Backgammon and Map Making

Let me start by offering the following disclaimers: I don’t play at a consistent pr of below four. I make blunders with checker play and the cube. My win ratio is below 60%.

Nonetheless, does one need to be a world-class player to be a good teacher? If all world-class players make good teachers, does that mean that all good teachers should make world-class players? No. Let me offer the analogy of English teachers, being one myself. Having an extensive and intricate understanding of literature can sometimes be a hindrance rather than an advantage. You might instead bamboozle your students with your knowledge and, in turn, they will learn nothing. It does not translate that the more you know, the more your students will know. This might even have the disadvantage of you alienating students and them learning both nothing now and also choosing not to learn anything in the future.

Some of the best teachers I knew were not in fact voracious readers; it surprised me at first, but then I realised that they compensated for this with the knowledge of real-life experience – it was hard-won and in many ways a fiction of its own. It was the balance and synthesis of these two things (knowledge and experience) that enabled them to engage students on a deeper level than another teacher whose heady love for reading blindsided him to his students’ needs and led inevitably to obfuscation and disharmony.

When I started teaching backgammon, I began with the Socratic tenet that all I knew was that I knew nothing. This was a good starting point.  To be honest, the first five years of my playing backgammon was a write-off exactly because I thought I knew how to play. I had a little learning but didn’t realise how much of a dangerous thing it was. After five years and a number of setbacks, no doubt expedited by myself, I went back to the drawing board, tail between my legs. This is what I mean by real-life experience.

I began to reverse-engineer where I had gone wrong. Why did I not know what I thought I knew? And what could be done to resolve this. I first started to read books – everything from Magriel, Michi, Olsen, Bray etc. They were fascinating and full of great positions but this only got me so far. It was like eating from a great buffet but afterwards not remembering any distinctive dish. Everything swirled together and I felt more confused than ever. I was back to the little learning.

I reflected where I had gone wrong and I started again. Only a fool makes the same mistake twice so I read a single chapter from Michi. The chapter was on bearing off against an ace-point holding game. I read it and made notes. Then, I opened the other books and looked for any other content on ace-point holding games. I followed this up by looking online for any content on ace-point holding games. And finally, I went onto XG and started playing around with – you’ve got it – ace-point holding games. 

After all this, I felt that I had finally learned something, albeit something small. Importantly, it was small and meaningful, and it gave me insight into how to learn and also, in time, how to teach. I stepped back from what I had done to try to understand what exactly I had done, systematically.  I saw the process as a sophisticated form of question-asking. For example, if instead I had been investigating the five-point instead of an ace-point holding game, I might ask myself the following: (a) “what’s the five point” to (b) “why do I need the five point” to (c) “what is the value of the five point” to (d) “how is the value of the five point different from the value of the four point” to (e) “what do we mean by value in backgammon” to (f) “how do I recognise value in points” and so on. 

Note to self: It is not about the answers but rather about the questions you ask yourself, an inner monologue where the questions become more nuanced as your understanding becomes deeper thus generating more nuanced questions and so on. This is the real learning.

Let me offer another analogy. When I first moved to Brighton, I was excited to see the Laines. However, on first visiting, I found myself completely lost! There were so many lanes and alleys and cut-throughs, it was confusing to know what went where. Yet, I persisted. The next time I visited the Laines, things became a little more familiar and so did each further time I visited. I was training myself into a new way of seeing. On repeated visits, I began to form a kind of visual map in my head of which lanes went were, and so became more confident on where I would end up by following which path.

The same is true of backgammon. Some players win more than others players because they have a better visual map. They understand that certain moves will more likely lead to certain outcomes; they do not get lost. The map is a work in progress. We add to it all the time. Much like walking through the laines will present new sights to me that I hadn’t hitherto seen – a freshly-painted window pane, an etching on a drain cover – so studying backgammon will yield fresh possibilities and embellish the map. Backgammon is ultimately a type of cartography.

An example. A player who is trailing at a 3a/2a score will know that the doubling window has opened should he first throw a 3-1 or 4-2. He will then wait to see what the other player throws in return and decide on his cube action. He will know this because of the visual map of references he has made through the admixture of experience and knowledge. He will know what leads where. Rather than having read numerous books on this in a buffet-like fashion, he would have followed something similar to the steps above, asking himself more and more nuanced questions. Not only will he know that the doubling window is open, he will know when it closes depending on what the opponent rolls in return. He will also know whether it is or isn’t a double at other match scores. But most importantly he will know why.

A good teacher teaches a student to ask not how, but why. Ask yourself these three simple questions: 1) When you make the five-point with an opening 3-1, why are you making the five-point? 2) Why is the bar-point worse than the five-point? 3) Why is it better to have three checkers on your eight point as opposed to two? 

Ask yourself: are these questions really that simple to answer? Have you seriously thought about these questions? Do you just make the five-point because you read somewhere that the five-point is good to make? Do you just do it because everyone else does it? What if Magriel recommended putting vinegar in your tea for extra flavour?

This is how you make the map. You question every assumption, no matter who said it. You investigate every decision. And you constantly ask why until you know that your logic is correct. The beauty of this is that by hitting dead-ends or getting lost, you will also learn to find your way. This is what is missing from many books. All the errors. The times people got lost. The experience. The journey. Good luck on yours.