Talk:Backgammon

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Contents 1 Archives 2 Backgammon GA 3 Merge with Nard (game)? 4 [12][13][14] 5 Backgammon Gambling 6 World Backgammon championship 7 redtopbg.com source credibility 8 in Hebrew 9 External links section 10 Condensing rules 11 "Barr v Oregon" 12 beaver missing 13 Dice software 14 Ambiguous? 15 They/their as a singular 16 Pop Culture

[edit] Archives

/Archive 1

[edit] Backgammon GA

I have listed Backgammon as a GA due to the fact that it is well written, contains pictures, and is referenced. However, before nominating it for FA, I would reccomend expanding and citing the Gambling section, and adding some more images. Some P. Erson 16:22, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. I was thinking, actually, that this section ought to be expanded in scope (and renamed) to cover the variety of contexts in which backgammon is played today: competitive tournaments, club and social play, as well as gambling. The main reason I've held off is that it's hard to find sources that aren't like "casinonewshotline123.com". Thanks for your input! —ptk✰fgs 23:15, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merge with Nard (game)?

There's a description of a number of variants of nard at Tables (board game), so I'm not sure it would be accurate to call nard and backgammon the same game. On the contrary, I think the descriptions of the long narde and short narde at tables warrant an expansion of nard.

Mani1, what's your reasoning? —ptk✰fgs 23:52, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] [12][13][14]

Is it really helpful to have the three footnotes referenced in virtually every paragraph of the Rules section? It strikes me as a bit of an eyesore. I'm not familiar with all the style standard for this sort of thing, but maybe these could be combined in one place? --Nephtes 21:40, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

No, it probably isn't. Discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Board and table games suggests that this section ought to be shorter and less detailed, anyway. I'm not sure if there is a style guideline for a large section that is supported by multiple references; I went with that style figuring that it wasn't too annoying as long as they weren't in the middle of paragraphs. —ptk✰fgs 21:47, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

ITs not uncommon in scientific articles to use commas in more than one reference , like for example [12,13,14]. But i guess that wikipedia doesn't support this style. SNx 18:00, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Backgammon Gambling

I am not sure what is the view on this with respect to adding such a section to the article but the fact is that lots of people are doing it. Have a look at this interesting article on the RedTopBG listed in the external links about backgammon compared to other gambling games. I think we should either use this material to form another section here or create our own part about these modern ways people play backgammon on the net (try to look beyond the banner :). any thoughts? Davidoff 14:11, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

I think this material would add a lot to the "Social and competitive play" section. Our section on gambling is pretty short, and that is both historically and currently an important facet of backgammon play. —ptk✰fgs 16:21, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

The anectode about the raid in Oregon is particularly interesting — however, I can't seem to find a news report corroborating it. It would be nice if we had specific details. —ptk✰fgs 16:37, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Just to add to this post is antother article about the online dice used in such areas of backgammon and its realiability have a look http://www.redtopbg.com/dice.php Davidoff 14:21, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

This might be worth mentioning in the computer BG section. —ptk✰fgs 16:21, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

I will start working on these sections then :) Although I would need your help in adding it to the references Davidoff 14:54, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

I like the way this article is expanding it is great :) I added the sections we discussed Davidoff 04:25, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

I still think we should expand and compare the backgammon game to the various skill and gambling games available on online sites, simply because people would be interested to know about these gaming areas played online, and as much as it is hard to say it backgammon is becoming a growing gambling game for people that want to increase their chances of winning by adding a fair bit of skill to the game. I think the comparison with other online gaming like casino games is important and intersting. we might want to restructure the sections that were taken off but i still think we should have them in the article. Davidoff 16:17, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Wouldn't that make more sense in Online gambling? We should try to focus on the core topic as much as possible. I think in the case of the article Backgammon we want to 1) be clear about how money play works (which I think needs little expansion as it is now) and 2) give a short description of how online play works (this could use a little expansion, but I think we have the core topics covered pretty well). a comparison between online backgammon gambling and other kinds of online gambling seems like we're straying way off topic. remember, this is an article about backgammon in general, spanning from the 13th century to the present, and I think it would be pretty unbalanced to go into a discussion about why and how playing backgammon online differs from blackjack/roulette/poker, etc. —ptk✰fgs 18:48, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

It definitely should not go in the online gambling article, which serves mostly to point to other articles about specific games. To be consistent it should either be included here; or in a general gambling skill games online article, or most consistently, an online backgammon article. I'd suggest that the content be written, and if a long paragraph or less it be putt here, and if two significant paragraphs or longer it be broken out into an online backgammon article -- which then would also include the free play online content. 2005 23:14, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Hmm. Thinking about it some more, a general discussion comparing various gambling games probably belongs in Gambling, and, not surprisingly, it's already written there. General information about online gambling absolutely belongs in the online gambling article, but I'm not sure there's anything more that needs to be said than what's already there. It links to gambling, which has the comparison discussions, and describes (or links to other articles describing) how those games are implemented in software.

