Is Beauty a Concept in Backgammon?

Backgammon is more of a long-term strategy game than a short-term tactical one. Therefore, pattern recognition is crucial in finding the best moves. Players often say, "don’t play that – it’s ugly!" or "that’s a beautiful move." But what does it actually mean?

I have come up with a definition of beauty in backgammon  that I am going to share with you, and it’s safe to say that if you simply stick to making “beautiful plays,” you will be making the best move about 95% of the time.

Defining Beauty in Backgammon

Let’s step back and ask ourselves a fundamental question: what are the most basic principles of checker play in the game? After pondering this question for 19 years (and I am only 37), my current answer would be these four:

1. Checker Utilization: 
Robertie calls it “Efficiency” - the idea of creating flat structures where checkers are used to make new points.

2. Purity: 
The idea of creating a gapless structure and avoiding burying checkers.

3. Flexibility: 
The idea of giving yourself as many playable dice combinations as possible to improve your position.

4. Freedom: 
The idea of not getting trapped with your back checkers behind a prime and being able to free them when you are ahead in the race.

The first three principles are intertwined. We could say that concrete and flat structures represent beauty, whereas stacked and gapped structures, as well as buried checkers, represent ugliness.

But it’s not enough. We need something else too. You don’t have a beautiful position with a flat and concrete 4-prime if you have 3 men stacked on your 24-point trapped behind a prime.

The missing concept is freedom. I think I was the first author to formalize it as a concept in the book Pure Strategy (please correct me if I am wrong). Many authors have used the term "connectivity" to describe a position in which you lack freedom with your back checkers. When we include the concept of freedom in our definition of beauty, then it all seems to make sense, and we achieve balance.

In summary, a beautiful backgammon position is one where your front structure is flat and concrete, and your back checkers are well-connected to the rest of your army. A beautiful play is, therefore, a move that promotes the four fundamental principles, and an ugly play is a move that violates them.

Let’s look at some positions from my daily matches on backgammongalaxy.com against the 2022 World Champion Sander Lylloff:

Here I made a beautiful move. Notice that since he has a very weak inner board, I don’t have to worry about safety; I can play the most beautiful move that I can find: 13/10 5/4.

In this position, I made a small error. I didn’t want to leave a shot in the outfield, so I compromised and made a slightly uglier move: 6/3 5/3, sacrificing purity a bit. The best move is the purest move that keeps the structure concrete: 8/3.

I made a mistake here, and therefore I want to include it in the blog post. I violated the beauty principle. I stacked the 6-point, which is poor checker utilization, and I failed to improve freedom. I mistakenly thought I should stay in the backgame.

Let’s have a look at how the best move looks:

23/18 improves freedom, and 13/11 cleans up a blot and puts it as a useful spare checker on the 11-point. A very balanced move and therefore beautiful.

In this position, I have a trilemma. Notice it’s post-Crawford and I am leading 4-1. I found the best play, which is the most beautiful of the alternatives: 8/5 6/5.

Quiz Positions

Quiz 1

Quiz 2

Quiz 3

Solutions

Solution to Quiz 1

Running all the way with 21/9(2) achieves full freedom and a flat structure. What’s not to like? Notice we still have a stack on the 6-point, which is an underutilized checker deposit. But at least we didn’t build the points in front of it yet, so they still have a useful place to go.

Solution to Quiz 2

Unstacking and creating flexibility is quite beautiful. 

Solution to Quiz 3

There aren’t any beautiful moves available, and given the level of danger of being hit, we should simply dump two checkers in deep and hope to roll well next turn.

Let’s end the blog post with a quote from the great legend Paul “X-22” Magriel: 

“Put your checkers where they belong.”

By GM Marc Olsen

I hope you liked this post, and remember to check out my newest book: "How to Not Suck at Backgammon - A Grandmaster’s guide for beginners and intermediates"