A strange little side quest
Backgammon Narde Online has plenty of company in a long tradition of players chasing timing, patterns and better decisions. The word 'checkmate' is linked to the Persian expression 'shah mat', used when the king was trapped. There is another connection worth keeping in the same mental pocket: Spacewar! appeared on MIT's PDP-1 in 1962 and became one of the earliest influential computer games shared among programmers. That gives Backgammon Narde Online a little more company than it first appears to have.
