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XG1 rollout, and remarks on psychology

Posted By: Timothy Chow
Date: Thursday, 9 May 2013, at 12:48 a.m.

In Response To: More free advertising for Stick (Timothy Chow)

This was a peculiar case where my opponent's psychological strategy paid off. When I say "psychological strategy," let me point out that my opponent was XG! I was playing White, and XG 3-ply doubled me. This took me by surprise. What, I thought, is the computer doing doubling me here? I figured it must know something I didn't. As I studied the position I noted that my timing wasn't very good, Blue had a four-prime already…and I passed! I'm sure I wouldn't have passed against a human opponent but somehow the bot's unexpected double caused me to lose confidence in my ability to assess the position.

Now for the QF surrounding my comment about asking for an XG2 rollout. I wanted to ask for an XG2 rollout, not because the doubling decision was close, but just because there has been a lot of talk about how XG2 is better at backgames than XG1 is. So I was curious whether there would be a difference. I would have been curious whether or not the doubling decision happened to be close. But naturally, I recognized that putting the request directly in the original post would generate a kind of QF, most likely causing people to "round up" or "round down" to the nearest boundary (as Stick did). But even though in this particular position, the decision was a borderline decision, I decided that the QF was actually not a bad thing, because in a way, it simulated the psychological effect I experienced OTB when the computer paused to think, and then doubled. Any readers who thought that the double was clear here might therefore be tricked into passing, for psychological reasons.

It's hard to know if my bluff worked on anyone, since I believe that most BGO readers are afraid of posting an answer to a difficult-looking position without checking a bot first, but I like to think that it did.





White is Player 1

score: 0
pip: 186
Money session
pip: 126
score: 0

Blue is Player 2
XGID=-c-b-BEBC---bB---a-cbbA---:0:0:1:00:0:0:0:0:10
Blue on roll, cube action?


Analyzed in Rollout
No Double
Player Winning Chances: 63.16% (G: 29.04% B: 3.41%)
Opponent Winning Chances: 36.84% (G: 5.80% B: 0.25%)
Double/Take
Player Winning Chances: 63.64% (G: 29.61% B: 3.56%)
Opponent Winning Chances: 36.36% (G: 5.66% B: 0.24%)
Cubeless Equities
No Double:+0.527
Double:+1.091
Cubeful Equities
No Double:+0.761 (-0.016)
Double/Take:+0.776
Double/Drop:+1.000 (+0.224)
Best Cube action: Double / Take
Rollout details
2592 Games rolled with Variance Reduction.
Dice Seed: 2
Moves and cube decisions: 3 ply
Confidence No Double: ± 0.024 (+0.737...+0.784)
Confidence Double: ± 0.028 (+0.748...+0.805)
Double Decision confidence: 79.8%
Take Decision confidence: 100.0%
Duration: 9 hours 05 minutes

eXtreme Gammon Version: 1.21

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