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BGonline.org Forums
What is your DMP PR?
Posted By: Timothy Chow In Response To: What is your DMP PR? (Chase)
Date: Friday, 4 September 2015, at 3:29 p.m.
I don't play a lot of DMP against the bot so I can't answer your main question.
Everyone is different, and different plans for improvement will work for different people. Your chosen plan—DMP first, then money, then match—is one that has been discussed on BGO before. Some people think it's a good idea while others don't. Short of becoming your personal coach, nobody can really say whether the plan is appropriate for you, given your particular strengths and weaknesses. However, I do have one suggestion, which is that if your plan involves getting one phase "under control" before progressing to the next, then you run the risk of never moving past phase one. If you're like most people, things will never seem under control no matter how good you get. If you ultimately want to improve your money and match play, then you should probably schedule in some of that from the get-go rather than waiting an indefinite amount of time before even starting.
I imagine I'm making all kinds of small errors in the openings which bump up my PR.
BGOnline has many vocal opening fanatics, but I personally believe that your original instinct that small opening errors don't contribute a lot to your PR is correct. By all means study the opening if you find it interesting. It's also possible to make a rather large error on the third roll or even the second roll of the game and those obviously deserve attention. However, fussing over 0.001 or even 0.005 is generally not going to be the most efficient use of your time if you've got much bigger fish to fry. Saying that it starts off your game with a 0.083 PR or whatever is a mathematical fallacy. What matters is the effect on your long-term average, and 0.005 is a hundred times less important than the 0.500 mega-whopper you make five moves later.
It seems like cheating to artificially lower my PR in this way.
Whether you do it or not, it's not cheating, as long as you are consistent. PR is just a tool for monitoring your progress. If you look at how the sausage is made, there are all kinds of wild and crazy things in the definition of PR. There have been heated debates about whether PR is "better" than Snowie "ER." It's all hot air. Everything averages out in the long run, and if you get better than you'll get better according to any halfway sensible measure. Don't take the exact definition of PR too seriously.
This might also be a good time to mention that even if you learn what other people's DMP PR is, I'm not sure that that information is helpful unless you're contemplating playing in a tournament and want to size up the competition. Your goal is to improve your own play, and for that, what you need data about is yourself, not data about other people. Everyone is different.
My point is I can play a bunch of 1pt-ers with low PR and then turn around and play several games with PRs close to 30. It's hard to keep your average down when you are that erratic.
In my opinion, this is where you need to start. Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you're playing a 30 then you're making errors that make you wonder, "What was I thinking?" afterwards. You might be missing an obvious play, for example. I believe that it's very important not to treat "What was I thinking?" as a rhetorical question, but as a real question. You were thinking or doing something that led you to make that play, and if you did it once, you'll probably do it again. Correcting psychological mistakes is an essential part of improving. I say a bit more on this topic here.
I have a lot of trouble with emerging backgames, for example -- haven't sorted out when to slot the front/back of the prime, when to hit additional checkers, etc.
Of course, increasing your backgammon knowledge is necessary to improve your game. The one tip I would have here is to adopt some plan to ensure that you make permanent improvements to your game. It's all too easy to review a bunch of errors, think that you've learned your lesson, only to find yourself making the exact same error the next week. How you ensure that your learning is permanent again is a personal thing. Some people like playing out the same position out over and over again. Others like fiddling around and creating reference positions and memorizing them. I like to classify my errors into separate folders and then repeatedly review them one folder at a time. The important thing is to find something that works for you.
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