The Future of Mainstream Backgammon

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Pacific Life Insurance compomany Omaha, Nebraska, and in New York, Pacific Life and Annuity, Phoenix, Arizona E Economics radio sponsored by LinkedIn ads. Ever invested in something that didn't live up to the hype? Marketers know that feeling. They optimize for the numbers that look great, like impressions, but then they don't see revenue LinkedIn has a word for that Bull spend. Instead, you can get the highest rowad of major ad networks with LinkedIn Bull spend, advertise on LinkedIn. spepend two hundred and fifty dollars and get a two hundred fifty dollars credit. Go to LinkedIn d. com slash free eonomics, terms apply There is an ancient board game that you can learn in fifteen minutes and then think about for the rest of your life If I haven't met a human being yet. that plays backackmon that the game doesn't get under their skin. That game will get to you. Backmammon has had a few hydays in modern history, especially among gamblers haid me in drugs and a gucci sweater that her friends had boosted from Vardera Dve NFL teams have used backgame in Theory to win the Super Bowl They're risk averse, at least they used to be before we came onto the scene. And now Backhammon is having a whole new Rnaaissance People want in person experiences. They want to get off dating apps, they wantna make new friends. Today on Freakonomics Radio, we continue our occasional series on games with a simple question Gamon save us from ourselves Okay Dice are yours This is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything with your host, Stephen Dubner This past January, the US Backhammon Federation held a big tournament, the New York Metropolitan Backhammon Open at a hotel in Jersey City. It drew more than four hundred players in a variety of brackets from beginner to grandmaster. They came from all over the US as well as Germany, South Africa, Greece, Peru. The field included many of the world's top ranked players like this one. My name is Masayuki Mochizuki. People call me Mochi. I am a professional backend player Mochi is arguably the best backgammon player alive. He has turned the game into a career play tournaments everywhere in the world teaching, writing a book, playing a priate game and everything about backgam. that's me Moji had flown in from Japan for the Jersey City tournament, but he busted out in the first round That's the thing about Backgammon, it is a dice game, which means it can be volatile and the better player does not always win I found Mochi in a side room off the tournament area. He was playing a money game with some of the others who had already busted out of the tournament. He told me he was staying on in New York City for a few days, so I invited him to come play backack Eammon at my apartment if you want to just Play great, if you want to teach and talk while we play. I'm happy to play for money. I don't expect you to play for free. No,, it's fine. We cant playay for freeo. But I mean, I know that's how you make your living. so I' ask you to work forree. five hundred dollars a year. I'm not planning to leave with it. last like three minutes, but that's okay I'm gorgeous O, thank you W is nice roll Things changed very fast. Now it's an even game. Yeah. ye. If you hit, I'm dead. Yeah fifty two This is very scary. Yeah, don't be scared. No, I am scared Okay This gonna be a shub anyway. so I got ahead Jse So this is the roll. If I roll the four, I'm gonna to win. If I don't roll the four, I'm probably gonna lose They're all in the middle Patory. That's okay. All right, M right. Backman is not the game that you decide the strategy. All you can do is you follow the dice' advice, you know, you're not going against the dice. The game plan that you had in your mind that want that's long gone. Got it. G it it That being said, may I hit you actually If I was thinking about doing this, that would have been terrible. Because if you waited longer then I have more ammunition to come in and it will be more dangerous. It's actually all about timing Now this game actually has a probable similarity in life Too late L you don't know what's going to happen. It's all about probability. If you make a good choice, you have a better chance to get a better outcome, right? But it's just a chance. So you may lose because of a good choice, right? But you shouldn't regret that you made that choice because that then was a good choice. So you have to be confident one twow, three, four lunch It's a good game goodame really It was really good. Yeah. I thought you're gonna win this one. My five hundred dollars did last more than three minutes, maybe an hour. We played three short matches and Mochi won all of them I held my own against a world champion And I certainly couldn't do that on the basketball court or football field is just one of the many interesting things about this game Another is what Mochi said about how backgammon is a lot like life itself. And I would hear some version of that from just about everyone I spoke with as we were making this episode. The Jersey City Tournament, I had met a very good player named Melissa Shin who works as an architect in Los Angeles And she told me to get in touch with her next time I was in town and she would put together an event with her backammon club Yes, there are backgamon clubs, more and more all the time And I happened to be in LA soon after, so we met up at a beer garden in Venice Beach. Melissa had set up a game for me We're gonna do doubles? Sure. Th me and Frank against you guys. Oh, it's me and Bob against you and Fank Wh. All right, here it is. Make it fun. This could be fun My partner is Bob Wachell, a ranked grandmaster. A couple of years ago, I had taken a few lessons from him. Melissa's partner, Frank Frigo, is another world class player, a two time world champion I'm not going to make you listen to another match, but I will say this. Bob and I won. Take that, Mochi Later on, I sat down with Frank Frigo, asked him to introduce himself My name is Frank Frigo, and I am somewhat semi retired. I'm playing a lot of professional backam in these days. I travel to tournaments, I teach, I lecture I did have an analytics