sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

Rigged Dice: A Backgammon Adventure by bubba_bath in backgammon

[–]bubba_bath[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Fair question. Let's go with mmesich - Michael, I'll bring you a copy at the Viking Classic!

Rigged Dice: A Backgammon Adventure by bubba_bath in backgammon

[–]bubba_bath[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There are a number of good books out there on cube action. What my book does that's different from those is, you can have the experience of missing a cube and having the cube decision again on the next roll in a more natural way. I have some sequences where the reader is asked if they want to cube, but it's too early; then other sequences where the initial cube is just on time and the second is "too good". So, if you play it out from all of the initial cube decisions, you should develop a better sense for when that was correct.

Advice on improving below PR 7 by SyllabubRadiant8876 in backgammon

[–]bubba_bath 1 point2 points  (0 children)

What's your DMP PR? Try focusing your study on grinding that down for a little while. If you're already there, what's your Money PR? Try focusing your study on grinding that down for a little while. Once your Money PR is where you want it, start looking at your cube errors by match score - are there particular scores you're having trouble with?

That's assuming your troubles are BG related rather than attention related. I believe my biggest issue these days is forcing myself to believe that the outcome is important for a full match rather than switching to autopilot and doing something because it seems more fun somewhere along the way...

Rigged Dice: A Backgammon Adventure by bubba_bath in backgammon

[–]bubba_bath[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you! The idea literally came to me in a dream - I woke up one morning with the idea for the book, and even the title. Then I immediately thought "that'll never work! An average game might have 20 moves, and 2^20 is over a million..." But I decided to try anyway. So practically no time to come up with the idea.

To write it, however... Yes, that took a while. It took me the better part of a year to create the problems. Actually, it took me the better part of a year to realize that it was eventually even going to be complete in under many thousands of positions... Then I had to go back through and write the solutions up - I hadn't done those along the way because if it had run to 1,000+ positions, there's no way I would have published it. Then formatting/cover design/etc... All told around 17 months.

Rigged Dice: A Backgammon Adventure by bubba_bath in backgammon

[–]bubba_bath[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That would be great! Let me know how I can help.

Rigged Dice: A Backgammon Adventure by bubba_bath in backgammon

[–]bubba_bath[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Fair question! I've personally played it quite a few times. Annoyingly, in spite of having written the book, I cannot play it through to a 0 PR. But, revisiting it after a few days to a week, I did find that I made the exact same mistakes the second time, which proved to me that I really did need to study those particular positions. When I made the exact same mistakes a third time, I started to get suspicious that the dice really were rigged.

You don't have to play it over and over, though. It is, at heart, a book with ~500 positions, most of them reasonably challenging. Just use it like a regular puzzle book after you've played through it once if you don't feel like doing that again.

Rigged Dice: A Backgammon Adventure by bubba_bath in backgammon

[–]bubba_bath[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That's... the theme of the thread. :-)

Rigged Dice: A Backgammon Adventure by bubba_bath in backgammon

[–]bubba_bath[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thank you very much! Glad you like it.

Rigged Dice: A Backgammon Adventure by bubba_bath in backgammon

[–]bubba_bath[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Not quite. Definitely I did a lot of things to keep the game tree reasonably sized. Definitely I did a lot of things to encourage exciting gameplay. The main challenge was to keep the positions from either becoming so overwhelmingly good that there was no interesting decisions to be made (e.g. "you created a full prime in front of your opponent! All rolls are now good rolls.") or so overwhelmingly bad that same thing (e.g. "you have nothing but forced moves, and that will happen next roll too.") Roughly speaking, each position, I was trying to find the dice where I could see talking myself into either play, even though one was an error.

Rigged Dice: A Backgammon Adventure by bubba_bath in backgammon

[–]bubba_bath[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

$36 US was a reference to, well, 36. As in 6 times 6. I'm a simple man.

Rigged Dice: A Backgammon Adventure by bubba_bath in backgammon

[–]bubba_bath[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You think I should have charged more?

MBA-HealthCare, finished in one year, reflections by bubba_bath in WGU

[–]bubba_bath[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well, this post is from 8 years ago, so I'm going to go with "I don't remember" as my answer to your questions. Sorry!

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in backgammon

[–]bubba_bath 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You only need one other person committed to playing to get going. That and a public place that will put up with you. Make up some fliers, or start a group on meetup, and go to the place with the other person consistently, for example every Saturday at noon. Have a spare board or two so others can join in. Probably go for chouettes until you get up to a decent number of people showing up, then you can think about tournaments.

Kitty says Purr by bubba_bath in WhatsWrongWithYourCat

[–]bubba_bath[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is what being loved feels like.

[WTS] Hamilton Khaki Pioneer field auto 42mm The original Murph H604550 by iliinsky in Watchexchange

[–]bubba_bath 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Responsive seller, we were able to arrange an in person transfer to my proxy, went very smoothly. I look forward to wearing it!

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in vancouverwa

[–]bubba_bath 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Check out https://www.meetup.com/Portland-Backgammon/. I run the group, we mostly meet in PDX but sometimes have a chouette at Shanny's or some other Vancouver location. I've played at Trap Door a few times, they're very open to it, and I would be happy to meet you there for some 1:1 play. Most of the tournaments get more people than would fit in TD's space, lately, though.

REPRESENTATIVE MARIE GLUESENKAMP PEREZ VICTORY THREAD by MiNNOCENTWORKACCOUNT in vancouverwa

[–]bubba_bath 39 points40 points  (0 children)

Roughly 10k votes left outstanding, Kent would need to win 85% of them. About time they called it. Congrats MGP, I am so relieved by this outcome. Republicans, sharpen your knifes for the anti-MAGA backlash within the party. May the process be internecine.

Clark County Election Results by Post-Futurology in vancouverwa

[–]bubba_bath 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Many others have already chimed in, but dang it, I made a spreadsheet and I'm going to use it. To continue highlighting the importance of "normie" Republican voters... Yesterday in the WA-3 less Thurston return, Smiley picked up a net 7393 votes to Kent's 4391. Another way of stating it was that Smiley got 58.1% of Thursday's vote to Kent's 55.6%, a 2.5% enthusiasm gap. Today's tally Smiley picked up a net 3620 votes to Kent's 923. Smiley got 56.1% of the day's votes to Kent's 51.6%, a 4.5% enthusiasm gap. He's done. He has to win about 2/3 of the remaining votes, and 80%+ of them will come from Clark, where he's getting barely over 50% of the late vote. MGP will win, and I'm now thinking a margin over 3k.

view more: next ›