Backgammon Super Genius Quiz – Reviewed

 

Take a close look at this position. It’s a money game Take up to one minute to choose your play.

 

 

Your choices are:

a)     15/10, 6/5*

b)     13/8, 6/5*

c)     7/2*, 6/5*

 

I will talk more about this position at the end. I was leery of giving you a position at all, but since this graces the front cover of James Vogl’s Backgammon Super Genius Quiz, you will be prematurely exposed if you buy it, or even if you simply fondle a copy while browsing the boutique at your next tournament.

In the mid-seventies, after beginner books had saturated the backgammon market, authors sought alternatives. The quiz book was born. Joe Dwek’s Backgammon For Profit, which appeared just before Paul Magriel’s Backgammon, was a quiz book, each page a new problem to be solved. Some quiz books were more unabashed, calling themselves quizzes, and offering scoring for the problems solved. While some, especially the easy ones, are more ephemeral than others, since once you have finished the quiz, it feels as though you are done with the book, others repay repeated study.

 

James Vogl’s book is in the latter category. As quizzes go, he has taken the format awfully far. The book comprises one hundred questions, and is divided into ten sections covering different aspects of the game, each with ten questions. That level of organization takes it well past the more typical “here are some problems that came up in my games, and I’ll see if there’s a book in them” efforts. James was just getting started.

He rounded up twelve players, his “super geniuses.” I am not sure I would class them with Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, and John Von Neumann, but they are sharp guys, and more importantly, excellent backgammon players. The twelve are: Aref Alipour, Bob Wachtel, David Wells, Dirk Scheimann … (I am following the author’s alphabetizing by given name, not surname) …Hideaki Ueda, Joe Russell, Masayuki “Mochy” Mochizuki, Ryan Rebello, Sander Lylloff, Sebastian Wilkinson, Wilcox Snellings, and Zdenek Zizka. If you aren’t sure who all of them are – I wasn’t – there is a long introductory chapter where you are invited to “Meet the Geniuses.” I know seven of them personally, and had heard of some of the others, and so can attest that this is an exceptionally strong group.

They agreed to compete in a timed event, ten minutes for each section of ten questions. I recommend that you read the book the same way. You do not need to do all ten sections at one sitting, giving you a slight advantage on them. But you should get a timer, and time yourself, writing down all your answers. I created a spreadsheet, recording my plays, and later the number correct, the equity lost on incorrect answers, and whether the incorrect answers were errors, or blunders. This matches what James did for his quizzers. By keeping close track of my answers, I will be able to review my errors, searching for patterns, or for particular types of problems where I had a blind spot.

 

After each section, the answers are given. Though not every quizzer commented on every problem (indeed, none commented on every problem) there were always several who had comments, offering their insights into the position. The reader is able to see what answer each quizzer chose, not only whether they got it right or wrong, and totals for the section, as well as running totals are given.

 

These are tough problems! How tough? The best anyone did was 56 correct. Two of the twelve scored 37. I couldn’t match them, scoring just 35. I tied for most blunders (18), and only in the total equity given up did I best a couple of them. I missed a few because I thought “quiz factor,” and a few more because, after reminding myself not to look for a quiz factor, a problem came along which had it. For instance, without giving too much away, there was a problem where my first thought was “I once saw a position like this!” That previous time, the answer was a horribly ugly, anti-positional move. “No, that would be too quiz factory!” But yes, it was the horrible, ugly play.

The problem I set you at the beginning is taken from the first section in the book, problem #10. You should write down your answer, and when you buy the book and take the quiz, give yourself nine minutes for the other nine problems.

The worst answer is 15/10, 6/5*. If you chose that, as five super geniuses did, score yourself with an error, and -.057. If you chose 7/2*, 6/5* you also made an error, -.048. That’s what I did, as did the other seven super geniuses. No one picked 13/8, 6/5*, the best play.

 

What is going on? Why strip the midpoint instead of bringing down the blot from 15/10? Mochy found the best explanation. He looked at the difference in equity between all of the responding rolls. Most numbers show very small swings, but 55 is somewhat large, because he can hit twice, and point. However the killer is 64! Bringing the blot to the 10pt transforms that from poor roll to joker.