A far more interesting and difficult task would be to go for one of
the other variants In my family they used to play machboosa
(surrounded), which is the same as the Greek Plakoto, which I find
strategically orders of magnitude harder. I can hardly tell if I make
sensible moves or not, as this is a game where you have to slow
yourself down usually not just a race to the line that is backgammon.
I even have doubts that a neural net can capture this complexity,
since most consequences are far ahead in the future - it is like
playing a backgame all the time, and we know how poor computer players
are at that, GNUBG especially.
-Joseph