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BGonline.org Forums
Which to focus on, checker play or cube action?
Posted By: Timothy Chow
Date: Thursday, 10 May 2012, at 12:10 a.m.
Given a limited time budget, which reaps more benefits for the tournament player, studying checker play or studying cube action?
For simplicity, let me ignore the "human factor" and assume that my goal is to play like a bot does.
There are at least two factors to consider here:
1. In my typical match to n points, how much equity, measured in MWC, do I lose through checker-play errors, and how much do I lose through cube errors?
2. Per unit time spent studying, how much do I expect to be able to reduce that equity loss?
XG conveniently provides a pie chart that at first glance appears to help answer Question 1. However, looking at it closely, I see that it seems to measure errors in terms of EMG, rather than in terms of MWC. So it's not clear to me how useful it is for answering Question 1.
Ignoring the important EMG/MWC distinction for the moment, about three-quarters of my personal pie chart is occupied by checker-play errors. I would guess that even if we use MWC units, checker-play errors would similarly dominate, simply because there are so many more nontrivial checker-play decisions in a match than nontrivial cube decisions.
Supposing that's true, though, it doesn't necessarily follow that studying checker-play is the more profitable way to use a limited time budget, because of Question 2 above. Perhaps I'm closer to "maxing out" my ability to improve my checker play, and there's more low-hanging fruit in the cube arena.
Has anybody figured out a good way to answer Questions 1 and 2 above? There was a relevant article by Zare on Gammon Village some time ago, but I found his suggestions rather tedious to implement for myself.
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