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Antonio Ortega, Mario Madrigal, and Danny
Kleinman 1996 161pp
Editorama ISBN:9977880352
Antonio Ortega and Mario Madrigal have once again combined efforts to produce
an excellent annotation in their newest book, Backgammon: Costa Rica
1994. The book thoroughly examines the Third Tournament of the Américas
Cariari Masters final match between experts Mike Senkiewicz and Mike Svobodny.
In addition to using manual rollouts to supplement the analysis, the authors,
along with guest coauthor Danny Kleinman, have also employed the powerful
JellyFish(TM) computer tool. Not only is JellyFish able to produce rollouts, but
it can also help with cube analysis. Utilizing these features, Ortega and
Madrigal have supplied very valuable information on doubling and market losers
in critical positions, an excellent type of innovative analysis.
Although the annotations were very good, they were not quite of as high a
quality as with their previous book, Costa Rica 1993. Perhaps the
authors may actually have leaned too heavily on the JellyFish rollouts.
Also, there was much discussion of how much time the players took to make
their individual moves. The time was recorded from the match videotapes. This is
really not very educational because a player may have been thinking about lots
of things, or he may have been distracted. The time he takes may have nothing to
do with whether or not he feels he has a difficult choice.
Still, there is a lot of valuable material in Backgammon: Costa Rica
1994, which is quite entertaining as well as instructional. I would
certainly recommend it to any serious student of the game.
Kit Woolsey. Reprinted with permission from the May 1996 edition of Chicago Point.
Backgammon: Costa Rica 1994 by Antonio Ortega, Mario Madrigal
and Danny Kleinman is priced at US$35.00.
Other book reviews welcome! Email them to DocMartin@Gammoned.com
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