Due to some truly unforseeable events, my 2014 book In the Game Until the End Vol II (IGUE Vol II) was knocked out of print for a couple of months. I'll tell the horror story at a later date (old-style publishing meets POD and the result is a hot mess), but the good news is that this book is once again online. Its new address is
Price is still $30. It is a nifty object in that it is "flexibound" with a dark and mysterious cover.
Here's the solution to the mystery: the cover image depicts the famous "Coup Classique" position, foremost in notoriety among the many contact endgames analyzed in the study. The artist's mannequin throwing the dice might have shown better in metal rather than wood: it represents the "bot"--the artificial intelligence program that all professionals use to help understand backgammon concepts and tactics. The bot plays a huge role in IGUE, because in this book I subjected my researches of two decades earlier (IGUE 1994 version, mostly out of print) to the pitiless scrutiny of modern AI.