I don't quite see what's so significant about online backgammon that we need an article for it. It's exactly the same game, played exactly the same way, just using thoroughly unexciting software. The only differences I can think of that actually bear on the game itself are that pipcounts are displayed on-screen, and that viewing the board on-screen kind of hurts my eyes. The real notable story about backgammon software is in the AI programming: BKG vs Villa, through to the revolutionary TD-Gammon, culminating in the modern NN packages. —ptk✰fgs 23:56, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

If there isn't anything particularly significant about online backgammon or gambling regarding backgammon, then this article should handle it. 2005 00:25, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] World Backgammon championship

added some information about this special event that happens every year in Monte Carlo hope you like it :) Davidoff 02:05, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

I only scanned it; is there actually any information that is not cited to RedTopBG.com? We are so far beyond overloaded with references to this site that it's becoming an embarrassment to the article. Additionally, the writing there is of very poor quality, and the articles do not credit an author. More extensive exploration into the site has only led me to doubt it more and more. I hope this weekend to be able to replace every reference to RedTop with sources that meet WP:RS. —ptk✰fgs 04:54, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] redtopbg.com source credibility

I have significant concerns about the credibility of redtopbg.com, currently cited for eight separate references in the article.

• The style of writing and these comments ([1] [2] [3]) have led me to conclude that it is a self-published site, and that the links are being added to the article by the site's webmaster.
• The site does not credit an author, so there is little possibility for independent verification of the claims attributed to redtopbg.com. A google search for "red top" backgammon has not yielded any commentary from secondary sources regarding the articles at the site.
• We currently cite redtopbg.com for a claim that a backgammon tournament in Oregon was raided by law enforcement agents. Despite an exhaustive search at my university library, I can find no independent corroboration of this event.
• We currently cite redtopbg.com for a claim that Paul Magriel served as an expert witness at a trial resulting from the Oregon raid. I can find no independent corroboration of this event.

Once we can establish the credibility of redtopbg.com under the guidelines at WP:RS, or once the references (and, where necessary, the attributed claims) have been removed, I think we can remove the verifiability warning template at the top of the article. —ptk✰fgs 05:27, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

I am going to work on finding more references for the new information on the article, regardless if you feel that the information about the backgammon championship or oregon raid are not valid here then we can remove them and the cite to redtopbg.com I only want to contribute quality information for the article and I do not want to impare the article in any way Davidoff 11:04, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] in Hebrew

In Hebrew, it is called shesh besh, meaning "six and five".

In Hebrew it is called shesh besh, and shesh does mean "six", but besh does not mean "five" or anything else. I had thought that the name in Hebrew was borrowed from another language, but it's obviously not from any of the other languages on the list. Rusco 08:10, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

I found a source that says the phrase is probably from Persian, and that "besh" means "five" in modern Persian as well as Turkish. I'll try to get to this today. —ptk✰fgs 13:04, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

I've addressed this the best I can. I would appreciate any further suggestions on the revised sentence. —ptk✰fgs 15:50, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

in hebrew we do call it shesh besh but the word besh does come from Persian as Ptkfgs said Davidoff 16:10, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] External links section

I suggest the external links section should be reduced to a single link to the Dmoz Backgammon category. As of this moment, all the other links listed are in that category. Some of the similar articles about strategy games with a large variety of good sites on the topic deal with the issue this way, which simplifies things and avoids edit wars or discussions of fine lines. I propose the following text as a note: <There are many quality backgammon information and play sites that could be linked here that would add to the value of the article. However, Wikipedia is not a link repository, so currently what is linked is a link to the Open Directory backgammon category, which lists dozens of topical sites.> 2005 10:02, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

That's reasonable and seems to be in line with how we handle external links in some other game related articles, like casino for example. Rray 12:11, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Works for me. —ptk✰fgs 12:42, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

