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BGonline.org Forums
Can someone explain this to me
Posted By: Kevin Finch In Response To: Can someone explain this to me (Jeremy Bagai)
Date: Saturday, 20 August 2016, at 1:18 p.m.
Hi Jeremy,
Very belated thanks for taking the time out to respond to my post. Loved 'Classic Backgammon Revistied', by the way. I am old enough to have read all of those books, so that was great fun even if much of it came at expense of my favorite author, Barclay Cooke.
I have to confess that the whole 'cubeful vs. cubeless' thing is something that I understand at a high (and no doubt fuzzy) level, but I have a tough time translating it to understanding the numbers shown in XG. My rough understanding of cubeless is "the game is played to the end, come what may, since the cube cannot be used". Similarly, my understanding of cubeful is "the position is evaluated on each roll for cube action as in actual play, resulting in terminated games (due to drops) and wins at higher stakes (due to takes and even subsequent redoubles)". Or something along those lines.
What the consequences of the distinction are for me in actual play (or the evaluation of positions) have always been a bit vague. If I understand your comment (and I may not), you are saying that the distribution of outcomes, as represented by percentage wins, gammons, etc., that is shown in the bottom left quadrant of XG, is derived from a cubeless analysis, while the equity associated with each of the plays is derived from a cubeful analysis. If so, that is interesting and, at least on first blush, seems a bit apples and oranges. It would however seem to explain the somewhat contradictory numbers that prompted my posting in the first place.
Thanks again for the input!
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