Product Review

Perhaps the most intriguing - and mysterious - realm in the backgammon universe lies at contact's 11th hour. Holding the opponent's ace point, a competitor is "in the game until the end" - an end which can run the gamut from utter disaster to miraculous deliverance. The first systematic study of the play in these exceedingly difficult positions was undertaken in 1993 by the renowned American expert, Robert Wachtel. In this, the sequel to that early, pioneering work, Wachtel mobilizes the cutting-edge tool of deep computer rollout-analysis to debug and carefully extend his research to a variety of more complex ace-point endings.