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BGonline.org Forums
PR question for the mathematically inclined
Posted By: Timothy Chow In Response To: PR question for the mathematically inclined (Bob koca)
Date: Monday, 25 March 2013, at 12:27 a.m.
Bob Koca wrote:
You imply that the variability is due to difficulty of the decisions. Do you think that is much more a factor than just playing better or worse?
Well, that's a good question. It's a little hard to separate the two. The only logically pure way I see of defining what it means for me to "play better or worse" independently of the difficulty of the decisions is to consider the exact same decisions under different circumstances and see how often I make the right play versus the wrong play. But by the nature of backgammon, the exact same decisions don't repeat very often (and the few decisions that do recur, such as opening or bearoff positions, tend to be decisions that players play the same way every time). So I think this is hard to measure scientifically, and we have to rely on gut feeling.
My gut feeling is that the vast majority of the time, I make the same choices when faced with the same decisions. I know that I do this even when I try consciously to alter my behavior: When I review old material, I often make the exact same mistake again, even after I've made an effort to stop doing so. HOWEVER, occasionally I will make a mistake that is "inexplicable," meaning that I look at it afterwards and wonder what could have possessed me to make it. These errors are usually not "reproducible" and are examples of playing badly even when the decision is not difficult. Though relatively infrequent compared to "systematic" errors, such errors tend to be very large. For example, a couple of months ago I dropped about 1.0 EMG on a single checkerplay where I missed an obvious hit. So these can contribute quite a bit to one's error rate (assuming one honestly records all such errors, as I do, instead of finding some excuse to exclude them).
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