company for about years and I still do some consulting in sports betting and sports analytics All the games ever invented and ever played, Is Bgammon your favorite game I haven't played all of them for sure, but I would argue it's the greatest game. It has all the elements of complexity Pace is wonderful. It's designed as a gambling game. It's a fantastic mind sport. The game is played at amazing locations around the world. It's got a beautiful aesthetic. If you come to one of our tournaments, you will see the most beautiful custom made backmammond boards and there's something about the sound, the touch, the feel adds to the whole experience. I think it's yeah, I think it's the greatest game out there If you were to call backam an industry, I'm not sure whether you would use that word or a sector. How do you think about the size of it? I've heard something like three hundred million people play globally in some countries where it has a long deep history. You see Bammon or Tavla or Sheesh, however they want to call it, in particular culture is played everywhere So what I see even in the United States is that there's multiple tiers. There's the social component of it, thenen there's the casual tournament player. thenen you have the more serious tournament player, there's a big spectrum For someone who doesn't know the game, just explain it as briefly as you can, the basic setup and goal. Okay Each site has fifteen checkers in a particular starting arrangement. And the game is essentially a race. Your pieces or your stones, as they would have called it way back in the day, you're trying to get them around the board and into your homeboard. there's four quadrants. You try to get those checkers into your homeboard and bear them off as quickly as possible But along the way, there's a lot of contact in those checkers interact. If you land on a spot where your opponent only has a single checker, we call that a blot, that blot has to go back to the beginning. So While it's a race, it's not that simple. sometometimes you're trying to slow yourself down, sometometimes you're trying to speed yourself up Then talk about the leverage and the excitement and volatility that is introduced by using the doubling cube. The idea behind the doubling cube is that you're playing a game stake of a single point If you win the game, you get a point. If you bare off all your checkers before your opponents born off any, you win a gamon. That's a double game. But it's double whatever the current value of the cube is Cube starts out. at a value of one. When it's your turn before you roll, you have the option if the cube is in the middle to tell your opponent I want to double the stakes of the game So the opponent has to then make a decision, do I want to play this game for double the stakes Or do I want to turn down the cube and the game ends immediately and they give up the point decision is I can give up one point with certainty and start a brand new game or I can accept Cube and now play this game for double the stakes, but I'm accepting the risk that I could lose two points. I could lose four points And I have to compare that distribution of potential outcomes versus the guaranteed one point that I would relinquish The other layer on top of that is that The cube is not just a scorekeeping device, it's a weapon. When you own the cube, you have bought the rights to it, which gives you the rights to play the game to the end. and it also gives you the rights to redouble the stake back to four puts pressure on your opponent If you do not know how to handle the cube, you're never going to win a tournament That is Mark Olson, another of the world's top ranked players. He's Danish and used to play professional soccer, so yes, he's pretty competitive ling Cube is a fantastic device that was invented in the nineteen twenties The Backgamon has existed for thousands of years, but the doubpling cube has only been around for around a hundred years It must have been so boring before then. Well, they' still play backgammon without the cube in many parts of the world. But I agree. The Dublin cube is the most fun part about Backgamon checker play moves, you can compare your move to other moves, which inherently make it easier because you've got something to compare it to. Whereas with the doubling cube, you've got nothing to compare it to. That's the thing about the doubling cube It occupies its own special dimension in the game. The two dice that you roll on every turn that dictate where you can move your checkers, they are inherently random. So you have to plan for and adapt to that randomness The doubling cube is the only part of the game that can be unilaterally controlled And who invented the cube As Frank Frigo told us, that fact is still in dispute within the backackgammon community. He mentioned a nineteen thirty New Yorker article that identified one possible inventor We have heard much debate on whether backgammon is basically a game of skill. They say the innovation of doubling was important This, according to one story was thought of by the grand Duke Dimitri, who lives in Paris, where Bach Eammon is called Trinketrk and who has been playing it for years Dmitri Pavlovich Romanov was a cousin of Tsar Nicholas II and one of the few Romanov dukes to survive the Russian Revolution He is thought to have been involved in the plot to murder Grigory Rasputin. so Yes, the history of Bacammon is littered with interesting characters As for the question of luck versus skill Here's Frank Frio It's a really difficult question because you've got to put some real context around it. Every decision with the exception of forced moves in backh is a skillful decision. The issue is how much it actually affects the outcome You're going to get randomness thrown into the equation, which is what makes the game great. But I'm going to oversimplify poker for a second. But imagine you're at the World Series main event. and take whoever you think is the most skillful poker player on the planet. Let's just say it's Phil Ivy at the World Series main event in a showdown could take someone, a five year old kid that has never played poker in their life and I could give them a very simple set of rules where I