Board Games Books

I bought it and read it during a flight from Washington to LA. Entertaining, with many good and easy to remember rules on how to improve your game. It made the trip pleasant, even though my score was low.

The authors describe themselves as world champion backgammon players. I have no reason to doubt this claim. However as expositors of backgammon, they fall fairly far from championship status.

The book presents a series of backgammon positions. Given a board position, a roll, and the cube, the reader is asked to find the best move. The authors then assign from one to five points to the reader's selection (assuming that the reader decided upon one of the authors' preselected moves, of course.)

Most of the introductory positions are uncontroversial. The authors quickly move on to more complicated board positions however, and here is where the trouble begins. In many positions, they tend to favor the safe play. Certainly a recognized style, but stating that the safe play is the best play, without a discussion of the cube, the score, or any alternatives seems like hubris.

In one problem, the authors state that "black is far enough ahead to run in this position", but they make no attempt to quantify what they mean by "far enough ahead", nor is there even any discussion of how to determine when one player is ahead. In another position, where they also advocate a safe play, they make no mention of the possibility of playing for a gammon, and the pro's and con's of that decision.

The book doesn't present enough basic principles to be of use to the novice: There are no discussions of pip counts, very little of bearing off, and only a muddled mention of hitting probabilities. The experienced player will find himself disagreeing with the authors without gaining any insight from them.

... beggars would ride. And if go could be mastered in ten days, everyone would be a master...

Similarly, it's possible, but not likely, to "master go" (i.e., achieve a 1 dan amateur ranking -- the equivalent of a strong chess expert) in ten days, but only if that means spending twenty-four hours studying and mastering the material in each day's lesson. Master Go covers a lot of useful material, but don't expect to master it ten days . . . or ten weeks. And don't expect to be a master if you do. The publisher of this title says that the book is intended to help you along the path to reaching a low kyu level.

The first lesson covers the basic rules, strategies and tactics of the game as well as the differences between the Japanese and Chinese scoring systems. I don't know why this lesson was included. It covers material found in introductory books, but the treatment here is too abbreviated for beginners and unnecessary for players who already know the rules. Beginners should start with the first two volumes of Janice Kim's Learn to Play Go series or Cho Chikun's Go: A Complete Introduction to the Game instead.

The other nine lessons cover tactics for capturing stones, opening strategy, basic josekis, life and death, tesujis, attack and defense, the endgame, and annotated games. In general, the material I already understood was explained better in other books. The material I did not understand beforehand was still confusing after studying these lessons. I found the lessons most helpful in identifying gaps in my understanding. If you completely understand everything the author covers in a given lesson, then you probably have a pretty good grasp of the topic, and the lesson serves as a useful refresher. But if you don't understand the concepts presented, then you know you have some studying to do. Chances are, you'll need to look elsewhere or review the material with a stronger player in order to fill the gaps.

The explanations are so terse that in some instances they are literally wrong. For example, the lesson on Life and Death classifies several life and death positions as alive, which are actually unsettled. The weaker side can live, but the other side can kill the group if it goes first. This seems to be a result of the author trying to cover too much material in too short a space.

Mastering Go in Ten Days should help most mid kyu players identify the areas that most need improvement in their game. Where the book falls somewhat short is in explaining the concepts in sufficient detail to fill those gaps in understanding. For more accessible and more in depth explanations of the material touched upon here, I'd recommend Bozulich's Second Book of Go, Kageyama's Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go and the volumes in the Elementary Go Series.

i think that's about how long terry buck has been playing go. of course, he didn't have this book to help him.

he really stinks!

I started reading this to my son when he was 3 months old and he loves it. He enjoys the rhyming story, the pictures and he especially enjoys spinning the wheels while I read. He is 5 months old now and still wants to hear it every night. Another reviewer said the book is flimsy and fell apart immediately. I find the book plenty sturdy for me to hold and my son to bat at the wheels, but I can understand that it might not hold up to an older child playing with it.

This book is extremely cute. The idea of making a book about firetrucks into the shape of a firetruck (with real, moving wheels) is adorable. But the book is constructed flimsily. My son received this book as a gift when he was six months old, and played with it for about 20 minutes before the back cover came off the book. It appears to have been "bound" to the book with artist's tape. Within another week the book had split in half, so the wheeled sections were no longer joined. The truck was useless as anything but a chew-toy.

