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Backgammon Books


I love books ! They accompany me on my journeys, help me to fall asleep at night, they are an effective way to turn a beginner into a good backgammon player and - last but not least - look great in my bookshelves   Laughing Smiley    

This part of my homepage therefore deals with backgammon books.
In my Backgammon Bibliography you will find all backgammon books ever published in English or German. I only included those books that only deal with backgammon and not other games as well. I only made an excemption for very old books, where usually backgammon was discussed together with chess or draughts. I should warn you, that most of the older books in my bibliography, however, will not improve your strength of play. The knowledge about correct, successful play has changed significantly within the last 15, 20 years. In particular the availability of strong backgammon software based on neural networks has added a lot to our knowledge 1) . So you need to read older books with some care. I will say more about that in the chapter How to improve and in my Backgammon FAQ.
The chapter Recommended Reading will introduce you to some books that every backgammon player with ambitions should have read.
And if you finally got crazy about backgammon and are desperately searching for sources to buy backgammon books (and supplies) I'll tell you in another chapter Where to buy.
Help-Smiley As I still intend to complete my backgammon library, I have listed those books still missing in my collection in  I am searching .... Perhaps you can you help me?
Backgammon Book Publications over the Years
The table below displays how many books on backgammon were published in the course of the previous 150 years; it also illustrates how the popularity of backgammon has varied over the years.
Each bar represents a time span of ten years, with the exception of the left bar, displaying all publications before 1860, and the right bar, representing only five years, 2001 until 2006. The length of each bar (left axis) indicates how many books were published in the correcponding time frame (lower axis).
It's clearly visible that the interest in backgammon hit a peak in the 1930s. Easily identified is also the climax of the backgammon craze in the 1970s. Later the interest decreased a bit, but seems to be rising again in the 90s. (Keep in mind, that the outer right bar in only displaying a time span of five years. So the smaller bar is not indicating a decrease in interest.)


New publications on backgammon from very beginning until today
Footnotes


1) JellyFish™, the first neural network based backgammon software was available from 1994 on. At that time is was significantly stronger than any other backgammon programme and had a deep impact on our understanding of the game.

Last update: 29th November 2006