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BGonline.org Forums
My opinion
Posted By: David Rockwell In Response To: Other games that I play (David Rockwell)
Date: Wednesday, 30 March 2016, at 3:48 p.m.
The problem with the traditional rule dealing with an illegal move in backgammon is that the penalty is widely variant depending on circumstance. There may in essence be no penalty at all. Or the penalty may be close to the forfeiture of the match. The rule discourages sloppy play. It does nothing to penalize or discourage deliberate cheating.
The problem with "legal moves" is that there is essentially no penalty for the irregularlity. I have seen proponents of legal moves write on this forum that they play more carefully when they are not playing legal moves. That's not what a good rule would do. It should encourage the player to be careful in making moves that are legal. Legal moves does not encourage careful play and does not penalize the willful cheater.
The best rule would have a measured penalty that would be sufficient to encourage players to be careful and discourage cheating without destroying the match with an oversized penalty. The penalty in backgammon needs to be relatively small because it is easy to inadvertently make an illegal move. I believe that a clock penalty would be good except that:
1. Many matches are still played without clocks 2. The delay to the match while resetting clocks would often be undesirable. Most players are still not adept at setting clocks.
I'm open to other suggestions. I do not like either choice as the rules now exist.
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