Backgammon is an elegant amalgamation of probability, statistics, game theory, and psychology. It is a game of considerable long-term skill punctuated by short-term uncertainty.

Over time, the experienced player will defeat the novice by reducing the uncertainty component through skillful play and will be known as "lucky."

- Ed Rosenblum

Backgammon is a rich, complex game of strategy that is far from solved. Top players like myself are constantly learning new things.

The beauty of backgammon is that it always can be blamed on the dice when you lose. Great players always seem to be getting lucky! They carefully choose plays that take reasonable risks in return for maximum reward. They choose plays that create good rolls for themselves and bad rolls for their opponent. Then when they get a good roll or their opponent gets a bad roll, it is easy for the opponent to blame the dice rather than credit their skilled adversary for creating the conditions to make their demise likely. Yes, any player can beat any other player in any single game. It is the illusion of hope and the occasional reinforcement of that hope that keep people wanting to play more.

- Rich Munitz

Backgammon is a much more subtle, difficult, intricate game than people can possibly believe. The difficulty comes not in explicit calculation of odds; it comes, like chess, in the understanding and recognition of the strategy. In chess there’s no calculating of odds, yet that’s a very difficult game. Backgammon is an extremely misleading game in the sense that it seems a lot simpler than it is.

The fact that there’s the dice element masks the deep subtlety, the complexity, the beauty of the underlying strategy. There’s so much more going on beneath the surface than people usually can possibly imagine. All different levels. People at all levels pretty much think they know all there is to know, they brush up a little about odds when they’re just a million miles away from understanding. But the dice disguise the fact that it’s a game of position and strategy.

Backgammon is very misleading. It’s hardly a simple game at all. The complexity certainly rivals, I believe, that of chess or bridge. There’s a lot more to the game than people can possibly imagine. There are all sorts of different levels of ability and skill. You keep on getting better and better but people just don’t recognize that there are all different levels, these different levels of play. So it’s a very subtle, very profound game. But it appears to be a very, very simple game, which is part of the fascination of it.

- Paul Magriel

Where does that leave us in our quest for the perfect game? If I was going to have to pick one, I would choose backgammon. It is full of drama, twists and turns. The lead can shift dramatically with a roll of the dice. As with the mathematics of chaos, small changes can send things in completely new directions. A beginner has the ability to beat an expert, but even when the dice seem against you, strategic play can still give you the upper hand. The rules couldn’t be simpler, and yet, in each of the thousands of matches I’ve played, the story is different every time. And as well as being one of the most perfect games, it is also one of humanity’s most ancient – able to trace its origins back to the game Finkel decoded at the British Museum.

- Marcus du Sautoy