Backgammon: Luck or Skill?
Backgammon is a peculiar board game wherein a player's skill and his luck both play important roles to winning. Let's take a look at the debate and interplay between these to aspects of the game.
There are two schools of thought in backgammon. Some believe that a successful backgammon game plays particularly on a person's luck. While others determine to be quite mathematical and insist that a player has a considerable chance of winning by properly understanding probabilities.
It is true that certain strategies play a lot on a player's luck. For instance, a backgammon blitz at times begins when a player makes a lucky double roll and begins hitting enemy checkers at will. Thus sending those checkers to the bar while taking good positions.
Another strategy that plays on luck that we may consider is the back game. Where one player is really behind and waits on mother luck to smile on him so the opponent makes a bad roll, opens up, makes a blot, facilitating a good hit. In any case that may save the game.
A prime versus prime game comes to a crashing halt when one player makes an unlucky double. Making his checkers move along faster thus breaking up the prime.
There are those who say that even though a player may know all the moves and strategies in backgammon, when faced with an extremely player who knows only little, chances are he still loses due to the lack of luck.
The other school of thought is that winning backgammon consist in understanding probabilities. One example is when deciding if a player is to make a hit or not. Disciples of the school of skill would recommend hitting a checker that is 7 points away from the next friendly checker.
Why? Because 7 is the most probable number that would come out of a two dice combination. Any player can easily make a 7 by a 6 and 1, a 5 and 2, or a 4 and 3.
Another skill employed by practitioners of probabilities has to do with opening rolls and how pieces move depending on dice rolls. These folks calculate the probability of an advantage before deciding on making the next move.
Since there are more players who rely more on probability and skill rather than luck we can expect that a lot has been written on this particular topic.
At any rate, we can still expect that a good win would still rely greatly on both a player's luck and on his skill. We can never really disregard the probability of the improbable. We can therefore paraphrase an old addage as "luck helps those who help themselves."