Backgammon – Skill? Luck? Or both?
History shows us that backgammon has been played through the centuries by many countries all over the work. The games has become even more popular in the last decades. That makes you think is there more than the board, dices and simple rules to play the game?
I’m sure that most of you will think it just takes a lucky hand - rolling the dices and hoping that you get the right combination. And I can assure you this is not all that it takes. Why would there be countless gaming techniques, strategies and books that help and improve a players game? You can understand what I mean when you watch a professional backgammon player like Bob, Falafel and Michy:
I can agree that the games has a certain element of luck. But that is only half of the story. The other half is how you move your checkers on the board and how you block your opponent. Even though the purpose is to be to remove all of the checkers from the board, you still have to do it first and this is where skill becomes a big part of the game. For example you can choose to block the other player or you can try to run with your checkers without interfering much your opponent’s checkers.
These are one of the two most basic strategies but these are not all of them. As I said there are number of other techniques that anybody can learn if he puts the hours to study and improve his game. Backgammon programs can also help because they play stronger than any person and can show you the proper play in every situation you have doubts.
As a conclusion, I can say that the game of backgammon requires both skill and luck. And besides what would the game have looked like without the element of luck? Not being sure what the next dice is going to be makes backgammon so interesting and addictive at the same time.
About the Author
Nikolay is a computer sciences student from Bulgaria with more than 5 years of experience in poker & backgammon. I try to incorporate techniques from that industry into online backgammon to make it as popular as possible. I play backgammon for fun or money as it is an astonishing game.
