I learned how to play backgammon from some internet friends. All the games were played by setting up/moving the checkers counter-clock wise.
I finally played a OverTheBoard BG game with a friend of mine. He's a National Master Chess player and has played BG for many years. He is a bit of a character. (hehehe)
He setup the board, and played it CLOCKWISE - I was a bit lost when playing him. It's like writing with your non-dominant hand.
Is this possible, or was he implementing some psychological warfare tactics on me?
There is no defined direction of play for gammon games. Various players have a preference and may pass their preference on to anyone that they teach, as happened when I was taught by my next door neighbour, and as happened to you.
When you go to a club or live tournament you'll find that some players have a preference for one way and others have a preference for the other but the vast majority will not care. They have become comfortable playing both ways, having had to, because whoever sets the board up has made the decision and it's not often that players will rearrange them.
But it does happen. If an opponent would prefer the board the other way around then it's only polite, as a player who has no preference, to quickly change it.
Your friend would have been showing good sportsmanship if he had offered to change the direction of play once you'd made your discomfort known to him. If you'd asked him directly then he'd have been rude to refuse. If he wasn't aware then you might have suffered unnecessarily.
If he was aware, from observation or an offhand remark by you, but didn't offer then he was possibly being insensitive or maybe doing it "for your own good", the thinking being that you'll need to learn it sooner or later. But, yes, he might have done it to gain an edge. At his level he shouldn't need that and shame on him if that was how it happened. You will hopefully encounter few players who are that competitive against newcomers. We want more people enjoying the game, not fewer! :-)
Online, a game site will tend to play in whatever direction the site designer chose. As it's not defined in any standard, that would have been arbitrary, eg. based on their own preference or on reading some rules which necessarily used a given direction in the text and diagrams. Having programmed backgammon myself, my default for play inside the program is clockwise because then the board numbering starts out from left to right, fitting in with the bias of the Western reading style. That said, the game can be played either way because a computer can display the board in whatever way you like, including having both sides on one side, so you're playing on a board that's 24-points wide. Now that's weird to see! ;o)
Fortunately the discomfort of playing the "wrong" way is not anywhere as hard to fix as becoming adept with your non-dominant hand. The hardest part is actually getting the practice at playing the other way.
DailyGammon, a site which specialises in backgammon and nackgammon, has a user setting for direction of play. Mine is set to play anti-clockwise, which is also the direction that Pocket-Monkey and BrainKing use. However I was taught by my neighbour to play clockwise. If you join DailyGammon then you can practice getting comfortable playing clockwise.
There are also various backgammon programs which you can install on your PC and play against. The best value for money is the world class and free program GnuBg. This program, will give you a serious thrashing in either direction so it's another good way to get used to playing clockwise. A player can also change the settings so that it doesn't thrash them quite so discouragingly often! ;-)
Whichever way round, welcome to Backgammon, playBunny ;-)
Thank you Playbunny for the thorough and polite response. ... Sincerely Rob
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