BGonline.org Forums

RO: Too good, too good, too good, oops!

Posted By: Timothy Chow
Date: Thursday, 15 May 2014, at 2:39 p.m.

In Response To: RO: Too good, too good, too good, oops! (David Levy)

Here's how I would go about trying to develop tools for these positions.

1. Switch to an unlimited score.

2. Simplify the position. For example, I'm inclined to remove White's 5pt and putting those checkers on her 2pt. Now we have a relatively straightforward 3 runners versus 1 runner position.

3. Move the checkers around the board in various ways and note the win and gammon probabilities. It might be valuable to compare these with the winning probabilities that you'd expect in a straight race. There's no way to get these directly but you can estimate using various pip counting methods like EPC or Keith Count. This way you can assess who benefits from the contact (one expects that it's the losing side who benefits) and by approximately how much.

4. Now if you like, you can complicate the position by adding another point to White's board to see how it affects things.

This may seem like a lot of work, but I don't think there's really any shortcut. The top players don't have any secret information that they can use to address these questions any better than you can; they would have to go through a similar process to develop formulas and heuristics.

Messages In This Thread

• Too good, too good, too good, oops!
  David Levy -- Saturday, 10 May 2014, at 8:51 p.m.
  • Too good, too good, too good, oops!
    Timothy Chow -- Monday, 12 May 2014, at 3:07 p.m.
    • Too good, too good, too good, oops!
      Bob Koca -- Monday, 12 May 2014, at 11:26 p.m.
  • Still need help here!
    David Levy -- Tuesday, 13 May 2014, at 2:08 p.m.
  • Too good, too good, too good, oops!
    Casper Van der Tak -- Tuesday, 13 May 2014, at 2:21 p.m.
    • +1
      David Presser -- Tuesday, 13 May 2014, at 4:23 p.m.
  • RO: Too good, too good, too good, oops!
    David Levy -- Thursday, 15 May 2014, at 5:50 a.m.
    • RO: Too good, too good, too good, oops!
      Timothy Chow -- Thursday, 15 May 2014, at 2:39 p.m.