Backgammon: Skill or Luck?

Does skill or luck make a winning backgammon player?

  Is Backgammon a mostly a game of chance or a game of skill? In any game that involves rolling dice, a certain amount of chance or luck comes into play. But how much? There may be no definitive answer to that question, but that doesn’t stop the debate. Some people claim backgammon is purely a game of chance. But if that is so, how do we account for players who consistently win a higher percentage of games? Do we assume they are just luckier than their opponents all the time? But that defies the definition of luck. Luck cannot be consistent over a period of time. Without question, experience and skill must factor into a player’s chances of winning a game. They can mitigate an opponent’s good luck and increase the advantage you gain when luck sways your way. How much luck factors into a game of backgammon depends on numerous variables, but the two primary variables that decide how much weight luck carries in a game are the length of the game and the equality of each opponent’s skill and experience.

Length of the game

  In a short match, for low points, luck is going to be a bigger factor than in a long match. Luck is not consistent, but it doesn’t need to be consistent to win a few points. The more games involved, the stronger is the need for a player to consistently win points. That is where experience and skill prevail over luck. The inexperienced player is going to make the wrong moves with his roll, over and over again. The experience player is going to understand how to work those wrong moves to his advantage, consistently. Even when players are not at such extreme odds in skill and experience levels, a longer game provides more opportunity for strategies and for experience to prevail.

Equality of Skill and Experience   In all but the briefest match between a novice player and an experienced, professional player, the novice won’t stand a chance – even if the novice player is lucky with the dice. Making a good roll isn’t really going to help a player who doesn’t know what the appropriate moves are for those rolls and cannot anticipate his opponents moves based on his possible rolls. But in a game between two opponents equally matched in skill and experience, luck is the deciding factor. How often are opponents going to have completely equal skills and experience? Not often enough to call backgammon a game of pure chance. Most likely, when players are in the same class, the game is equal parts luck and skill.