{"id":34821,"date":"2025-10-13T15:56:32","date_gmt":"2025-10-13T20:56:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=34821"},"modified":"2025-10-13T15:56:32","modified_gmt":"2025-10-13T20:56:32","slug":"a-near-run-thing-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=34821","title":{"rendered":"A Near-Run Thing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It wasn&#8217;t as world-historical as Waterloo, but this game of backgammon was closer than it had any right to be.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"675\" src=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Screenshot_20251013_164252.jpg\" alt=\"Screenshot of a game of backgammon\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-34822\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Look at that!  White is trapped and unable to put his piece back on the board.  I should have had an easy time of it.  But no, some lucky rolls on white&#8217;s part, and white and I were trading blow after blow in removing pieces from the board.<\/p>\n<p>Nonetheless, I emerged victorious.  I still lose 60% of the time, and I&#8217;m convinced that xgammon cheats, but I&#8217;m getting better all the time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It wasn&#8217;t as world-historical as Waterloo, but this game of backgammon was closer than it had any right to be. Look at that! White is trapped and unable to put his piece back on the board. I should have had an easy time of it. But no, some lucky rolls on white&#8217;s part, and white<a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=34821\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">&#8220;A Near-Run Thing&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[5163],"class_list":["post-34821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-backgammon","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34821\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}