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Perspective (on gold standard and N57)

Posted By: Nack Ballard
Date: Thursday, 4 February 2010, at 2:56 a.m.

In Response To: Very nice, but just a tad conservative for raw pip counts (neilkaz)

First, Neil, thanks for the rollouts. It's amazing what you can pull out of your hip pocket on short notice.

In echoing what others have pointed out, I'll confirm that I'm not trying to reinvent Walter Trice's(?) gold standard table, however it may have been derived. My only goal was to express it (match it) in a short, succinct formula. That has never been done before to the extent that the Nack 57 rule does. (Henceforth in this post, I'll refer to it as "N57" for short.)

You show rollouts for positions in which the trailer can take a pip more aggressively than the gold standard claims. It is possible that gold standard is slightly conservative for the trailer (after balancing the factor that (a) a 15-checker race is longer than a 1-checker race, with (b) even small wastage for one or both sides increases variance); Walter might have not quite balanced/netted (a) and (b) optimally.

Or it is possible that he (Walter) perfectly achieved what he set out to do; that he did not intend to spotlight 15-checker positions of absolute minimal or even extreme-low-end wastage, but rather an average of positions that didn't include any obvious wastage. That is the (reasonable) possibility that Ian brought forth in his post.

In any event, the gold standard table is the best we have today. I notice that you targeted cusp take points in the table (where 7 is on the verge of changing to 8, and 11 is on the verge of switching over to 12), and that's fine -- it's natural to test the weakest spots you can find. But even at those weakest points, in the exact positions you chose, three of your four rollouts show a pass conservatism of only .007, .009 and .005, and the fourth is a vindication of .002. And again, that may all be in line with expectations -- for all we know these positions have even less wastage than the average low-wastage positions Walter meant to blanket.

Also, I'd like to point out that with N57, it is easy to determine how close you are to the take point.

For example, consider the leader count of 100. Subtract 33 -> 67, double -> 134. The squares flanking this are 121 and 144. Since 134 is closer to 144 than 121, you use 12 as the take point. But it's only a little closer (13 one way, 10 the other). So, although as the trailer you will take at 100-112 with all other factors being equal, if you're the stronger player or a little ahead in the match or you have slightly inferior wastage (with Opp's being average), you'll probably choose to pass. And with less guesswork -- you have a reference point gleaned from your application of N57 itself that tells you how much leeway you have.

Now let's consider the first example you rolled out. It is the same as the previous example except both the leader and trailer have one fewer pip: 99-111 (which your rollout result had at 0.993 take). Subt 33 -> 66, double -> 132. Again, the sq rt flanks are 121 and 144, but this time you're closer to 121. Only slightly, though: You're 11/23 of the way from 11 to 12. All other things being exactly equal, you'd drop at 12, but you could almost flip a coin to decide -- a change in the direction of the wind might sway you.

Nack

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