In an attempt to clarify the current status of the game of backgammon I have written this article. The fact is that I am merelyan observer and have no special qualifications. Many people are capable of writing this, yet I don't think any have. The info here is accurate to the best of my ability. A few of my observations are mere speculation. Hopefully I make those clear.

The game of backgammon in some form or another has existed for several millenia. The current "Western version", which I concentrate on here, has been played for only about 3/4 of a century. I emphasize WESTERN because a related version is played in the Eastern Mediterranean and Eastern Europe. The major difference between the two games is the use of the doubling cube in the Western form. Surprisingly the inventor(s) of the cube remains unknown even though it has existed only since the 1920's. This one modification leads to such a rich enhancement of strategy and tactics that the modern Western BG has separated itself from its more fundamental relative. My comments from now on are only intended to relate to this form and I will now dispense with the "Western" adjective. ("Eastern" backgammon is also quite popular, and probably has many more proponents/players. A similar status report would be interesting to many GoL readers.)

PART I: A brief history of backgammon--1920-1990.

1920's. ("Roaring 20's")

1940's.

1960's.

1970's.

By the second half of the decade, backgammon was extremely popular not only in the adult social and recreational establishments (country clubs, night clubs, etc.) but among young people as well. The game had exanded from the upper class to the booming middle class. A typical Christmas gift was a backgammon set. Local weekly tournaments were common in cities larger than 100,000 population and national tournaments thrived. In Indianapolis, where I lived, there were a series of Saturday afternoon round-robin contests held at different shopping malls. Even though the prize pool was minimal (these events were aimed at beginners) the attendance of each was around 100.

The US national tournament scene was also going strong. Most major cities held regional (full weekend) tournaments with multiple divisions and significant entry fees and prize pools. The "World Amateur Backgammon Championships" with the "Plimpton Cup" trophy were promoted by Henry Wattson (of New York) and backers. Held in Las Vegas, these annual events flaunted six (originally advertised as seven!) figure prizes. And even though prominent champions were not allowed entry, there was a simultaneous open event which attracted most of the big names, at least from the US.

Although much of this article concentrates on the US BG scene, Europe was also participating in the surge. Lewis Deyong (a top promoter and player) describes the flavor in his PLAYBOY'S BOOK OF BACKGAMMON (Playboy Press, 1977), a must read for its entertainment value alone. Big names (and personalities!) from Europe included Joe Dwek and Kumar Motakhasses. The US had Paul Magriel, probably the most publicized pure backgammon player in history. (I qualify "pure" to distinguish him from celebrities like Omar Sharif and Lucile Ball.) Magriel was featured in articles of the top magazines, the most noteworthy story being in the June 4, 1979 issue of SPORTS ILLUSTRATED.

New books appeared, with each year seeing the publication of a handful. Although initially merely beginning texts (like THE BACKGAMMON BOOK by Jacoby and Crawford, The Viking Press, 1970), Magriel's 1976 publication of BACKGAMMON (Quadrangle/New York Times Press) began a trend of truly challenging advanced texts. It is an accolade to Paul's teaching ability that this now 23 year old work has never (IMO) been equalled by any book at either the beginning or Intermediate Level

Organizations (like Les and Sue Boyd's International Backgammon Assoc.) surfaced. Their periodical "Backgammon Guide" was soon followed by otherssuch as "Las Vegas Backgammon Magazine" and the slick but short lived GAMMON. At theend of the decade, a newspaper format "Backgammon Times" came out. In 1976 The New York Times hired Magriel to write a weekly column which eventually produced on the order of 100 shorts. Other large newspapers followed the trend. Local club newsletters became common, and some (like "Chicago Point" and "The Flint Area Backgammon News") survived to receive world-wide circulation. Backgammon was in its heyday....

1980's.

PART II: The Computer Revolution.

I don't know what the first computer backgammon game was. However, it is acknowledged that the first decent piece of BG software was the work of Hans Berliner, a computer science professor from Carnegie-Mellon Unviversity. Ironically, this very program was available for play on the Arpanet (the early forerunner of the Internet). We will see that this one-twopunch--formidable backgammon computer players ("robots") and large are a computer networking--would give rise to the third backgammon Renaissance of the 20th Century.