could guarantee they could take down the top player probably a third of the time prorove that mathematically. I could just get them to push the whole time and theyll eventually the opponent will have to call In backammon, if you took somebody you just introduced to the game and they played a top level player at a major tournament length match, say nineteen to twenty five points, they would have almost a zero chance of beating that player because you have so many active decisions, you can't simplify the game down to that level. This is going to make poker players cringe because I'm oversimplifying poker It's a fact Frank, you are a two time worldld backgamm and champion, correct? Yes. I'd love you to walk me through both your wins. firstirst, nineteen ninety four, give me the who what, when where or why of that tournament win That was a very memorable experience. The World Championship has been played in Monte Carlo since the nineteen seventies. It's been at the same location, the Fairmont Hotel, this iconic hotel. I was with my wife. And we decided to go to Europe for an extended road trip to Monte Carlo I was a fairly accomplished player back then. I played a decent amount. I didn't have kids yet or anything I got on a roll and it was like a magic carpet ride for me because I didn't really have a close match quality of play back then wasn't as good as it is today, but I just got on a very good roll. I won the main event, eight matches undefeated. I entered the super jackpot, which is the big separate event and I went undefeated in that as well That was nineteen ninety four Your second one was in twenty twenty three. That's an amazingly long stretch to be at the peak of your game What was the difference between Frank Fgo in nineteen ninety four and Frank Friigo in twenty twenty three In nineteen ninety four, I had more physical stamina, but I don't think I was as seasoned as a player to handle the emotional swings of the game, which are a big component of it In ninety four, I was fortunate that I won a lot of matches by very clean scores. so I didn't have a lot of difficult emotional tests In twenty twenty three, I had a lot of close matches. I had some crazy turnarounds and some late swings, but I was much better conditioned as a player to weather that, to be able to sort of turn the page and not let it get under my skin and say, what do I do now? New circumstance, new set of conditions, Regardless of what transpired last game, I've got to focus on what's going on in front of me and give myself the best chance. In ' ninety four it was a blur. In twenty three, I really embraced it and enjoyed every step of the way and got to celebrate it with a lot of friends, which was really fun too What would you say are the characteristics of a good back end and player, including perhaps some characteristics that might surprise people A lot of people think you've got to be like a mathematician. You really don't There are very analytical aspects of the game where you're grinding numbers, like what we call match equities, where you've got weigh a bunch of information and come up with the highest probability outcome. I feel like I'm pretty good at that. but there's also a big pattern recognition component because once you're a few moves into the game, maybe you've got some reference positions in your mind that you've seen before But it's just a combinatorial explosion when you get a few moves into a game And you haven't seen it before and something that I think a lot of players underestimate is the execution part. It's one thing to sit in front of your computer and look at problems as quiz problems and say, what would I do But it's an entirely different thing to do it over the board Facing an opponent traveling to a tournament. I will tell you, I haven't met a human being yet. plays back him and that the game doesn't get under their skin That game will get to you because you just feel like your best laid plans get thrown aside This ability to turn the page and look at a new circumstance, a new problem and treat it independently. not to think superstitiously You just got to purge your brain of all that pollution and really focus disciplined way on What's in front of you? How do I frame my decision? How do I cus solely on only what I can control Have you seen examples where someone just kind of becomes a more rounded person, a rounded thinker by playing games, whether it's backgam or something else, mayaybe that person was you? It's definitely me. I've taken things from my life and them into the game, but I think the game has given me much more in that direction co direct the San Diego Club, which is one of the biggest fastest growing clubs in the country We have a number of people that play with us for different reasons. Some of them just love the competition. They love it as a minds sport, the intellectual stimulation, the social aspect Another thing you hear, particularly from some of the older population is they like to play because they feel like it keeps their mind sharp. Everybody's paranoid these days about demention. They want to keep their minds stimulated. Backhage just does such a good job of that. You've got a lot of active decisions. You have to think probabilistically I would say that the uncertainty component is more realistic of what people encounter in the business world and in social decisions Chess is a great game But chess, if you make best move, it's the difference often between a one hundred percent winning path and one hundred percent losing path. Whereas in backack Amon it's more probabilistic. and I think that is more like the decisions we encounter in real life I had been told that Frank Frigo had put his backgamon obsession to good use in the analytics firm he founded and ran. proprietary models for a variety of applications in sports, in commodity trading, in healthcare, in education, The idea was to take a game based approach to solving difficult problems. There's a lot of data out there But there's not a lot of good ways to take that data and steer it towards a particular objective. So in commodity trading, it might be ROI. in education, it might be how to reduce freshman attrition rates. In healthcare, it was how to reduce hospital