A Look at Robert Wachtel’s The Backgammon Chronicles: A Pro’s Adventures on Tour

Robert Wachtel is a world-class backgammon player — Richard Munchkin and I have each known him for more than forty years. He recently self-published a two-volume set of Chronicles which I read and enjoyed. While Bob will be a guest in the near future on Gambling with an Edge, I thought I’d give readers a preview of the books.

The essays in each volume are mostly previously published stories from backgammon periodicals — updated for the book. I haven’t kept up with the backgammon literature since I left the game in 1993, so it was all new to me (other than a remembrance piece written when Paul Magriel passed away). Color photographs enhance the experience.

The chapters largely cover things that happened in backgammon tournaments around the world — primarily, but not exclusively, in Europe. These are not merely reports on who won, but rather give the flavor of the matches. In each tournament, Wachtel writes down one or more positions that arose where he wasn’t sure of the answer. Most of these positions arose during a game where Wachtel was the one considering how to play a particular position. He’d then pass them around to some of the best players in the world and they’d discuss them.

Of the 100 or so positions he showed, I was absolutely sure how to play exactly zero of them. My intuition on the correct play proved correct maybe 20% of the time. Probably 80% of the time I had it narrowed down to the top two plays. Some of time the correct play was one that I hadn’t considered at all. Given that all of these were positions that world-class players debated, my poor score isn’t too surprising.

To put this in some context, when I left the game almost 30 years ago, I was a fairly strong intermediate player. Today, I wouldn’t be anywhere near that high. A generation of players has grown up using bots to practice against, the best of which is eXtreme Gammon (XG). 

In the good old days, players would find these unresolved positions and play them against each other, in what were called “props,” short for propositions. In some cases, handicaps were given (similar to using a point spread to make a football game competitive gambling-wise.) In today’s backgammon world, XG is used to determine the best play.

But before consulting XG, Wachtel would ask several top players what the best play was, and they would gather around a board and discuss the options. Often the players asked would include “Mochy,” (Japan’s Masayuki Mochihito) and “Falafel,” (Israel’s Matvey Natanzon, who passed away at age 51 in February of this year — after the Chronicles were published), both of whom enjoyed the World #1 ranking for a time. The discussions among them led to a deeper understanding of the game. And like masters of any discipline, the best in the world keep studying to become better. Falafel nicknamed these sessions “The Chronicles,” which led to the title for the book.

A series of essays captured some of the “Denmark against the World” matches. Surprisingly to me, Denmark boasts a large number of world class players who periodically would face off against Mochy, Falafel, and other top players — sometimes including Wachtel. 

Those matches were colorful and brought out the flavor of backgammon competition — where the fortunes of the games ebb and flow with the roll of the dice and player personalities often affect the decisions. The last match of each of these tournaments was a consulting chouette, where the entire team of Danes would talk about each play, as would the entire team of non-Danes. A player could learn a lot just listening to those discussions.

I enjoyed these Chronicles immensely. Am I a better player for reading them? Perhaps, . . . but only slightly. There are so many zillion backgammon positions with 21 separate rolls of the dice that could arise from each of them, that a sampling of a few of them hardly makes a dent in your overall knowledge base.

In my case, I’m not going to take the game seriously again. But I enjoyed these writeups where I got to tag along to locations all over the world. It was fun!

In some ways, the Chronicles are similar to Barry Meadows’ book Blackjack Autumn, where Meadows played blackjack at every casino in Nevada and wrote about life on the road. Except Meadows took us to some very small and out of the way casinos and Wachtel takes us to exotic locations. But the life of any touring pro features ups and downs not experienced by most of us.

I’m including a remembrance piece Wachtel wrote after Falafel died. It’s not part of the Chronicles, but it will give you an idea of Wachtel’s writing style. I wish I could write as well as he does.

A Gambler’s Honor by Robert Wachtel

Our best friend Falafel was one hell of a backgammon player. Sadly, he was knocked out of the game this year by a genetic anti-joker.

Falafel is a central character of the memoir I published a few months ago, The Backgammon Chronicles. Chronicles is so titled not only because it is a history of modern backgammon, but also because that was what Falafel called one of our favorite recreations. Back in the day, I used to organize impromptu quizzes (usually based upon my own blunders) at major tournaments, rounding up as many world-class players as I could to weigh in on them.

Falafel loved these sessions. “Ohhh, the Chronicles,” he’d murmur happily as I’d begin setting up positions. And immediately the fun would begin. No matter how difficult the problem, within a minute or so he’d state his opinion––categorically and emphatically––and offer to bet all of the assorted “geniuses” present that he was right. Moves other than the one he’d chosen, he declared, were “impossible.”

Naturally bets and propositions flurried, as did negotiations over new bets and offers. The amounts at stake were not trivial; but it was the value of the insights attained, the spectacle of ideas clashing, and the sheer entertainment that these sessions provided, that made them truly memorable. Scenes like these also took place on the several occasions that Falafel captained the World team in its yearly challenge matches against Denmark. When he could not come to an agreement with his teammates, he’d always offer to bet with them that his choice was the correct one.

As his friends have recalled in the last days, Falafel was kind, generous and caring––but I must confess that I barely noticed those traits. To me he was a brilliant rival––but even more interestingly, a true gambler. Not the most verbal of persons, he found in betting a means of expressing not only his beliefs––on backgammon positions, sporting events, or political outcomes––but his integrity as well.

We have all heard the expression “Put your money where your mouth is,” but to Falafel that challenge (which most people completely ignore) was a moral imperative. “I guess,” I remember him announcing on a hundred occasions, “If I say it I have to bet on it.” And so he would. No hypocrisy or weaseling here: to require oneself to live by a strict creed like this requires no small amount of courage (called “heart” in the gambling world) as well as a deep sense of honor.

I am glad that I was able to send Falafel a copy of the book in which he starred while he was still able to read and appreciate it.