Berliner's game surfaced in the mid-70's, I believe. Around 1977a young Indianapolis entrepeneur and computer software specialist, Kim Brand, envisioned cashing in on the backgammon craze. His ideas was to design, build, and market a stand-alone backgammon set comprised of an attractive walnut and glass case with checkers being replaced with lights under tosurface. The key to this product would be a world-class computer opponent.

Brand's vision was backed by conviction and capital. He hired both Berliner and Magriel to develop the software. Publicity culminated in 1979 when Brand took a prototype to Monte Carlo and put up $10,000 in a winner-take-all five point match between "Aristotle" and the newly crowned World Championwho turned out to be Italian Luigi Villa. Dice were hand rolled (Motakhassestossing for the robot). Magriel narrated the match which surprisingly was won by the computer, much to the relief of its fledgling, financially strapped developer! The results were reported internationally by the press. Unfortunately, few of the $2000+ sets were ever built and the project fell by the wayside. The software remained for a time on the Arpanet but todayit is unavailable and possibly lost forever.

In the late 80's, a second breakthrough in software surfaced. Expert Backgammon (initiated by Tom Johnson and enhanced significantly by Tom Weaver of Dallas) became the first truly commercial backgammon robot which played at a competitive level. Although its quality of play was sub-world-class (as was the previously mentioned Aristotle, btw), its true value was the ability to perform rollouts--repeated trials of a given position with random dice.

Rollouts were not new, but they had previously been performed by humans with hand rolled dice and standard BG boards. A long human executed rollout would be about 100 trials--not sufficient for statistical significance in most cases. Expert Backgammon could run thousands of rollouts overnight. For the first time, questions like "what is the best way to play an opening 62?" had the hope of being answered with scientific accuracy. Any owner of a personal computer (which had become commonplace by the end of the 80's) couldshell out $100-$200 and have not only a decent opponent available 24 hoursa day, but a tool capable of helping answer age-old questions in tactics. The computer revolution had hit backgammon in a big way.

The next major breakthrough, possibly the biggest in the history of backgammon, occurred around 1990. Gerald Tesauro, a computer scientist at IBM's Watson Research Center in New York, wrote a piece of software which actually taught itself backgammon by a neural networking technique known as Temporal Difference learning. The resulting software was coined "TD-Gammon". (Although frequently misunderstood, I believe that TD-Gammondid have some human coaching along the way. In theory it apparently could have learned the game by simply starting with the rules.) IBM's interest was the development of this revolutionary learning method--a subclass of Artificial Intelligence--but a spin off benefactor of this effort was the game of backgammon. Tesauro had created a legitimate world-classrobot! Unfortunately TD-Gammon never went commercial, although a play-only version was included free of charge for IBM's OS-2 WARP operating system.

Coincident with the software development was computer networking. About 1993, Andreas Schneider of London started the First International Backgammon Server (FIBS) which was set up on an academic computer in Sweden. This service was provided free of charge to anyone with a (now booming) internet connection. There quickly grew a truly world-wide backgammon club open around the clock! Typically over 100 players were active at any time of the day. A Ratings System (patterned after chess) was included on the server and players could not only rank themselves amongst the other members but could also track their own progress. Matches could easily be recorded for later self-study. Any member could watch live matches between world-class players. One can only imagine what Oby would have felt had he lived to witness this readily accessible spectacle!

What Tesauro had begun, others soon followed. Fredrik Dahl of Norway created Jellyfish, another world-class neural network. And he made his work commercially available. The neural net technique is so powerful that not only can it choose the "better" play (as Expert Backgammon could do), but it actually assigned values (in commonly used backgammon units--equity) to ANY ARBITRARY position. As strongas JF's evaluations were, even more reliable were its rollouts. Surprising to some, many of JF's rollouts confirmed previous rollout results performed by the limited brain of Expert Backgammon. But as a player, Jellyfish was encroaching upon the hallowed territory previously only occupied by the best humans.

