Hey all — hoping for a little further guidance in proper use of XG. Today I happened upon Phil Simborg’s “Deliberate Practice” video on Facebook and thought I’d try out using XG in this way, with the position he used for illustration. All went well as I cycled through all the dice rolls, and I took some notes on the various positions. Here’s the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80ASxnr000g
So, then I took the second approach he suggested, playing out the position multiple times in ‘Coach’ mode, trying to get a feel for ‘what’s going on’ in the position. After while I got the feeling I was getting different results in these ‘Play from Position’ sessions than I was getting from the original XGRoller++ evaluations, so I went back to setting up the position with various rolls to play . . . but now I’m finding the results I’m getting are very different from what I recalled getting before, and what Phil refers to as ‘correct’ plays in the video. For example, at 11:45 in the video he shows that XG likes the hit with 65, yielding equity of +.370 (.090 better than playing safe to the 5 pt).
. . . but when I set up the position with this roll I’m getting something wildly different: the hitting play coming in slightly second place with an equity of only .087. Huh?
         
 
        
 | | White is Player 2
score: 0
pip: 81 | Unlimited Game
Jacoby Beaver | pip: 103
score: 0
Blue is Player 1 |
|
| XGID=-BaBBCB------B--A-Accccb--:1:1:1:65:0:0:3:0:1 |
| Blue to play 65 |
| 1. | XG Roller++ | 16/5 | eq: +0.090 |
| Player:
Opponent: | 55.84% (G:1.36% B:0.02%)
44.16% (G:4.02% B:0.08%) | |
|
| 2. | XG Roller++ | 13/2* | eq: +0.087 (-0.002) |
| Player:
Opponent: | 63.46% (G:2.05% B:0.03%)
36.54% (G:19.36% B:0.90%) | |
|
| 3. | 3-ply | 18/12 16/11 | eq: -0.010 (-0.099) |
| Player:
Opponent: | 53.12% (G:1.60% B:0.04%)
46.88% (G:8.76% B:0.07%) | |
|
| 4. | 3-ply | 18/13 16/10 | eq: -0.058 (-0.148) |
| Player:
Opponent: | 49.46% (G:1.23% B:0.04%)
50.54% (G:5.97% B:0.03%) | |
|
| 5. | 2-ply | 18/7 | eq: -0.146 (-0.235) |
| Player:
Opponent: | 48.71% (G:1.58% B:0.03%)
51.29% (G:13.47% B:0.11%) | |
|
eXtreme Gammon Version: 2.10
I’ve got the cube where it belongs, on my side, have it in ‘Unlimited Games’ mode with jacoby and Beavers checked, the pip counts match . . . I can’t for the life of me see what I’ve got wrong here. I went and made dinner, re-started XG and tried again and I’m still utterly baffled, yet the must be some major thing I’ve got wrong? Any suggestions? I'm losing my mind here.