Holiday coziness = backgammon

I taught both my boys backgammon this past week. This is the younger guy playing with mom.

I used to play a lot with my colleagues during the year I was a broker on the NYSE floor. Every time I came back to the “booth” (that’s the area with the phones on the sides of the exchange floor where clerks take orders from customers), I’d make a move on the Jellyfish software. When I was at Parallax, I worked with 2 of the best backgammon players in the world (one of them was the best in the world iirc) and Parallax was actually founded by Roger Low, who was a world-class player himself. Roger had retired by the time I joined so I never got to know him.

Backgammon is especially neat if you like options because the doubling cube begs you to price volatility.

💡Fun fact

When I had my phone interview with SIG (this is the round that happens in between campus interview and the final on-site) I was asked a basic question regarding the cube. Since accepting the cube doubles the stakes of the game and rejecting it forfeits the current value of the game, what is the minimum probability of winning you need to accept it?

When looking at the board you need to evaluate how risky the position is. Like how likely is the tide to turn? When you offer the cube you are selling your opponent an option and its value depends on their chance to come back. But if you offer it to them when they have no chance they will reject it and be bailed out because you have now sacrificed your own possibility of getting a gammon (double points) or backgammon (triple points) if you beat them by a large margin.

It’s a great game for kids because they get to practice dice math. I was playing last night and knew I’d win as long as my next roll wasn’t a [1,1], [1,2], [2,1], [3,3]. So the kids would first need to figure out that’s what they are rooting for and then I ask them the probability. 4 out of 36 or 1/9. Plus the little guy figured out that the 7 is the most common roll and how to count the number of ways to get each number (he was delighted by the pyramid pattern when he realized it).

We always play more games during the cozy holiday season and I’m irrationally pleased that this season it’s backgammon. I recommend it.

[Also, if you are just learning, play a bot on your phone. You learn the game very quickly getting trounced by bots. Ultimately, I’m just a casual player, I never studied it, but would just play for $5 a game with my NYSE squad. Of course, with the doubling cube and possibility of gammons that can multiply pretty quickly. The real hitters play for four and five figures per game.]