readmissions for cardiac patients. And then of course, in sports One of the big, big breakthroughs that we applied was we took a lot of ideas from the modeling of games applied it to professional football When you say applied it to football, what kinds of scenarios or with what kind of goals in mind Originally, when I was just watching the game as a fan and I was a pretty seasoned to backham player, I would look at what appeared to be the inherent risk aversion bias of head football coaches. They would get to force down decisions and they would sort of pucker up and relinquish possession. You're saying they're very risk averse At least they used to be before we came onto the scene. it struck me that those kinds of decisions are very, very similar to backhammon decisions and decisions that were modeled One of the great breakthroughs in the modeling of games in backack Aammon in particular, was that when you focus on the proper objective, which in backack Aammon is giving yourself the highest probability of winning the match And in football, if you apply the same metric, which is How do I make a decision that gives me the highest expected outcome of a win notot maximizing yardage, not assuring I get some amount of points on a particular drive. When you shift that objective in that metric, it really opens things up and you start to see that theseese risk averse decisions are actually quite wrong. We set out build a model that could actually measure it. We did this by building a fully customizable simulation model that was built on a lot of NFL empirical data partner to Bower who is also an experimental physicist to did a lot of research at Indiana University and work for NASA He and I put our heads together to build a model that could simulate NFL games from start to finish, running clock, penalties, the whole thing We had a hypothesis that coaches were giving up quite a bit. It turned out after we started studying it deeply that they were worse at it than we even thought they were. If they were giving up even more, then we got excited. We' like it's time to start knocking on some doors. And so how much is your model or versions of your model used in the NFL today I would say it influenced probably just about every team, some more directly, some indirectly. We licensed to about twelve NFL teams. most famously, we worked with the Philadelphia Eagles during their Super Bowl run. They used it religiously. We had buy in from top to bottom from Jeff Lurie, the owner to Howie Roseman, the GM Peterson And also with the Kansas City Chiefs, when you see Andy Reid on the headset during a game, he's speaking to Mike Fraasier up in the booth and Mike Fraasier was consulting our models Let me back up and make sure I understand Philadelphia Eagles fan, let's say, or a Kans City Chiefs fan Their Super Bowl victories over the past several years, you're saying are derived in some part from the application of backgamon theory Yes, absolutely. When the Eagles adopted it We worked very closely with their analytics staff. They had some of their own internal models, but they were basically calibrating everything off of ours because it was a lot more sophisticated The real similarity of football to backackhammon is that You sccore in these unusual increments where in games like baseball, you're basically trying to produce runs and trying to keep your opponent from producing runs. and that correlates very, very well with win probability. Football's very different because you have a decaying clock and you score in different increments. So the utility of points changes dramatically based on the state of the game. And that's something that has been very, very well modeled in backm Coming off after the break. How did that modeling happen? And just how wild was the back gam and scene in the nineteen seventies and eighties I'm Stepeven Dunner, This this is Free e Conomics Radio. We will be right back Fre Eonomics Radio sponsored by Ever Pure. 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In addition to being a top ranked player, he co founded and runs Backgamm and Galaxy, an online platform for playing and studying the game Back Gam and Galaxy was an idea that came up between M, Sandra Lilov and Moi back in twenty eighteen Mochi and Sandra are basically the two biggest Bagamon legends in the world The idea was simply just to have a unified Grand Bagamon site because it was kind of lacking We just set out to do it a bit of naivety there M and Sander came from the world of sports betting. Basically, I was a quant in sports betting for the last ten years prior to that. In twenty nineteen or so, I went full time on Pgamma Galaxy, trying to get this project up and running We thought that we were going to be a money gaming site because that was kind of like the world we came from, but It wasn't really a good business plan. It's a very regulated market We had trouble really getting off the ground And in the meantime, we had a YouTube channel. It became the biggest backgam on YouTube channel quite fast We realized that the opportunities in mobile gaming and social gaming were actually gigantic. The market is really, really big So we pivoted and we started creating a product and we raised some money, and we had the first real version, I would say, of Backgam and Galaxy launched in twenty twenty two How many players are on the site and how do you make money We have about two hundred twenty thousand users We have a subscription And then we have some social coins You can't withdraw them or anything for real value, It's just purely in the game But you have users purchasing these coins as well. How much money do you actually make if you can tell me I don't think I'm in a position to reveal that. We are still in a competitive space. But it's a business that is at least aimed toward profitability or no? Yes, it is. I mean, we've raised money a couple of times and we keep expanding. Our team is now twenty five people. half of them or so are developers and the rest are dealing with customer support, YouTube, social media All kinds of st live tournaments. we own the worldor Championship. So once a year in Monte Carlo, we host the worldor Championship Let's spend a couple minutes