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BGonline.org Forums
Kocagammon backgammon variant
Posted By: Jason Lee In Response To: Kocagammon backgammon variant (Bob Koca)
Date: Saturday, 7 September 2024, at 6:51 p.m.
UBK: You and your opponent will play two games of backgammon
To be clear, the two games are played simultaneously on two different boards.
Bob and I played KocaGammon twice yesterday, and I can attest to the fact that it is very interesting. We tied in both (making our $1 bets a wash), and I suspect this is the "problem" of KocaGammon. However, high level chess has a ton of ties, and it's still enormously popular. I had a great chance to win the first time, but Bob luckboxed his way out of a miserable position.
When possible, you want to keep flexibility in which board you can move on. If you previously moved on Board A, and the dice roll gives you equally good moves on both boards, you want to move on Board B. You probably still want to move on B if the play on A is *slightly* better. If you can, you want to avoid the situation of having moved twice in a row on the same board. However, you can't avoid it completely.
Diversification across boards is a totally new concept... maybe 6's play poorly on A, then you might want to make 6's play well on B. Or you might want to make 5's good on one board and 4's good on another.
The main thing that KocaGammon makes you think about is comparing the value of the best play in two different games. Playing in a disjunctive sum in a combinatorial game forces you to make this decision. This shows up in Go, where the game as a whole tends to decompose into separate small games, and you have to decide where the action is "hottest."
I've played a ton of variants of BG, this was definitely great to play, and still looked like backgammon.
JLee
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