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It's not even an easy way to Cheat!!

Posted By: Timothy Chow
Date: Friday, 12 May 2017, at 9:37 p.m.

In Response To: It's not even an easy way to Cheat!! (Boop)

Some time ago, I did an experiment along these lines, except that I gave myself not just knowledge of the next roll, but of all the rolls. I reported the results on rec.games.backgammon. For the convenience of BGO readers, I reproduce the relevant paragraphs here:

I played out a match mindlessly just to see what the dice rolls would be, and I wrote them all down. Then I started a new match with the same seed, and played "for real," now with the crushing advantage of knowing exactly what the rolls would be. In the first game, I doubled at my first opportunity. I left a blot where gnubg would hit it loose because I knew I could double hit back and launch a blitz. Blitzing is pretty easy when you know what your opponent is going to roll. :-) I closed gnubg out, meandered my checkers around and started bearing off. Bearing off aggressively is also easy when you know what your opponent is going to roll, but since I had closed out only two checkers, I couldn't quite manage a backgammon and had to settle for a gammon. I was now leading 4-0 to 7.

In the next game, it was easy to get the cube up to 8 to play for the match. I made the golden anchor and sent four of gnubg's checkers back, but couldn't see how to prevent gnubg from anchoring on the 3-point. However, by hitting the loose checkers I gained plenty of time to build a prime and choose an opportune time to break anchor when I knew gnubg wouldn't be able to hit me. Bearing off safely with several of gnubg's checkers hanging out in my home board did require looking ahead several rolls; this was probably the trickiest part of the match. But ultimately it wasn't too hard to do, and I overkilled by winning another gammon.

…

Right now, my ability to study the upcoming rolls and plan my strategy is poor, and so I would be playing suspiciously slowly, or playing suspiciously "wild" moves that make no sense unless you're cheating. However, I'm sure that with some training I could get better at it.

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