Up to this point, the poem for Coconut has been
First you double the near side men.
Then add the diagonal, and double again.
Plus slants, less one-o-five, times three.
Then shift to the middles for accuracy.
In the post linked above, I applied the first line of the poem to the example below.
First you double the near side men.
On the near side (Blue's side of the board), there are 16 checkers. Doubling that number you gives you 32.
Below this diagram, I will reveal a shortcut.
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Find the White checkers on Blue's side of the board (one on her 22pt, two on her 21pt, three on her midpoint). From the Opponent's (White's) point of view, those six White checkers are on the far side of the board. For convenience, I refer to those six White checkers as being in the "Opp-far" location.
Now find the Blue checkers on White's side of the board (two on his 18pt, three on his midpoint). I refer to these five Blue checkers as being simply in the "far" location.
Note how easy it is to spot the six (White) "Opp-far" checkers, and subtract from it the five (Blue) "far" checkers. This gives you a difference of 1.
You might find it even easier (as I do) to visually cancel the three checkers on both player's midpoints, and cancel the two on Blue's 18pt against the two on White's 21pt, with the remaining checker on the 22pt screaming out the same difference of 1 (as in the previous paragraph).
I have reconciled the math elsewhere (as I will explain in a moment) so that you can use this difference of "1" instead of counting all 16 checkers on Blue's near side. The replacement for the first line of the poem is
Opp-far minus far, (and then you) double.
So, it's 6 – 5 = 1. Doubling that gives you 2.
I arithmetically adjust for this change in the third line of the poem, which used to include "one-o-five" (105) instead of "forty-five." This change incidentally creates a second benefit of smaller numbers.
While the old one still works, I recommend this updated poem for Coconut:
.....Opp-far minus far, (and then you) double.
.....Add the diagonal, (again you) double.
.....Plus slants, less forty-five, times three.
.....Then shift to the middles (for accuracy).
To make the meter go most smoothly, vocally stress the syllables of Opp, far, then and dou- in line 1; Add, -ag-, -gain and dou- in line 2; slants, for-, -five and three in line 3; and shift, mid-, ac- and -cy in line 4.
If you don't care about the meter or the rhyme, disregard the stresses and/or remove the words in parentheses.
When I have time, I will create an update for the long post I linked at the beginning of this post, and will provide a link both in this thread and in that one.
Nack