Many of you know I played backgammon professionally for a long time — actually from 1974 to 1993. I became pretty good, but there were many players who played better. By the time I moved to Las Vegas in 1993, I had decided to give up the game simply because as hard as I tried, I could never make a living playing it. So, I gave the game up for more than 20 years.

Over the years on the podcast, we had several backgammon players: Bill Robertie, Kent Goulding, Bob Wachtel, Jim Pasko, and Kit Woolsey. If I left anyone out, I apologize. Usually, these experts would come on to talk about books they had recently written, and would send review copies of their books to Richard and me prior to the show.

I read these books and started to feel the old juices flowing again. After reading the 10 or so books I had been forwarded, I was a considerably better player than I had been a few years ago. 

I learned about XG, which is a downloadable app and is the latest and greatest backgammon computer program. Other programs are available, and some players prefer different ones. But XG is the one I heard was best and that’s the one I got. 

For any position, it ranks all the plays in order and tells you how much they are worth. Positions vary in the number of possible plays — from zero to several dozen. Practicing on the program for maybe 25 hours, I became a better player than I was when I quit the game. It was easy for me to see that continued practice would improve my game even more.

But this program is available to all players, and some players have been using computerized help for decades. I’m now in my late 70s and I have no illusions that I’m as sharp mentally as I was when I was younger. Having a good memory is a key part of being a good player, and my memory isn’t what it used to be. 

I might enter an intermediate-level tournament occasionally, primarily for entertainment purposes, but becoming a professional backgammon player isn’t in my future.

When I play against XG, I do win some games, of course. Each backgammon game contains both luck and skill components. But the program keeps track of my EV as we continue to play. Since the computer plays perfectly, I can never keep up. The difference between my score and the computer’s score inevitably keeps growing. The only way I can “catch up” is to reset the scores to zero.

I believe this also happens in video poker — only we can’t see it. Every mistake adds up. I know 9/6 Jacks or Better perfectly and the game returns 99.54%. But sometimes I make mistakes due to playing too fast, mis-keying, being distracted by something, having a senior moment, or maybe a sticky button. Each one of those mistakes costs me EV. 

You don’t spend EV directly, of course. You either win this session or you lose. But the mistakes add up. They are there for everybody. Practicing on a computer is useful, but it’s not the same as playing in a casino. The sources for errors in a casino are much more numerous than they are when you practice at home.

I’m not sure if I “learned” this lesson while practicing backgammon. Probably I already believed it and what I experienced with the backgammon program just reinforced what I already thought was true.