[Robertie]

OK, here goes.

"Paradoxes and Probabilities" was based on an erroneous conception of backgammon. The game is fundamentally a race, with a lot of fascinating positional overtones. Cooke thought the game was fundamentally a positional struggle, with racing overtones. In his problems, he's constantly advocating the sacrifice of racing equity to build priming structures. He's sometimes correct, but more often wrong, and a lot of his mistakes are really serious blunders.

Slotting a point to make a better blocking formation is actually a dangerous play which has to be considered very carefully. To be correct, a slot has to be based on more than just the potential value of the slotted point. The point must be both valuable and unlikely to be made in the normal course of events. Often a correct slot also involves unstacking a heavily stacked point. If your position is not stacked but is reasonably flexible, slots are likely to be wrong because your position will improve itself naturally, without risk.

There are plenty of positions where slotting, or some other apparently risky maneuver, is completely correct. But Cooke can't distinguish between the two. In a nutshell, he just took too much risk for the potential rewards.

You can try to play in Cooke's style if you wish, but against competent opponents, what will happen is that you will be forced into various sorts of holding games and lose lots of races. Once in a while, of course, your fancy plays will work and you'll look like a genius. But not often enough.

By the way, in the early 1970s, a lot of top players played in Cooke's style and were very successful. (Which is why the books were written.) But they succeeded because most of their opponents were complete beginners who had no idea how to use the cube, not because of their super-aggressive play. A more modern approach to using the checkers would have won even more easily.