The entire thing is also free, open-source and with a very diverse tech stack behind it that includes Scala, Redis, MongoDB, Elasticsearch, Typescript, websockets, nginx and more [1]
Although, I had so much fun. I was playing mostly openings with 2nd move being the one with queen. Got to about 1700 rating on that site in bullet (3-5 min game). This was the result of about 1 year of heavy addiction (2-10 hours of chess per day).
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/05/13/the-chaos-of-t...
Sadly, Falafel (Matvey Natanzon) passed away in March: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/03/nyregion/matvey-natanzon-...
Is this supposed to be a good thing in a game? It's kind of like the opposite of being skill-based. E.g., poker has this "problem", and it's a huge part of the game and its skill, but it's not literally a good thing that "anyone can win once". At worst, it just encourages gambling, at best it makes results more random than necessary to establish skill differences.
Bridge also has this property that every beginner can win, and the main consequence I've seen when teaching people is that it trips people up when their understanding of probability theory isn't up to snuff already before they start learning, they end up having way too much trouble distinguishing success and failure.
There's a theory that one of the reasons chess is so highly-developed with so many children playing at such a high level is precisely that not anyone can win, so people just get so much more feedback on their decision making.
Absolutely. Maybe not for a sport, but unless you're talking about the pure competitive aspect of it, most games benefit from having that level of accessibility. Bad players need to feel like they can win games. Even if they don't know how, they'll feel like they can win again.
One of the big draws to any game is the idea that you aren't just measuring your skill/experience at the game against everyone else playing, it's like when everyone comes over to play Super Smash Bros but you can tell the host has been playing on his own to practice, it takes a lot of the fun out of it. You can also use the example in SSB of playing with items on. Sure, really competitive players will hate the randomness that comes from items but the whole point of that randomness is to give everyone else a fighting chance.
I guess it depends on what you want out of a "game". If you're only looking at it through the lens of Chess where luck is virtually nonexistent and skill is the ultimate deciding factor, you're going to take a lot of issue with anything that upsets that balance. But, in practice, most people play games for enjoyment, not for sport.
The fundamental skill in backgammon is managing variance. Since there are many possible outcomes of the dice that you can't control, your job as a player is to put your checkers into position such that you're maximizing good outcomes and minimizing bad outcomes.
Yes, in any giving game, a poor player might roll very well and win that game, but over a large sample, the better player will absolutely dominate.
Backgammon also has the advantage over poker in the sense that it's still fun to play in the absence of gambling. Poker is dreadfully boring if no money is on the line.
Also, in backgammon, you still need to actually win. Contrast this with poker, where oftentimes when playing for money, you don't actually want to reach the end of the hand (i.e. showdown). Which, again, is pointless if there's no money involved since always calling is your optimal strategy.
But we need a lichess for Backgammon! Backgammon has tons of strategy but also has the element of chance because of the dice roll - anyone can win anygame (in theory, at least).
There is even a lichess forum post about making lichess for backgammon: https://lichess.org/forum/lichess-feedback/backgammon-clone-...