $4,200.
PM: It was a lot more then, about $5,000. [In today’s currency, it would be about $20,000.]
Zelman: That’s a lot of bread.
PM: So that’s the highest I’ve ever been sold for.
Zelman: How did you do in that match?
PM: Got knocked out in the very first round. The very first. Bombed out in the very first round.
Zelman: Did you buy yourself back, or half of it or anything?
PM: A quarter of myself.
Zelman: Do you usually buy yourself back?
PM: No. It depends on what I sell for in relation to the other players, how long the matches are, how much is siphoned off into the consolation, how much goes to charity.
Zelman: Do you get nervous gambling for your own money?
PM: No.
Zelman: Not at all?
PM: I like playing. As I told you before, I like playing and the tension and pressure.
Zelman: When you’re at an auction, do you ever buy fields while you’re still playing?
PM: Yes.
Zelman: I saw a lot of that going on. It was my first auction and I had no idea – everybody’s buying each other. So you could basically end up coming first, winning that first money, owning half of yourself, also owning the second guy, the third guy, and so on.
PM: Conceivably.
Zelman: Has that ever happened?
PM: I’ve done well in some auctions. You buy people up. Like the guy who paid $5,000 for me and all of a sudden your horses start dropping like flies.
Zelman: If someone really wants to learn to play well, what do you recommend they do? How do they go about it?
PM: Well, you have to practice. You’ve got to try to play people who are better than you. If you’re serious, you’ve got to go to tournaments and try to see the best players play and watch them. You’ve got to think about the game. If people really want to learn, they can also take lessons.
Zelman: I understand you have a book coming out shortly. What type of book is it?
PM: It’s called The Complete Book of Backgammon. It’s being published by Quadrangle, that’s the New York Times Press. [The book’s title was shortened to just “Backgammon” when it was published in November, 1976.]
Zelman: It’s coming out in hardback or softcover?
PM: Hardcover.
Zelman: A hardcover edition. Would you like to talk about the book a little bit?
PM: It’s going to be a definitive work on the game. I spent years working on it and organizing it and classifying things and studying the structure of the game, so in other words when you look at a position you don’t just think about that particular position but I show you a structure so you understand the reasons behind the move applied to that position and similar positions.
I go into great detail in the middle game, how you’re trying to play it, what you’re trying to do. But the whole thing is to make an organized structure of the game instead of just roll for roll and play for play. A lot of the structure enables you to view the game, to think about it from different angles, different perspectives in an organized type of way which hasn’t really been done in any of the other books.
If you took all the other books and took a reasonably talented person and had him go home and read all the other books on the game and come back a few months later, there would be glaring deficiencies in his game. If you had a reasonably talented person take my book and study it, I could almost guarantee he’ll be a competent player.
The first third of the book is for beginners and it goes into great detail on structure and other basic things that beginners have to know as they go up in competence of play. The first third takes structure step-by-step with illustrated games which I spent a long time composing just to illustrate the basic concepts in the order they should be learned by beginners.
Then the remaining two-thirds of the book is for – I shouldn’t say for advanced players only – but for all players who have some familiarity with the game. Not necessarily advanced at all, because the way I’ve written the book is not technical. In other words it’s not all technical and mathematical. I don’t sit there constantly discussing the number of shots. No technical knowledge like that is required. What I do is discuss concepts. The book is very conceptual. It can be a profit both to an expert who sees the concepts verbalized, and to just an average player who’s used to playing around. Both can profit from the latter part of the book.
The difference between my book and a lot of the other books is this: if you take a position from my book and ask every above-average player “What’s the right play?”, they’re all going to give you the same answer. But you ask them “Why?” and they’ll all give you a different answer which will be particular to that position. Now what I’ve been doing, what I consider my major achievement in backgammon – more than even becoming a top player – is verbalizing and making explicit what in other good players is just a sort of sense or feel. I’m verbalizing in terms of structures or concepts what it is about the player’s move that’s right. I feel this is my main contribution to backgammon.
And that’s the key to the book, figuring out things in orderly ways, so you have an orderly way of thinking about the game, as opposed to a series of isolated positions. In other words, I have a whole chapter about when it’s right to slot and when it’s wrong to slot and why. Or when it’s right to play aggressively and dangerously and when it’s not.
Zelman: You deal in backgames, you deal in running games, the doubling cube, you deal in all the aspects of backgammon.
PM: Right. You see, to me the middle game is the main part of the game. What it is you’re trying to do, how you go about doing it. Although I have a very complete section on bearing off and the technical aspects of that.
Zelman: Then it’s basically an encyclopedia on backgammon.
PM: Not particularly an encyclopedia. There’s a lot of meat, a lot of material there. And it’s a big book. You wouldn’t want to sit down and read it at one sitting. Just because there is a lot to study, a lot to think about, a lot to learn. But it’s not hard to follow because it’s not at all technical. Just because there is so much there, all of a sudden you have all sorts of new ways of viewing the game.
Zelman: What is this book going to sell for?
