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BGonline.org Forums
Why football type score tie-breaks are undesireable
Posted By: Rick Janowski In Response To: What is the best (fairest and most efficient) way to tie-break 4 player round robins? (sebalotek)
Date: Friday, 23 September 2016, at 3:36 p.m.
I think there are at several strong reasons why football-type tie-break systems work very poorly in backgammon:
1. It changes the nature and goals of normal match-play to such an extent that in effect this becomes another variant of backgammon, much like money backgammon or chouette are in effect different variants of backgammon.
2. Much backgammon science has been developed around the assumption of normal match-play backgammon, especially the major work on match equities over the last 40 years. Similarly, because players' win rates will diverge from normal, Elo rating theory assumptions will no longer be directly consistent.
3. The overall effect is that expert players who invested time in study of match-equities or match equity effects (through study of bot analysis of positions) will lose part of their well earned edge over players who did not take the trouble to study these aspects of the game.
4. XG analysis of such matches where goal difference is important, is invalid, because no match equity charts deal with these additional player motivators. This disbenefits players trying to improve.
5. Most importantly - because this system favours players who defer playing their matches until their rivals have completed theirs, it is inherently unfair, favouring the cynical and savvy players over the innocent and trusting players. The reason it favours the "late" player is that he/she knows what goal difference is necessary to win the group, whereas the "early" player can only guess what might be enough.
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