Masterclass Review

Should your ear have not yet been witness to the music of a thousand shaking cups at Istanbul, then one way to gauge the growing popularity of backgammon is to look at the recent book publications. The past couple of years alone we have seen a flurry of titles by some of the best players in the world: Dirk Schiemann, Michihito Kageyama, Jacob ‘Stick’ Rice, Bill Robertie… and now we have Mochy and Marc Olsen’s Backgammon Masterclass, expertly written by Alec Barr.

This is the book we have all been waiting for! What makes this book so special is that it is the only one written for a popular audience by a Super Grandmaster, and that it is also a collaborative approach between two of the sharpest minds in backgammon. Reading the book is like sidling up to the best Doubles team at a tournament and listening in to their thoughts when they play.

Masterclass is a three-way collective project of SGM Masayuki ‘Mochy’ Mochizuki, GM Marc Olsen (CEO of Backgammon Galaxy), and Alec Barr, which is composed of a number of exclusive lectures they have given (one of which Mochy said is the best he’s ever given!). The book is split into four main chapters like the four quadrants of a backgammon board: strategic visualization; game plan dynamics; back game positions; and cube action in undefined positions. Each chapter is jam-packed with positions, XG analysis and clear explanation by the GMs. This is followed up by a number of quiz positions at the end of the chapters so that you can test yourself to see how much you have retained from the knowledge imparted. 

The positions are elegantly presented and the explanations are written in a clear-typeface with key ideas emboldened much like Michy’s proverbs in his popular books. For example, written in size 50 font, ‘Play according to the game plan’ is like someone holding a megaphone to your ear to do, as Stick says, some of that thinking stuff. 

Game plan is so fundamental to becoming a good player that if you are not already thinking about this, then you need to go and buy this book immediately or cut your losses and take up Ludo. Not since, What’s Your Game Plan?, has a book so elegantly described the importance of game plan: When do I prime? When do I blitz? When do I hide under the table and whimper? Ok, the last not so much but the previous two, an emphatic ‘Yes’, and Marc and Mochy do a fantastic job of explaining the WHY of the position as opposed to the WHAT.

The time and effort it takes to travel between these two Ws can sometimes feel akin to the journey of Sisyphus trying to push that blasted boulder up a mountain – but luckily M&M have done the heavy lifting for us and distilled years of work and experience into paragraphs that are lucid and intelligible to the lay reader. The clarity of the prose is largely due to Alec Barr’s tireless efforts in parsing the hieroglyphic brilliance of M&Ms backgammon knowledge.

The first two chapters of the book offer a deep dive into game plan: that’s 50%. It’s like the authors knew how important this was as a foundation stone to improving! Mochy does a great job of showing common pitfalls in thinking when players underestimate the Prime or Blitz value in a position. Often even a few moves into the game, he demonstrates the potential for catastrophic mistakes from misreading the board (Ok, nobody’s going to die but he does emphasise, repeatedly, how important it is to stop and think). Normally I would advise against hearing voices in your head but following Magriel and listening to the checkers whisper to you is an acceptable form of madness and is encouraged throughout the book. 

In the second chapter Marc flows forward from the first with a wider focus on all four game plans: the previous two from chapter one plus Racing and Contact. He explains the difference between ‘strategy’ and ‘tactics’ and emphasizes the importance of maximizing value in your checker plays. This is something that often is not considered enough. Ask yourself before you make a play such as the opening five-point, why are you doing this and what value does it add to your position? Now apply this to all positions as Marc does in the chapter. With snappy phrases such as ‘action zone’ and ‘finding balance’ to help you remember the ideas presented I wonder whether Marc gave this talk after taking a karate class. 

Next, we have a chapter on backgames by Mochy. Again, game plan – to be honest, they could have called this book Game Plan but, let’s be honest, Masterclass sounds cooler, right? Now, let me pause here and say this: This is the first serious chapter on backgames in 20 years to appear in a backgammon book and the only one ever written by (super) grandmaster! Have you bought the book yet? Basically we can all argue that XG doesn’t completely understand the complexity of backgames but if I was to take the advice of someone on this confounding topic then it would be Mochy. He’s probably spent more time thinking about backgames than you’ve been thinking about games per se.

Taking on the ambitious task of writing a chapter solely focused on different backgames is impressive – and it pays off! Mochy doesn’t get lost in the minutiae of positions but instead focuses on palatable concepts such as ‘flexibility’ and ‘timing’ to help readers approach backgames with confidence. Explaining complex ideas in simple prose is the mark of a grandmaster.

Pretty much any position, no matter how complex, can be broken down into its conceptual parts if you have learnt the right ways to do so. Everything looks like a spanner to someone who isn’t a mechanic, right? Mochy and Marc give you the tools and show you how to use them, which I can vouch for, having being inspired to create my own highly-powered sports car. Joking! They gave me the confidence to create my own YouTube channel, @BackgammonIsBeautiful, where I reinforce key concepts in backgammon.

After Mochy’s work on backgames, we have a brilliant final chapter on undefined middle game positions by Marc Olsen. Here we have Marc developing his work from previous books on the value equation, which is basically a better version of PRaT. If you’ve spent five seconds watching backgammon on YouTube, you’ll know that Marc is a great teacher and this comes across in the chapter. He offers a visual map on how you can read the patterns of a position to come to the right cube decision. He teaches you how to seerather than how to look at which patterns emerge from the checker distribution and how this guides you forwards. This follows on well from the earlier chapters on game plan where again recognising the subtleties in shapes over the board can often be the difference between choosing the right play and a huge blunder.

Given the books’ focus on game plan and key concepts, I believe this book has value to players of all levels, although expert players may take umbrage at the paucity of maths and number-crunching in the book. This of course may come as a relief to some players who get nauseous anytime someone mentions ‘Gammon Value’ or the number ‘1296’. I would argue that one of the strengths of the book is that it doesn’t become lost in the matrix of mathematics and instead focuses on conceptual understanding and clear explanation with a few tables neatly summarising key ideas.

The only number you need to know is 89, which is the number of dollars it will cost to buy this book. That’s equivalent to a couple of months at the gym, right? Or a pair of trainers. Consider this book as a mental workout and the money an investment in yourself.  

But most of all, Mochy and Marc are great ambassadors of the game and this is a book ultimately for the community, written by one of the community! It is democratic in that its content reaches all levels of players; it announces that this is the class and you can be a master too.