The robots and the internet again combined--almost 20 years after Berliner's Arpanet software. Many strong robot opponents were created "ingarages" and made available for all to play on FIBS. The previous lymentioned TD-Gammon and Jellyfish were joined by other world class opponents like LONER and SNOWHITE (or Snowie, to be descibed below).

Jellyfish continues to be a valuable tool and world-class opponent. Commercial competition arrived in 1998 with Snowie (created by Olivier Egger of Switzerland), another neuralnet trained robot. In its most advanced version, Snowie can do full cube rollouts. Another valuable feature of Snowie is its ability to import and analyze entire matches with little operator intervention. The tools for human improvement continue to grow.

PART III: Present and Future.

Other backgammon advances of the 90's included a journal quality publication--INSIDE BACKGAMMON (which has sadly been discontinued).The internet accessible usenet newsgroup (forum) rec.games.backgammon receives about 20 posts per day. This free-form conversation-like facility specializes in giving everyone his/her say on conventional and unconventional ideas alike. Many excellent World Wide Web sites have been set up simply for the purpose of expanding the scope and knowledge of backgammon. Competition to FIBS (like the currently popular GAMESGRID by CyberArts) abounds. Hardcopy books continueto be published. The first online backgammon magazine which you arecurrently reading is another testimonial to backgammon's continuing popularity.

Backgammon, for the moment, seems to have reached a sort of "steadystate". Attendance in large US tournaments, which had again surged in theearly and mid-90's, has leveled off. Membership on the servers appears to be reasonably constant as well. It is probably time for some newideas to sustain the game's popularity, but it is not obvious to me if, where from, or when that will come.

What will the next decade bring? For now the surge in software capabilities seems to have reached a plateau. There has not been a true breakthrough on any dimension (intellectual or commercial) for a few years. Hopefully, the current products will continue to improve but recent upgrades seem to be more on the cosmetic side (which is certainly welcome) than on an intellectual level. On the other hand, breakthroughs by their nature are not usually foreseen. And there is always that nagging question: is the game of backgammon nearly solved?

In retrospect, the quality of play has been steadily advancing over the past 35 years since Obolensky re-introduced to game to thepublic. Initially this improvement was available to a select few who were fortunate enough to live in the cities (like New York) where the inovative minds congregated. The strong texts helped, but the computer revolution has had the biggest impact in providing the masses (specifically those motivated to commit the time) access to the world-class level. For example, an isolated midwest farmer with some effort can, within a couple years, reach the level of the top champions of the 60's and 70's. Of course getting to the level of the current world class players is still a major challenge, but much easier than a similar rise would have taken back in the 70's.

A final unanswered (but answerABLE, in theory) question is "who is the best backgammon player today?" Some include in the best robots among the candidates. At money play, Jellyfish provided a serious challenge back in 1996 when it broke even in two long (but independent) money sessions against two of the World's top human players: Mike Senkiewicz and Nick Ballard. The jury is still out as to whether Jellyfish (or Snowie) isequal to or better than the best humans at money play.

At match play, the robots are probably a little more vulnerable. Although their choices in plays are completely determined by their neural net brains, their cube decisions are a combination of the neural net evaluation function AND a human installed algorithm on the binarydecisions: double/no double and drop/take. This human intervention aspect is even more fragile in match play. It's likely that a top level human player is superior in match play cube handling, but the difference is small enough that other actions (play decisions and positional cube evaluation) could still leave the robots as favorites.

One thing where humans have an advantage over the current cropof robots is in adjusting their play level to the particular opponent.Snowie and Jellyfish apply no active learning in their commercial versions. They always play the same game. Also, would psychological ploys by the robots help?

For all their perceived shortcomings, the robots still play at the level of the best humans. The question "who is the best backgammon player in the world" remains unanswered, but the robots are certainly on the short-list. 1984 seems like a distant memory but we still are living in a "Brave New World".