PM: It’s going to be expensive. I’m not sure just how much because there’s going to be about 650 diagrams, about 400 oversized pages, but we haven’t decided on color or black & white yet. There’s a lot of material. It’ll retain for about $20. [$80-$100 in today’s dollars.]
Zelman: That’s not a bad price.
PM: Well, as I say, there’s a lot in it and I spent years working on this.
Zelman: What sort of future do you feel lies ahead for backgammon in general?
PM: I feel there’s a really excellent future. I feel that backgammon is really catching on all over the country. It used to be a sort of small, elitist game and now the game has percolated down to people all over. In terms of sales of the boards, more and more people are playing it all the time. In terms of clubs in not just major cities like New York or Miami, Chicago and Detroit and New Orleans, places like that, people are beginning to play all over. I feel it’s definitely here to stay. It’s not a passing fad or anything like that.
It’s such a natural game because it is a game of skill and yet it has a lot of advantages over other games like chess or bridge. For one thing it’s very easy to learn, it just takes a few minutes. And once you learn it you can begin enjoying it right away.
At every level you play you can enjoy it. If I sit down and play a beginner at chess, I can get virtually no pleasure out of it because I just wipe him off the board. And in bridge you have to memorize so much before you can even begin appreciating the game or enjoying it. In backgammon that’s not so.
Zelman: Do you play bridge?
PM: A little bit, not very well. I’m a notoriously poor bridge player. But backgammon is very easily learned in the sense that you can appreciate it and enjoy it at different levels. The game is also very natural because it goes very quickly. An average game in my experience usually takes about five minutes.
Zelman: I’ve seen you in match play where you sit and ponder each and every move.
PM: Well, this was in the finals of a tournament. Then you play a lot less, maybe four or five games an hour. If we’re just playing around, we get 20 games in an hour. Besides going fast it’s also a very social game. To play chess, you’ve got to be able to sit down for a few hours. To play bridge, you’ve got to be able to get four people together. Backgammon is a very casual sort of game, you can meet people, people don’t get upset when you talk.
One of the trends is a combination backgammon club and discotheque which is half discotheque/eating club and half backgammon club. These are springing up – Cavallero’s in New York, Pips in Los Angeles, Oby’s in Miami, Knickers in New York.
Zelman: You forgot to mention Knickers here in Knickers City. Is Cavallero’s still around?
PM: Yes. So in that sense it’s a social game. It has all these advantages and yet there’s a real subtlety of mind, an intellectual point of view which of course is probably not recognized. It’s a real fine, deep, solid intellectual game. It’s not just like playing checkers or something where you’re just passing away time. So it can’t be cited in that aspect.
I think definitely the game is here to stay. To me the amazing thing is that it didn’t become popular sooner, that people just weren’t aware of it. It’s been dormant for so long. And now people have really begun to appreciate it. I think there are going to be more and more people playing.
Zelman: So basically what you’re saying is that if someone … Let’s use an analogy. Golf is here to stay. Someone could really practice and practice and become a golf professional. They can go onto the golf scene and become another Arnold Palmer. In the future of tournament play someone could really come up and …
PM: New players are coming up.
Zelman: As a professional, do you feel the tournament is here to stay, that there will be a real tournament scene?
PM: There is already a sort of tournament scene. One of the trends I hope to see more and more of is to have more and more outside sponsors adding money and so on – which is happening now.
Zelman: Are there any aspects of backgammon we haven’t covered which you’d like to mention to our readers? We’ve tried to go over questions you would like to answer, something which would be interesting to our readers.
PM: Just that you should learn backgammon. It’s a fascinating game. One of the other fascinations I should mention is the interplay between the luck and the skill. It’s what makes the game always exciting and always novel.
Zelman: I’m glad you brought that question up. What is this that people are asking, “Oh, he’s lucky.” Is he really lucky? Does luck play a very big part in the game?
PM: Well, different people have different theories. I’m very much a rationalist. I don’t believe in the dice having memory, although the game can be a very cruel and frustrating game. A lot of the time it just seems that the dice are laughing at you, trying to mock you. But basically I believe that when the luck runs out, the skill will show. And it does.
Sure there are unlucky people who lose incredible games you never think they’re going to lose. This happens. It’s part of the excitement – never knowing when it’s going to happen. Or you can win incredible games too. Though people are usually less prone to remember those games. There are amazing things, games which are supposedly totally lost swinging around, and this is part of the excitement. This definitely does happen.
Yet you have control over things in the sense that there is an enormous amount of skill involved. The interplay between these two is one of the reasons it makes a great and fascinating game.
Zelman: Make sure our readers know about your book again.
PM: The main book which I’ve already written, a comprehensive book, is The Complete Book of Backgammon. It’ll be coming out next fall, to be published by Quadrangle, the New York Times publisher.
Zelman: Is that going to go into a softcover edition later on?
PM: They’ll eventually be a softcover edition, yes.
Zelman: Could I have the pleasure of playing a game with you?
PM: Sure.