I've implemented this. Excellent suggestion, thanks. —ptk✰fgs 22:12, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Hey guys I have seen the recent changes implemented in the external links, although I think it does makes the article cleaner I disagree that we should send users to ODP in order to search through quality links on the specific article category (most wiki articles do not do this, and it has never been a policy by wikipedians or wikipedia). I think a good article should provide selected resources that fellow wikipedians had chosen instead of sending users to go fetch in ODP. Remember that some or even most users are not that handy with the internet or do not have the patience of looking through ODP listings that they do not know (mind you that some users do not know what is ODP at all). I respect the decision we will make, although I do think we should reconsider this in order to save users the hassle of searching through ODP by listing the best sites relating to this article on this article, that is the main reason for the external links in wikipedia. Davidoff 02:59, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

The links on ODP are pretty good. We're linking directly to a well-organized collection of sites about backgammon. We can never hope to be as extensive or as selective as the linked directory listing. —ptk✰fgs 03:01, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

There is no doubt that the links on ODP are good, although the argument i am making does not talk on the quality alone it also talks about the convinience for users who are not aware of ODP's quality and do not know what it is. I think we should keep to the wikipedia policy of listing quality links in the external links WP:EL as well as a link to ODP in order to serve both type of users. any thoughts guys? Davidoff 12:25, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Thoughts? I think you are trying to increase the google rank of your site by posting it here. I think Redtopbg has credibility problems, because there's no author listed for most of the articles. I think the writing is, in general, of a lower quality than at Backgammon Galore. I think you've used an anon ip to assist in maintaining the link here. I think it's starting to get irritating, and I think the article is of higher quality without linking to Redtopbg. I think it's unfortunate that we can't link to Backgammon Galore without you insisting we link to Redtopbg as well, but I think linking only to the ODP category is an acceptable compromise. —ptk✰fgs 13:57, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. 2005 20:21, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Ok now listen I DONT care if you take RedTopBG off the backgammon article and I don't care if you take out all the references to RedTopBG from the article. The additions you are talking about were made by me and I stand by them (I said it was me have a look at the top of the page under "World Backgammon championship" so please don't accuse me before checking) and I think they were legitimate, all information on the site is verifiable on news sites and other backgammon sites. I have nothing to hide the fact that I am managing redtopbg is mentioned on my talk page and you missing it is not my problem. If you want to talk without personal attack than let's do it. If you haven't noticed I am not engaging in any attack towards you other then putting forward constructive suggestions. Regardless of what you think RedTopBG is listed in major sites like ODP, backgammon galore, backgammon pages and other major gaming sites so its credibility is well in place. If you don't want to list it because of your personal opinion or because you think I tried to trick you then that is crazy and is not how we work in wiki and you know that. I have been doing lots of good things here on wikipedia and I never used wiki for my personal gain and I am not doing so now. Lots of sites and people value the RedTopBG.com resource and you your self had said in the past that the site is very informative and has good articles. If I get new information about backgammon or online gambling on redtopbg then I might list it here or other locations. I think that it is fair and will benefit the article, and if wikipedians do not like the new information they will take it off or re-edit like you have been doing with some of the information and that is fine isn't that how we work always? Please let's solve this constructively with no attacks Davidoff 02:55, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't believe for a moment that you had any intention of deceiving me or anyone else. The reason I linked to the diff wherein you identified yourself as the webmaster was because I did not want to assert that without any supporting evidence. In that case, the site was being used as a reference on this article, and I wanted to establish that the webmaster and an editor here were the same person, to bear on the guidelines for self-published sources and original research. One of the risks of referencing one's own content on Wikipedia is that it may be criticized; I apologize if it sounded as though I was disparaging your contributions.

You are correct that my initial assessment of the site was that it contained a number of useful articles. I changed my mind after reading a number of articles on the site. As I noted in the earlier instance, and as I noted above, there is no author listed on the vast majority of content there. When I compare this to a site like Backgammon Galore, which features articles by authors that I can easily identify as authorities on the subject, I see a significant difference in credibility. I have no idea who the authors at RedTop are because they are not identified.

I'm still not sure what we lose by linking only to the ODP category. Is there a valuable backgammon resource on the web that is not listed there? If so, I'd be glad to suggest it be added to the category. 2005's solution for the external link section is brilliant, and we need a clear plan for this section, because the volume of referrer links and drive-by spam is likely to increase, not decrease.

