How Good Are You At Backgammon?, by Nicolaos Tzannes, Vassilios (Basil) Tzannes

Backgammon Books

How Good Are You At Backgammon?
50 Challenging Situations for You to Rate Your Ability with the Experts

AUTHORS: Nicolaos Tzannes
Vassilios (Basil) Tzannes

YEAR: 2001 (1974)

EDITION: An abridged edition of their 1974 book.

PUBLISHER: Writers Club Press, an imprint of iUniverse.com, Inc.

CITY: San Jose

ISBN: 0-595-17642-9

BINDING: Softcover

PAGES: viii+113

SIZE: 23 cm high, 15 cm wide

OTHER
EDITIONS: First Edition, 1974

CONTENTS:

Preface
1. Early Stages of the Game
2. Middle Stages of the Game
a. Avoiding a Hit
b. Making, Rejecting, or Defending Against a Prime
c. Mutual Primes
d. To Run or Not to Run
e. Go for the Backgame?
f. Miscellaneous
3. Last Stages of the Game
a. Bearing Off with No Enemy Pieces
b. Bearing Off with Enemy on the Bar
c. Bearing Off with One Enemy Piece
d. Bearing Off with Two Enemy Pieces
e. Bearing Off Against the Backgame
f. Forcing a Blot
g. Avoiding a Gammon or a Backgammon
h. The "Return" Play
4. On Doubling
About the Authors
Appendix: The Use of Probability in the Explanations

COVER: If you already play backgammon, don't you sometimes wonder how good you really are? Well this book is your chance to really find out.
The 50 situations presented here cover most of the aspect of the game from initial moves to bearing off strategies. Each problem is graded on the basis of 5 poins for the optimum play and some partial credit for sub-optimum but adequate ones, if such exist.
If you rack up a score of 225-250, you rank right up there with the experts—you should think seriously of competing in Backgammon Tournaments. If you score 200-224, you are not an expert yet, but you are rapidly approaching this point. A score of 135-199 indicates that you are a good, sound player, probably the best in your ... neighborhood. If you score less than 135 points, there is no need for despair, Study this book carefully. It can serve as a case studies tool for improving your game. Besides, the problems presented are not only mind-taxing, they are also entertaining. And the justifications for the optimum play are clearly explained, often cluminating in various useful rules of thumb (the closer-closest rule, the rule of even, etc.) for difficult, but commonly occurring situations. Good luck!

ABOUT THE
AUTHORS: Dr. Nicolaos S. Tzannes is a Professor Electrical Engineering at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. He has authored, co-authored or edited many engineering books in English and other languages, as well as dozens of scientific papers in his research fields of communication and Radar Systems, Signal Processing and Image Processing. Dr. Tzannes also writes non-scientific, fiction/nonfiction books under the pseudonym of Aris P. D'Avenal.
Dr. B. Tzannes is a` Professor of Mathematics at the University of Patras, Greece. He has authored many scientific papers in his field of Topology.
The brothers, well-known backgammon theoreticians, have also co-authored the book Backgammon Games and Strategies.

BY THE SAME
AUTHOR:

Backgammon Games and Strategies
Nicolaos Tzannes, Vassilios (Basil) Tzannes
1977: A.S. Barnes and Company, South Brunswick