talking about this nice point that you raise about Backammon as an illustration of economic thinking. In what ways do you see those parallels Let's talk about trade offffs that you face in every decision because backackgamon is a multid dimensional game. where all the variables they are entangled You can't just say all else being equal It doesn't exist becausecause every time you change one variable, all the other variables change constantly trade offffs to be made. Sometimes they are macro. I have a decision here between a priming game plan or a bllitz attack sometometimes it's micro. Do I promote that back checker one pip over there which slightly improves my racing chances or do I want to split it with the front What about ideas like opportunity cost and sunk cost and decision making under uncertainty. Do you actively factor in those ideas as you're playing or is it more like they're just humming beneath the surface. sunk cost, I think any professional investor or games player at a high level knows You should not dwell too much on Sk cost. It's in the past focus on making the best play opppportunity cost comes in a lot in that ga as well, especially when you're Choosing between game plans. if you pursue this one game plan, there's an opportunity cost. It affects the optionality of going to another game plan later. deceision making under uncertainty That's literally what you do on every single move in backgamma. There's actually several levels to it. We do have complete information of the game. We can see all the pieces. Nothing is hidden But we don't know the upcoming dice rolls. The future is uncertain just like the universe. L is uncertain, the world is uncertain, even at a quantum level in backgamon We learned to deal with it. There's a psychological aspect to it. Playing games, it trains you for being a more robust person. It rewards hard work and especially back Emmon, if you're lazy and think you can win You're going to lose If you are reckless with your decision making and you're taking degenerate risk U you're going to be punished immediately. So you're going for kids, you know, I want to teach my son to play backmon for that reason. I've heard you say that you want to teach your son to play backmammon not only for the sake of the game, but because gambling itself is a really good way to leararn about the world and yourself. Can you just talk about that I've heard you say that most people look at gambling as pure vice and you have a different view Exactly. So let's start by making a distinction. My distinction is that if you're betting on something like a roulette table then you have no control of the outcome. It's purely gambling. I don't see any good in that. But if you're talking about backgamon, or to some extent, also poker orr to some extent, also sports betting, where you can get an informational advantage. you can analyze the game in a way that is better than the market or even when you see the rise now of the productotion market sites I do see that as a virtue more than a vice that again, hard work is rewarded. There's instant negative feedback on your bad decisions You harden your personality and your mental abilities to deal with stress and misfortune Gemon or a similar variant basically as long as we've had dice. It has that advantage over other games that it simply evolved into this perfect equilibrium style of game where it's not too long, it's not too short It has the right amount of lock to skill ratio It's just a very balanced and perfect game Backgammon is indeed one of the oldest games in the world. In various forms, it has been played continuously in the Middle East since three thousand BCE. During the Cusades, it became a popular gambling game in Europe. Richard the Lyionheart of England and Philip II of France issued a joint order banning the game for low ranking Soldiers Dan Rather, in a nineteen seventy eight piece for sixty Minutes, rattled off these and many other backgammon facts as he discussed the rising popularity of the game. In the United States, it is played everywhere In the CBS cafeteria, for example, In modest rooms like the Bar Point Club on New York's fourteenth street where the winner of the weekly tournament win a few dollars. And it is played in elegant private clubs where the rich and famous gather to dance and drink and play It' basically Hugh Hefner, who was responsible for back E and becoming a fad in the nineteen seventies because Hm oppose this kind of hedonistic, sophisticated glamorous lifestyle that involved Lots of consumption of alcohol, some drugs lots of sex and anything that looked privileged and sophisticated That is Bob Wakel, my partner at the Los Angeles meeetup Wachel got a PhD in philosophy, but as a profession, he chose gambling. He was a world class backmon player and backmmon writer Chronicling the scene and it was quite a scene to chronicle I first learned to play in Toronto in nineteen seventy seven I went to discoos and there were backdammin sets in discos, backdammon tables I played a guy there and the guy wrote me a check on a napkin I said, What's this? He said, Don't you know anything He said, a check is just a piece of paper that the bank issues, but I'm writing my account number right on this napkin So this is just as good as a check If you went to tournaments, you'd find the most zany collection of characters There were lots of people who pretended to be royalty There were snobs of different kinds and posers and drifters and people who were cheaters and lots of people were phonies, but none of them were very good at back yamming. and most of them believed that They were much, much better than they were. so they'd be willing to play anyone In the early seventies, Back Eemmon was a place of magical thinking and people believed that it was a game of luck. They didn't do anyy work, most of them But there was some work you could do and there was some calculation. There were ways of learning the game which most of the populace didn't participate in at all Did you do a lot of that kind of work yourself I didn't do as much as some other people if you really If cared to learn specific elements of the game, you would set up a position and play it many times. People weren't