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Winning PR vs Losing PR--one thing impossible to measure

Posted By: Timothy Chow
Date: Thursday, 31 March 2016, at 1:16 a.m.

In Response To: Winning PR vs Losing PR--one thing impossible to measure (ScottJ)

I think it's worth spelling out a few things explicitly because this is such a common misconception.

If there are a lot of plays with similar equity, then it might be a difficult play, but that's not necessarily true. In the position below, it's obvious that 2/off 1/off(2) is the best play even though there are many alternatives that are almost identical in equity.

Money Game
Blue to play 11
White41

Blue20
GNUBg Id: 1W4AANg2AAAAAA:QYkEAAAAAAAA
XGID=-BBBB--------------bcbaaa-:1:-1:1:11:0:0:0:0:10

Similarly, if there are just two legal plays and the equity difference is large, then it might be an obvious play, but it might not. Anyone who has played backgammon for a while can cite many examples from their own games where there were only two legal plays but they chose the multi-whopper instead of the correct play (and it wasn't just because they overlooked the correct play).

So it is not possible to come up with a plausible measure of the difficulty of a play just by counting the number of options and the equity differences among them.

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