Every person I have ever met who plays backgammon wants to improve their game. Some are serious about it, others less so. However, one aspect which all players need to overcome is “frustration”.

What do I mean? Well the most obvious is with the dice. I call this “The Fastest Gun in the West” syndrome. What? Well sooner or later you will find someone who is quicker on the draw than you! Similarly you will always find someone in the tournament hall who has had serious bad luck with some amazing sequence of dice rolls than you have had! It’s tough, particularly when you hit a bad run of dice-related luck. What do I do? Well I am not interested in the dice! I am only interested in how I play. Thank God for Performance Rating (PR)!! If you are not interested in PR, then smile at the dice Gods when your opponent rolls a major joker. What else are you gonna do?

What else could frustrate you? Well, I was playing my friend Stefan at the recent tournament at Canterbury. A simple one-way holding position. He cubes me and I take. After the match, Stefan points out that my take was a mistake. “No way” was my first thought. Then when I got home I realised that I had mistaken the take points for the position by several pips. I had not re-read my notes on holding game take points! Hey, I wonder if Mochy does this kind of thing when you see him looking at his phone prior to a match? Frustrating, no! Won’t make that mistake again.

I can only speak for myself, but the most frustrating and enjoyable part of BG improvement is your personal training. Yes, you can improve by reading books and watching YouTube commentaries, etc, but if you do not have a coach you need to be organised in getting the material required for the level of your play. If you have a kind of scatter-gun approach, yes you will gain the knowledge required I am sure, but along the way you may have picked up all sorts of bad habits which could frustrate your improvement in the long run.

Now just before the World Team Championships I noticed my game was dropping off. To be clear, I base my improvement solely on PR. What to do? Well I had a word with my coach Tim Cross. He noted my frustrations but simply said “no problem, I will sort you out”. The next match I played against him I played at PR 3.85. Somehow he got me to think about my game and for me it’s all about concentration. I have not looked back since. So much so that I have now managed to get below PR 4 based on my most recent 300 live matches which I like to do in line with BMAB because this means I am playing at Grandmaster Level 3. The only frustrating part is I need to do that in a BMAB environment! That’s tough. Work in progress.

So what do you do when you feel frustrated due to the dice or your improvement has stalled? Find a coach, if not then try and speak to a strong player about your issues. I have always found BG players helpful and it just could be a small piece of advice is what you need. If you really feel super frustrated, I suggest finding a tournament like Canterbury or some such where the match lengths are only 5 points and get back to enjoying the game. Stop putting any pressure on yourself. It’s one of the reasons I play at Canterbury, just for the enjoyment of playing. If that does not help, take a short break from the game. Refresh your mind.

It’s funny what you do on a bad trot of form. I thought “well how bad does Mochy play PR-wise”. Amazingly, when I went to the BMAB website his last match shows him playing at PR 5.21! The last time he played at that level in BMAB matches was four years ago! So Mochy I am sure would say “What can I say, backgammon is hard”!!

The point of this post is to highlight the fact that we all get frustrated at backgammon and of course the dice does not help in this respect, but do not forget the dice can go with you and that improvement does not come for free. Just enjoy the game for what it is.

Irish international player Kevin Bailey is currently a Master [M2] level player. When he is not playing or studying backgammon, he enjoys walking his dogs and going on holiday with his wife.