Backgammon: I Learned to Stop Worrying About the Idiotic Error Algorithm

For a little while there, I kept trying to find ways to game around Backgammon Galaxy's broken "error rating" algorithm, which rewards slot machine ("land on any single and hope for the best") play.

One hypothesis I tested was that slot machine players would prefer shorter matches, since they win entirely on luck and luck eventually runs out. Therefore, they would go for the short (1, 3, or 5) game matches rather than the full-length 15-game matches.

I only gave that hypothesis a short test, since I don't have much time for longer matches (I fit my backgammon play into time periods when I'm e.g. waiting on something for work and have a few minutes to kill). Four or five of the longer matches, I think. Nope. All but one of them were slot machine players. And there's nothing more boring than 15 points of slot machine play.

In doing a little online research, I ran across a hypothesis that I haven't been able to verify but that seems sound: When you get trapped in the gammon, your error rating goes down, because you keep rolling, but aren't making moves (and if you can't make a move, you can't make an error, right?). The other player is making more actual moves, meaning more potential errors. I don't know if that's true of the algorithm or not, but it would explain some crushing wins that come back "you made more errors than the guy you skunked."

So I've pretty firmly defaulted to paying attention to win/loss ratio rather than player ratings points, which slot machine players do well in since they gain points when they win, but don't lose points when they lose because the algorithm treats slot machine play as having fewer errors. For example, I just finished a 3-game match. Won it 3-0. Backgammon Galaxy said I had much worse luck and many more errors, so I gained no ratings points and the loser lost none. No biggie. I tacked a win on my record.

My ratings points go up and down, but my win/loss ratio continues to improve as I'm continuing to win more than half my matches. At the moment, I'd need a pretty bad losing streak to get back down to 1 win for every 2 losses over my whole "career," and if I keep playing, I figure I'll be at 1:1 and beyond some time later this year.