Really, what it comes down to is that I don't think what this article needs are huge new sections of content. I think your contributions have played a significant role in bringing the article to where it is today, even as I believe it was an improvement to shorten them significantly. I think that for the most part, the current revision covers all of the major issues associated with the game that it needs to be a featured article. What it needs to get there is to raise the quality of references and writing. —ptk✰fgs 03:34, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Condensing rules

WikiProject Board and table games has developed some helpful style guidelines for articles about board games. I'd like to work on condensing our "Rules" section to be more in line with the WPBTG guidelines. Currently we have pretty much a complete description of the rules here, which is probably too much detail for a general encyclopedia. I've temporarily copied the section to my user page at User:Ptkfgs/Backgammon Rules. This diff is my first stab at condensing the rules section. I'd appreciate any comments here about what we can lose and what we need to keep. —ptk✰fgs 20:59, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Barr v Oregon"

There are a lot of sites on the internet stating that a backgammon tournament in 1981 was raided by police in Oregon, that the tournament was run by Ted Barr, that Stephen S. Walker eventually heard the case in the Oregon district court, and that Paul Magriel testified as a witness at the trial. I've searched and searched and searched, and no news publication seems to have ever documented this event. I'm no expert legal researcher, but I can't find anything, ever mentioning this in Oregon court cases or any federal case. If this happened at all, nobody ever wrote it down. None of the websites that describe this give a date for the trial besides "1982", and none of them ever cite a specific case number.

The only verifiable part of the story seems to be that Stephen S. Walker was an Oregon district court judge in 1982. This is well-documented, but not very useful.

Since this is such a commonly repeated story, and since the Safe Port Act seems to be veto-proof, it would be really nice if we had a real publication or legal citation for this case. We are going to need a sentence or two to update the "online play" section after the Safe Port Act takes effect. —ptk✰fgs 02:47, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] beaver missing

the beaver disambig page refers to this page but there is no mention of beaver at all. someone must have removed it at some point.

Wikikob 14:44, 12 November 2006 (UTC) I have just corrected this.

[edit] Dice software

Is there a reliable source attesting significant doubt of the randomness of dice on backgammon servers? In my experience, this has strictly been the domain of paranoid usenet posts. The redtop site refers to a controversy, but its credibility is still hampered by its lack of any authorship attribution and a writing style which suggests it is a self-published source.

The question here is this: are some fringe theories about internet backgammon dice, which remain unsupported by any serious analysis, a significant enough issue in the game that we need an entire section devoted to it? No, I don't think we do. I added a sentence describing how dice rolls are supplied (using random or pseudorandom number generators). I'd really like to know why we need this section. —ptk✰fgs 00:56, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

I think the point is not necessarily to say there is doubt in the online dice and trying to prove that gaming site manipulate it, but more to make people aware that this doubt, if exists, can be easily refuted. I guess it is more of an assurance from an authority site such as wiki to say that such manipulation of the dice is not possible without players picking it up and raising the issue. Davidoff 13:49, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I have serious objections to this article being the first "authority site" to raise the issue. If there's no reliable source that raises the issue, then it's original research for us to speculate on it here. We have a sentence describing how dice rolls are generated in backgammon software. The rest is paranoid junk. I will remove it now. —ptk✰fgs 04:28, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

All this paragraph is trying to say is that it isn't an issue and that players should not be worried. This is not to raise any new issues with the dice and has nothing to do with being paranoid it is to assure players that such manipulation is not possible due to the reasons you just stated that there is no reliable source online doubting the cube as well as the reasons the paragraph lists as well, I am adding it again. Hope you agree :) Davidoff 04:09, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

All this paragraph is trying to say is that it isn't an issue and that players should not be worried.

Why do we need to do this? It's an encyclopedia article, not a soapbox. If backgammon server operators want to convince people their dice are random, that's their job, not ours. Maybe it's part of your job? If so, please take it elsewhere.

it is to assure players that such manipulation is not possible due to the reasons you just stated

Of course it's possible. It would be a fairly trivial python script to get jokers and roots for a given position from gnubg. It's just not an issue. We don't talk about magnetic boards here, or loaded dice, or people playing online with Snowie. The purpose of the article is not to promote backgammon servers. It's to provide a balanced and informative article about important aspects of the game, and having a whole section about the fairness of dice on backgammon servers adds a particularly irrelevant dollop of fancruft to the article.

