Grandpa’s Backgammon (To Tavli tou Pappou)
By: Phillip Delikouras
Tags: Backgammon, Board Games, Summer, Probability, Greece

Growing up my summers were spent with my grandparents in a small coastal town in the southwest of Greece called Theologos. I loved these trips because they were one of the few constants of my childhood; every few years I found myself settling into a new town or school or in some cases country, but every year, invariably, there I was, swimming in the oceans, eating the food, and walking the paths that never seemed to change. Ubiquitous throughout the Baltics and Mediterranean, which I distinctly remember playing with my grandfather is the board game “tavli”, whose western equivalent is backgammon.

In essence it is an extremely simple game, get all of your “poulia” (in Greek), roughly translating to chips, from one side of the board to the other. Simple concept, yes, but in practice many complications arise. The game is referred to by players as “plakoto”, colloquially translating to “beat down”. This is because in order to progress along the board, the poulia must always be in at least a stack of two which usually happens by overtaking the opponent’s piece by stacking yours on top, hence the “beat down”. Otherwise, you leave your own chips exposed and receive the “beat down” rather than give it.

Every summer, the greatest foe I faced was my Grandpa George. Our games often lasted hours going back and forth overtaking one another, playing best of 5s and even 7s in one sitting. The word he always repeated to me was “pithanotites” meaning “probabilities”. What was the probability that he would roll the number needed to overtake my chip. The probabilities dictated how conservatively or cautiously you progressed and played. The basic logic was that if your opponent was far, they would need a larger roll to land on your chip, and therefore it was not as likely that they would be able to overtake. My grandfather rarely took these risks, always ensuring he had formed his own stacks on which his chips could safely step before he moved throughout the board.

I on the other hand had the opposite philosophy: attacking and aggressive. I regularly defied the probabilities in order to make a potentially beneficial position further along the board, while admittedly leaving myself exposed. These were risks that either resulted in my Herculean victory or my embarrassing defeat. And of course, receiving the beat down was an inevitable part of the game, regardless if you won or not. These beatdowns certainly made the game harder, but did not deter from the primary objective of the game.

As I grew older and the years passed, I realized the universal application of this seemingly mundane board game and I saw just how valuable these lessons in strategy and risk-taking were. In life we are often posed with a game of tavli. We face obstacles and scenarios where we can either be conservative and maintain a firm foundation in expectation of a beat down, or we can be defiant. We can be defiant of expectations, of probabilities. Defiant of what others may think. When my grandfather would see these moves he would shake his head in disappointment. “Why would you do this, didn’t I teach you to never do this?”, “To be great is to be understood” I would reply. Nine times out of ten my grandfather would then reply with a finishing blow that would end up securing his victory, a victory even Emerson could not dispute. The pithanotites were almost always on his side, however, when this exuberant strategy preceded the odds, it resulted in a resounding victory.

Playing the odds is the most comforting tactic in any endeavor because it provides reassurance. It provides an objective measure for how successful someone can be. However, the greatest stories are often the ones that deviate. The ones that redefine the odds, the ones that ignore the pithanotites.