| |
BGonline.org Forums
What is better than O''Hagan's approach?
Posted By: Phil simborg In Response To: Estimating winning chances (John O'Hagan)
Date: Wednesday, 9 December 2015, at 7:15 p.m.
If you read John's answer you will see a very logical, mathematical, nearly provable without a bot approach to determining winning chances. If someone knows a faster or more accurate way, other than when you have a reference position to rely on where you pretty much know the numbers and can interpolate for small variations, I would be thrilled to hear it.
So why doesnt everyone teach and learn and use John's spproach over the board?
I have taken many lessons from John and given many with him and a lot our our group's material (thebackgammonlearningcenter.com) incorporates concepts and tools recommend by John--some of which he actually developed himself or took from classic material and found ways to simplify and improve it. Everyone knows John is a terrific player but because he hasnt written a book or gone on the lecture circuit I dont think many appreciate that he is one of the best at coming up with great approaches to make math easier to apply over the board.
So again, even after reading John's approach why doesnt everyone just do it that way?
Becsuse unless you are a very skilled player who has studied the game for years and is very comfortable counting shots snd going through all the rolls in your head and then remembering them and converting them to percentages and then learning how to divide by 1296, thinking of actually doing what John recommends scares the living shit out of you!
I know it did me.
And i did what most people do. Walk away saying that i will never be that good because im not that smart and csnt do math like john and just accept that in positions like this i am going to make my best guess and hope im right. After all, you can just flip a coin and get half the cube decisions right!
But at some point you get tired of being s mediocre player (took me about 40 years of it) and realize that if you really want to have a shot at getting to a respectable Open level PR (whatever the hell that is) you have to do some heavy lifting.
So the first thing i did for myself, and i do with my students is to make sure you can quickly and painlessly count shots snd figure basic odds of hitting. Using powerpoints snd examples and practicing together we master this important skill.
The next thing is to get comfortable doing the backgammon math in your head. Its not as hard as it seems once you lesrn some shortcuts and learn how to round out numbers quickly. But even doing that is scary if you dont have good, basic math skills, and there i recommend every student reads Art Benjamin's book, The Secrets of Mental Math. (Wish i got a commission as i guarantee i have helped him sell at least a couple of hundred books.)
Bottom line is this:
1. I think John's approach described in this stream is the best.
2. If someone has a better, faster or easier way, I'm dying to hear it.
3. If John's approach scares you, join the club. But you can overcome that with some work, or as Neil says by "getting your hands dirty."
By the way, I can do everything John does but just not as accurately or as fast but usually close enough to be in the ballpark to lead me to the right cube decision. The fact that John gets the right decision a little more often than me, and blunders a lot less than me is one of the reasons he is a better player than me. The fact that I can explain what John is saying to intermediates and maybe even open players as well or to some people even better is what makes me, I believe, a pretty good teacher even though i lack the skills of a John O'Hagan.
| |
BGonline.org Forums is maintained by Stick with WebBBS 5.12.