shy about expressing their opinions in those days. You would make a move and one of your compatriots would say, that's ridiculous. How could anybody do that and immediately could challenge them to propositions and those were situations you'd set up where each person would theirir turn to make their move And the game would be played out to the end. And then youd turn the board around and allow the other person to make their move and the game would be played out till the end You'd log a whole bunch of data. not all of it was that valuable becausecause if you didn't play these games, well In subsequent moves, it didn't prove very much But there were some very simple situations, especially in bar offs at the last couple of moves of the game where The game could be played out in ten seconds And you could log hundreds of games and sometimes if you had an advantage, you could log hundreds and hundreds of dollars And some people, we should say, wrote not one but two books just about the bear off situation, yes, that would be you Yes, but only a tiny segment of the bear off The first volume, I decided to name it in the game until the end because back in the day at the Mayfair Club in New York The Marks or pigeons when they got in these positions would say, at least I'm in the game until the end. There was a lot of mockery of the pigeons I always liken it to the vista that The pioneers in America encountered when the bison covered the plains of the whole country And you could shoot them at will. They were always there for the taking. That was what it was like in the early seventies And the pigeons or markarks or suckers or whales or whatever you want to call them, were they the same cast of characters or did you have to reffresh the pigeons There was an inflow of new pigeons, but The hustlers of the day would husband them themselves into their little flocks. There were some hustlers at that club who really weren't good players at all They had flocks of even worse players, much worse players who they' shelter from people like me You're supporting yourself. This is your profession. Yeah Can you give some insight into your earnings? I'm guessing you don't have a nice statistically sound career earnings calculation? No, I never kept records, but there were lots of times when I was not paid, when I was cheated. There was lots of stuff along the way that happened at that time. I once played this dealer, a woman coke dealer and paid me in Drugs. I bet she did, yeah a little bit of money and a gucci sweater that Her friends had boosted from a shop in Rodero Drive And was that a kind of typical scene for A guy like you, would we call you a hustler or is that? I wouldn't call myself a hustler, No, because to me a hustler is someone who s incapacity. You didn't hide your ability? No, not at all, not at all How did you develop and keep your opponents playing you for money when you were plainly better. There was this great club, the Cavendish Club in Los Angeles. I could go there every night and have a game. What were the stakes? They used to play ten or twenty dollars a point, which would be like seventy five or one hundred today, something like that. So you could come out of there with several hundred dollars a night easily. Maybe a couple thousand, right? Sure, sure. And overall, just to give a sense of the luck versus the skill, overall in a given year, do you think you were ever down for a given year? Oh no, no, no, no. Oh no, he says confidently. So a markark, who would be the ideal markark? Like would I be really good because I'm like decent, but may be good enough to think that I'm better than I am and I'll just keep coming back and giving you my money like an ATM The ideal customer is someone who's very wealthy and enjoys locking horns with someone who's also good enough to give them the great challenge. So how good were you at the time? By today's standards, I was terrible But I was one of the better players around Things got much more difficult. The neural networks had a great effect on back downam and society That's an interesting conundrum. I'd love you to explain When the neural networks came along and you could actually identify what were good moves and what were bad moves and you could acquire what's called an error rate or performance rating What was that like for you For me, personally, it was a joy because I had a stack of note cards a foot high of positions I'd never been able to figure out, even rolling out. I' tried and tried and tried. And all of a sudden The answerers It was bliss It was very annoying in the sense that the bad players could see how bad they were And it more or less killed the money action in backammon. the worst players all of a sudden you realized how bad they were There was a lawyer I played. who lived in Marin Cy had plenty of money. I played him for five years or so I must have won almost every time we played. and at the end of those five years and this is beforefore the neural networks came along. He explained to me, He said, Look, Bob, you have a slight edge on me, but we're basically at the same level Pople could just live in that kind of delusion for years and years But when the neural networks came along, not only did the worst players realize they were bad, but if they weren't willing to work, and learn themselves they'd fade away Before the neural nets, nobody really knew what the best place were That's Mark Olsen again. Backgamm and Galaxy is built atop a neural network that plays the game at a superhuman level. I asked him how this technology came about. In the nineties, AI algorithms with reinforcement learning was invented. A guy called Gerald Tasaru invented a program called TD Gammon. This was the first neural net play by Gammond really well, stronger than even the best players in the world Where did this come in the development of AI playay This was basically around the time when Dep Blue were playing against Kasparov Gerald Tasaro used Bgammon as a case study for his new AI algorithm Bgamon was such a perfect environment for that because it's a multid dimensional game where all these dimensions interact with each other because there's so many trade offs and the variables aren entangled. Yet it's still a