Backgammon

You know the rules and the basic race. You keep losing to players who somehow always seem to know which point to make, when to hit, and when to just wait — while you're still guessing.

The good backgammon books are 15 to 45 years old and pre-engine. This book gives the club player what the rollout engines actually confirmed and refined about checker play, verified against GNU Backgammon rather than half-remembered forum theory.

Inside:

• The engine-checked play for all twenty-one opening rolls, verified against a fixed, deterministic fresh board — not a reply masquerading as an opening.
• When a hit genuinely gains more than it costs, and when the loose hit your instinct wants is actually correct.
• Building a prime with real point priority, and reading a prime-versus-prime timing battle where the player who looks ahead is often about to lose.
• The holding game played with an actual purpose: counting real shots instead of just waiting to lose.
• Twenty named structures — the golden-point holding game, the broken prime, the mutual blitz, and seventeen more — each with the plan that goes with it, so you recognize the position instead of recalculating it from scratch.
• A reading checklist, a candidate-comparison process, and the blunder-review method that turns your own games into your next study focus.

Every opening, every reference position, every checker-play claim in this book was verified with GNU Backgammon rollouts. Written for players who know the rules and the basic race and want the strategy nobody sat them down and actually taught.

Backgammon Uncovered, Book 1. Reads on its own; the series continues with The Doubling Cube Nobody Teaches You, the strategic centrepiece of the series.