Backgammon Galaxy How to Not Suck at Backgammon

by Marc Olsen

Elevate Your Skills Easily This backgammon book is tailor-made for beginners and intermediates who want to elevate their skills to an advanced player level. It contains 20 fundamental rules on how to avoid making blunders – knowledge that all grandmasters possess instinctively but might not be obvious to less advanced players. With 18 years of experience in competing, studying, writing books, and giving private lessons, Grandmaster Marc Olsen has compiled a book equivalent to how he would teach in private lessons to a new player. It’s the ultimate guide for beginners and intermediates. Its structure is based on practical examples of ideas and logic, training the reader’s pattern recognition without delving into unnecessary math and game theory. The book is easy to read for everyone, and the three quiz sections make it a super fun and interactive experience. Contents Part Rules on How to Avoid Checker Play Blunders Part Quiz for Strategic Understanding Part Train Your Pattern Recognition Part Checkerplay Quiz Part Rules on How to Avoid Cube Action Blunders Part Cube Action Quiz About the Author Marc Olsen (Grandmaster), famous from YouTube, CEO of Backgammon Galaxy and author of four From Basics to Badass, Pure Strategy, Cube Like a Boss, and Masterclass (co-written with Super Grandmaster Masayuki Mochizuki). Marc Olsen is currently ranked no. 13 in the world on the UBC skill-based ranking list.

342 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2023

Reviews

[isaac dwyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easiest backgammon book for intermediate players aspiring to really get a handle on advanced strategy concepts. Worksheets on cube action in the latter sections are exceptionally helpful with not only demonstrating said core concepts, but also narrativizing them in a way that makes the logic stick.

Backgammon books have an annoying cultural tendency to refer to checkers as “men” and the opponent as a default “him” and this one is no exception. Marc is an excellent teacher, however, and his pedagogy far outshines the masculinist default of the genre.