small enough universe that you can just reproduce data as much as you want. You can simulate the games And it worked exceptionally well And when you say it worked, that means that in any given moment in any game, there is an optimal move, essentially, correct? Let me explain a little bit how these AI algorithms work. You have, let's call it a play agent. That's the agent making the moves And then you have a learner, we call it the value function in machine learning So you're training your value function as a function of the results that the play agent decisions are making Basically it's a self learning algorithm best move is simply the move that has the higher value in the value equation because we have the computer engines, the neural nets that more or less solve the game. The level at the top is so high nowadays that it's much more a game of not making mistakes Does that take some of the fun out of it I don't think so if you are a really high level player What is your motivation? For me, it's this mastery achievement thing I'm not playing against you, I'm playing against myself Here's how Bob Wkell described it in his book, The Backdammon Chronicles, a prose adventure on tour, volume one Gammon has evolved from a model like that of soccer, basketball, or tennis, he wrote, where it is the fantastic inspired shot that will be the object of awe for years to come to a sport like gymnastics or ice skating or diving where the entire goal is to perform a flawless routine i. e a zero error rating back to Wakel to talk about this evolution You know, When we started this conversation, you talked about the seventies and eighties as Golden era of backgam. There was a lot of action and a lot of excitement and the play was starting to get a lot better. How would you compare the current era? I mean, it must feel very You know, tame How do you feel or how do you describe the current era where there is a lot of competition, a lot of tournament play? I assume there's a lot less of the kind of gambling action that you're describing here Yeah, right. It's much more normalized. Is it boring Well, I mean, it's not nearly as exciting. I would say that. I think it is undergoing a minor reennaissance. I don't think it could ever reach the manic levels of the seventies. becausecause the whole playayboy lifestyle was what got people engaged in. and they were all sort of buying into this vision of the good life which people are a lot more cynical now and aware of the pratfalls and pitfalls they can encounter pleased are you with this mini Rennaissance? Do you think it's good for the world Definitely. I am very pleased with it. I think it's great Coming up after the break, we meet a leader of the Back game and Renaissance This is Free Economics Radio. My name is Stephen Dubner and we will be right back Toast unforgettable backackyard barbecues with savings from Who Foods Market. 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If you or someone you know has a gambling problem call one eight hundred gambler Everyone has a reason for wanting to move ahead. Maybe it's money or a bigger office, or maybe it's for those at home who laugh at your silly jokes At Thomas Edison State University, we know earning a degree while working full time is no joke. That's why our undergraduate and graduate programs are one hundred percent online in a range of in demand fields with flexible schedules built for working adults. So you'll still have time Let'sell a few jokes. Thomas Edison State University, the university that works for you. visit tu.edu Program XG or Extreme Gamon was released in two thousand nine and it became the go to software for serious players Last year, it was bought by Travis Kalanick, a founder and former CEO of Uber. He is also a backhamman obsessive Kellanak is expected to invest significantly in the site with modern AI and machine learning It definitely feels like we are in the middle of a backgham and Rennaissance We have seen two different things That's Mark Olsen again One is the rise of online backgam one Bagamon Galaxy and other Bagamon apps on the phone. And the other thing is the rise of the social clubs all across the United States right now hosting these incredible social events where people come just to play backgam. and I think it's amazing It's something we haven't seen before. I don't know how big it can be, but it's very exciting, especially New York City by Gamon Club, Remington Davenport is doing a great job Hi, it's Remy. Remy Hi. Hi. How are you I'm doing so well. Thank you. How are you doing? I'm dying to know why you're doing so well. I mean, I'm very happy about it, but I just have like an amazing weekend. I trreated myself to a present. It was a back in and purse and I've been eyeing it for so long. You can like open it and it's a full board and it comes with the pieces. Oh, and I got my backm and table delivered that I designed And so this was just like a very big back in and girl weekend. So how did you first get into the game My parents taught me how to play I never really wanted to play with them. I had a group of six girlfriends in middle school And we played backam in every weekend. We were very competitive over everything and nothing. When we played back him and we were very physically abusive We would flip the boards and throw dice at each other. We were so crazy. We would just like look for anything to compete over but it was all in like good fun. But now I'm like, good sportsmanship and good etiquette is the only thing I believe in. But don't look at me when I was playing as a kid because I was a monster Were you playing for stakes for money or anything No, nothing bragging right A few years ago, Deavenport founded the New York City Back Emon Club put it simply, it's a social club to play and learn back in in It's really focusing on community and bringing people together over this concept of being offline and The heart of it is making new friends and meeting new people and pushing yourself to want to improve I also started gals who gamon When I go to these tournaments all over the world, I've noticed it's really about a ten percent womomen attendance In twenty twenty four, Davenport attended her first backgammon worldorld