Without a reliable source to back up the claim that a substantial number of players have doubts about the fairness of the dice, this is just a distraction. Please, if you are going to add this to the article again, provide a reliable source that raises the issue. —ptk✰fgs 05:15, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Ok fair enough, if i find a reliable source i will add it otherwise we will leave it out. Davidoff 08:57, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ambiguous?

I am trying to learn the rules of backgammon. I found this sentence ambiguous: "Checkers placed on the bar re-enter the game through the opponent's home field." Who is the opponent in this context?

Jameshfisher 17:32, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi. This article is not meant to contain comprehensive rules for backgammon. You will find this page more helpful. —ptk✰fgs 17:49, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

The sentence is so nicely phrased it puts a lot of information across in few words. It may seem strange, but concise language can often lead to significant details being missed by readers. Here the significant detail is that the implied subject is the owner of the checkers which are placed on the bar. This player's checkers re-enter play through her opponent's home field. The implication follows from the fact that checkers in backgammon always belong to one player, throughout each game -- white to one player, black to the other, for example. Alastair Haines 11:53, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] They/their as a singular

This article is not a situation where we would want to use "they" and "their" as singular nouns. There are always at least two players in backgammon, and using these pronouns to refer to a single player here would introduce unnecessary ambiguity, since they are most often used as plurals in formal writing. I don't think gender-inclusiveness is a problem at all in this article, as it uses male and female pronouns in roughly equal numbers to refer to players generically. —ptk✰fgs 02:48, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm not going to get into a revert war with User:ICarriere, but my opinion is that "The winner is the first to remove all of his/her" should be "The winner is the first to remove all of her". mpetch 19:58, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I think "his/her" is clumsy, and it seems like there's someone blasting through here every other week to change "his" or "her" to "their" or "his/her" (today was the first "there" I've seen, to be sure)... or something else ugly. I've changed it to "his or her". I seriously just. do. not. get. why this sentence attracts so much grammatical damage. —ptk✰fgs 22:44, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Might want to catch the commentary/discussion over at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Backgammon. I've tried to direct it back here. mpetch 22:52, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I'd just make them all "she".

I agree that the plural option is not well suited to the context (imo it's non-ideal anywhere). I also agree that her/his is just awful, same with "her or his", "she (he)", or other variations. This is an article about backgammon, not about gender equality. Given, the political nature of the issue, I simply always use "she", and when refering to women and men, always put women first. In other words, I use the traditional English conventions, only in reverse. That never gets reverted.

I find the constant change between "she" and "he" makes me dizzy. I had to correct one sentence that read something like, "he rolls the dice and then she moves the pieces", but only one player was intended! May I suggest, if the pronouns do have to alternate, that this is done on a section by section basis, not paragraph by paragraph (or within sentences!). But why not keep it simple? Use "she" everywhere. Alastair Haines 12:19, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Works for me. I think at some point it was originally on a section-by-section basis, but a lot of crap got merged around and rewritten. Certainly, the within-sentence example was not intentional. Just as long as it isn't "they", for reasons I noted above. —ptk✰fgs 12:31, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Pop Culture

I just added back the pop culture section that was removed (chess has a large section on culture). Any comments on why it was removed.169.139.225.2 21:40, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

We really don't need it. Pop culture sections tend to attract the worst kind of unencyclopedic trivia and add little to the article. —ptk✰fgs 22:10, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I think a “popular culture” section could be useful and informative, like the one at Go (game) #In_popular_culture 169.139.225.2 23:00, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, the only example anyone has proposed is Locke's discussion of the game, which is only one of many board games he's depicted playing. The Lost themes article already has a complete discussion of the topic. Do we really need to mention Lost in every single article on a topic the show has briefly touched? Most everything backgammon discusses is a crucial and substantial topic in the game. While I was of course pleased to see that the castaways were equipped with a backgammon set -- I always fly with one, of course -- I just don't see why that's important to mention in this article.

The situation with go is different, in that it is far and away the most played and studied board game in the East. The same is true of chess in the West. These games have a substantial presence in popular culture. Backgammon has not left that sort of enduring mark in 20th century media... at least not yet. —ptk✰fgs 23:34, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

That makes sense, thanks for your thoughtful response and explanation.169.139.225.2 23:59, 26 March 2007 (UTC)