Masayuki Mochizuki (Mochy), perhaps the strongest backgammon player in the world, has kindly invited us to reproduce his recent bear off seminar here on the UKBGF blog. Mochy gave this presentation over the weekend at the Merit Open 2013 in Cyprus, and it is our pleasure to share it here with our readers.
Mochy, who declared the formation of the UKBGF great news for the backgammon community, can be followed on Twitter here.
On the BGonline forum, Mochy has added some comments about his bear off rule which appears after Problem 6 in his seminar. These comments make the rule much easier to remember (even for westerners):
“When you pronounce 31524(6) in Japanese it sounds some meanings, so it will be much easier for us.
(6 doesn’t mean anything, but it was added to have some sound in the end)
The inventor of this rule is Hironobu Yazawa (Akiko Yazawa’s husband), as long as I know. I should have credited his name in the presentation but I forgot.
When I did the lecture in Cyprus, Haluk Oral (Math professor in Turkey) told me this;
31 = number of the day in the month
52 = number of the week in the year
4 = number of the season in the year (in Turkey and Japan at least)
I like it very much. Isn’t it beautiful?”