Championship in Monte Carlo She says it was life changing. Walking into that room, I was almost in tears There's three hundred people in this room obsessed with the same thing I'm obsessed with. Like how freaking cool is this I'm building a community in New York, but then there's this community of US tournament players People in the U.S have been playing with each other for decades. When they go to tournaments, it's a reunion. But then on top of that going to the worldorld Championship, I've made friends from all over the world This makes it sound as if And please don't take offense by this, but this makes it sound as if you are backmammon and backgammon is you and there is no space between the two. There is no offense there. Backaman is my life And that's it. There's nothing else going on, you know What do you see yourself as with back Gammon in I don't know, pickure interval, two years, five years, fifty years. Basics is just growing the game in the United States and then definitely global. I'm starting to expand to other cities. I'm encouraging people from around the world to get into it, start their own club, do their thing, practice more, play online, play in person, whatever Back Gamon in this country seems to have a craze every half century, right? In the nineteen twenties, it was big in the nineteen seventies and maybe the craze is really going to be that big again now. No, we're in it We're on the path. The reason it's having a surge now and I started my club three years ago, I can put a lot of my success on the change of society, which is people want in person experiences, they want to be offline. They want to get off dating apps, they want to experiences I don't know what happened in the eighties for it to die down, but the reason it's coming back now is there is a big change in society of wanting to get offline and connect with people and be human again. So I started NYC Backhamming Club kind of as a joke. I knew ten people in New York. I was just looking for a place to play. I had a full time job, and I started hosting an event every weekend in twenty twenty three And people started coming, I'm like, whoa, this is so crazy. And I don't have a social media or marketing background. I'm a sales gal. What were you selling? A lot of bullshit There was always in startups, it's not even worth talking about So I started hosting these events and I'll never forget The first event that I had fifty people at and I just went home and cried. I didn't even know fifty people in New York. thenen I was like, okay, this is it I left my job after a year of starting the club because I just felt like I could not be one foot in the door and one foot out the door of trying to grow back in I host events Sunday through Thursday night, I'm killing myself, still doing events. Does your club have a dedicated physical space No New Yorkers are tough, you know? People don't go below fourteenth, they't on the East side they don't go to West side. they don't go to Brooklyn I'm try to do as many events as I can for as many people and people love to try new places Ramy, the first time we met, you were helping run this national tournament in Jersey City, I see you have some kind of role in the US backackgammon Federation I'm on the board of directors I'm trying to make it more approachable. for new people. My job in general is I'm trying to bridge this gap of Cub players in the U.S. and the tournament world Can I tell you about my backamen league? Yes, please. It's one of the things I'm most proud about The first season, we had sixty four people. I built a whole website and a schedule and every team has their own home bar. You either play home or away. I keep track of individual scores and team scores. and it's tournament play Five people from each team compete. you play in a seven point match if you're intermediate and nine points if you're advanced. Everyone gets a league shirt, comes with their registration. And then I give out prizes and trophies and stuff Now we're in the fourth season and This season was actually two hundred and thirty five people, which was really cool. I'm sure there haveve been events even that you've organized where some character comes who just ends up being Whatever, a drag. Nasty. creepy, nasty, whatever in some way. How do you handle that Great question because I'm very, very hardcore and I have a zero tolerance for bullshit This sucks to say, this is not the case for everyone. I've met a thousand wonderful, wonderful, wonderful people, but there can be one bad apple that really screws your entire tournament experience and you may never want to come back because a man was super misogynistic for whatever reasons. Maybe you beat him, maybe just simply for sitting down at the table. These are things I've experienced If there's consequences for bad behavior, then we can start to change For decades, a lot of people were like scared that backaman wasn't growing, so they weren't necessarily kicking people out If you set the standard of like really welcoming and loving and fun, it sells itself When poker started being played online, there was a whole new, not just generation, but a whole new style of poker player who had never played anybody else in person, then they began showing up to tournaments and sometimes they would win Are you seeing people who get very, very, very good outside the established realm of playing in person? There's definitely people that come to my club being like, you know, I've only been playing on the computer or on my phone and I'm a little nervous. I'm like, donon't even worry. We're all nice herered. There is this world of playing online and then trying to get into tournaments it's so different. What's different about tournent play in tournaments. Sometimes the rooms are absolutely ice cold, sometometimes they're so hot, there's so much stimulation. There's smelly people, there's like just so much crazy st going on and the stamina of just sitting there and focusing Game after game I recently stopped in at a small tournament that Davenport was hosting on a Monday evening at a hotel in lower Manhattan. My first opponent was a friendly guy named Nick, maybe in his thirties Nice to meet you I don't think we can fit here quite