Another Dirty Little Secret

I play backgammon. A lot of backgammon.

Father figure Ken Ingerson taught me the game in the 1970s, but it was this year that I was bitten by the bug. My place of choice is It's Your Turn which offers numerous games at reasonable prices. You can play for free but you're limited to 25 moves a day; you'd be surprised how quickly those 25 moves disappear.

IYT offers eight or nine types of BG, of which I play three:
- Backgammon: this is the regular, traditional game, but with no doubling cube.
- Backgammon Pro: Regular game with doubling cube. First player to five points wins. This is match play, so there can be as many as nine one-point games before a winner is decided.
- Backgammon Pro-9: Regular game with doubling cube. First player to nine points wins. This is also match play, so there can be as many as 17 one-point games before a winner is decided.

You can play in three different environments:
- Regular games, which players can make moves from once every three days to once every 30 days. I always play three-day games because one-month games can take months to complete.
- Ladder games. Players join the game they want with set time limits they want (ex: moves every 28 hour moves to 100-hour moves). Failure to move within the set limit is a forfeit. Players climb the higher in the standings with each win.
- Tournament games. These are elimination tournaments where you play three to four players a round, two games against each player. I justed started tournament play and the highest I've ever gotten was the fourth round (13th place out of about 200 players).

Looking at my games right now...
Active regular games: 26. Most of these are plain old BG. (Only 26??? I'm slowing down.)
Active ladder games: 53 matches. Most of those are Backgammon Pro with one or two BG-9
Tournaments: 10 tournaments of almost all regular BG.

Now the big question: Do I win? Of the nearly 1400 BG games and matches I've played on IYT, I've won nearly 900 times which is two-thirds of games played (895/477/14 draws = 1386 games and matches). Of the three environments, I win about 62% of my regular games, and 70% of my tournament and ladder games.

All of which proves yet again that I need a life.