If you have a child who is *very* delicate and careful with his or her books, then this is a good purchase. But for a regular kid that chews on board books and bangs them around, you won't get your money's worth out of this purchase.

I have read (and studied) countless betting systems. The Tote Board is Alive and Well is one the truer accounts of betting systems I have had the pleasure to come across. With an ounce of concentration, anyone can become a successful bettor and literly any track in America.

Yet another book trading on the fallacy that horse trainers are capable of fixing races, and that they bet "inside money" using complicated betting schemes that emerge as betting patterns on the tote board. The idea is that if you watch the odds on every horse, you'll find a few whose odds fluctuations suggest insider trading, as it were.

The fact of the matter is that it's next to impossible to fix a horse race in the way these guys are talking about. It's possible to drug an animal, for good or ill, and it's possible for a jockey to put a choke-hold on a horse that will cause him to lose. But causing a horse to lose is not going to guarantee another will win unless you happen to be in a two-horse race, and they've never carded all that many of those. (Between 1995 and 1999, I've seen two.) And the idea of a conspiracy containing every trainer on the grounds of any given horse track (there are usually betwene two and three hundred trainers working during any given meet) is just plain ludicrous, especially when you realize that for the vast majority of those trainers, the difference between first and second-place money in every race they run is the difference between the family eating a decent meal and the family having beans for the eighth day in a row. (Would you want to live in that house? Hope it has lots of windows.)

It makes for entertaining reading, but that's about it.

This game needs to be labeled for 15 years and younger. not a game that will interest adults.
the price tag is way overpriced.

This is one of the best strategy guides I have ever owned. It goes into terrific detail about each of the maps, all of the armies and gives great strategy tips. It even suggests which units to use in each map and what to spend your precious gold at each of the towns along the way. The tactics given work well, and the level of detail while being concise is great. I haven't looked too closely at the multiplayer section, so I can't comment on that. Over all, this is one of the best and I would recommend it to anyone, even if they don't have trouble with the game.

Essentially a beginner's book. Of course there are players who are beginners, yet think they are good players. This may be for them.

If you are new to the game I suggest reading, Improve Your Backgammon by Paul Lamford, first. Next read Backgammon by Paul Magriel. His book is from the 1970s and has some small errors but is still widely considered the backgammon bible.

If you really want to play well, then join a local backgammon club and play with real players.

This is a fair read, and covers all the basics. It is at least partially written by the BG master Kit Woolsey. It is a good review for a new player. However, if you play regularly at a backgammon club and compete in tournaments, you already know all this information.

Tip 1: Run. Tip 2: Block your opponent. Tip 3: Hit your opponent. Tip 4: Learn to build a prime. Tip 5: Consider all the possible plays. Tip 6: Learn the opening rolls. Tip 7: Do not play too safe. Well, you get the idea.

Also I noticed at least 4 or more mis-spellings and errors in the book such as when a picture did not match the text. If you show a diagram of a backgammon board and then describe something else, how will that help someone learning? I really should deduct another star just for those mistakes. There is little excuse for such poor proof-reading.

Backgammon is a lot of fun. It can be very social, in person or online. This book will help the newer players. Good luck and play to have fun!

Perhaps best left in the hands of children who love history (are there such?) or just those who enjoy board games, "Ancient Board Games" provides durable playing surfaces and markers, but little or no data. Also, if I'm not mistaken, for none of these games were the full rules discovered.

Easy to read book that takes you from the very beginning of the rules on how to move the checkers to the theory on when to double, and when to accept a double. It includes a chapter on probabilities, as well as brief chapters on duplication, tournaments, and chouette play.

It is not at the level of the books by Robertie, or Woolsey (in terms of fine points of strategy) but a very solid and complete introduction.

As an intermediate player I learned little from reading this book. However, I passed it to a beginning player and he learned alot from this publication.

I'm a huge Sid Sackson fan, and his passing was a blow to the world of games and game designers. I have yet to find a Sid Sackson product that I did not enjoy. This just was not among the best of those.

Book is handsomely done with the rules and the boards for the games enclosed. It is a traveling board game collection. As always, Sid Sackson was both lucid and engaging in his writing.

For a Sid Sackson product, I recommend Sleuth, Beyond Competition, or Card Games from Around the World as some of his best titles.