Backgammon: A Game of Luck & Skill

Tommo · Joined: 14 Jun 2007 Posts: 14

In a tournament last week I saw a beginner who knew next to nothing about strategy beat a man who has been playing backgammon and participating in tournaments for over ten years. How did he do this? The beginner’s win was pure luck! Sometimes in backgammon you just keep throwing bad dice and other times you throw lucky roll after lucky roll after lucky roll. Seeing this made me ask myself why would so many people play a game that was so largely dependent on luck? It seems almost torturous to me that in order succeed in this game a person must be highly skillful and lucky at the same time! I guess I just wanted to see what other people had to say about this…

Deuce · Joined: 14 Jun 2007 Posts: 38

First of all, I want to say that backgammon isn’t a game of luck. It is a game of “luck management”. This is to say that a player can roll lucky roll after lucky roll but if he doesn’t have the skill or strategy to know what to do with these rolls then it doesn’t really matter. Aside from that, you sound like you think backgammon is the only game that has a luck factor. In fact, MOST games factor in luck in huge quantities. Card games, for instance—spades, cribbage, poker, bridge, even go fish—require a huge amount of luck. Even monopoly requires luck as you must roll dice and pick up “Chance” cards.

To beginners the game may seem as though it’s nearly 100% luck, but as you learn the game you find that it is more and more dependent on strategy and skill.