BGonline.org Forums

Chabot vs iSight, Keith, Kleinman, Thorp, Trice, Nack-57/58 etc.

Posted By: Sebalotek
Date: Saturday, 20 April 2024, at 10:16 a.m.

I had been looking into some backgammon history related to cube theory: specifically racing cube theory.

Some of the more commonly known decision criteria in this field are iSight, Keith, Kleinman, Thorp, Trice, Nack-57/58, and 8912.

In November 2014, Michelin Chabot, a chess and backgammon player, published a revised document called "Money Cube Action in Low-Wastage Positions."

N.B. I couldn't find a date for his original publication, but it must have been some months earlier than that.

In June 2014, Axel Reichert published a document entitled "Improved Cube Handling in Races: Insights with Isight."

N.B. Chabot's (earlier?) methodology is mentioned in this

In February 2015, Chabot published another paper, "Analysis of the Article Entitled: “Improved Cube Handling in Races: Insights with Isight”."

In my opinion, the most valuable and interesting section of the latter paper relates to Chabot's analysis of these competing decision criteria and his conclusion: "To determine what the best practical approach is, it is necessary to consider the precision or accuracy of the analyzed approach as well as the effort needed to memorize and use the analyzed approach."

So, as I understand it, in layman's terms, they are trying to discover not only the most accurate racing cube formula, but also to balance that accuracy with the one that is easiest for us to calculate over the board. A very useful criteria!

Does anyone in the backgammon community have knowledge of analytical mathematics? I think it would be really useful to see an impartial comparison of the different approaches and a ranking of which is optimal in terms of 'accuracy' combined with 'ease of use.'

Page 97 of 97 in Chabot MoneyCubeAction.pdf has a handy Summary page. Is it worthwhile me memorizing this?

For ease of access, here's a link to a zipfile containing the 3x pdfs of the articles in question - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1d3PFfBeP7qh2-3-CUlzLNtmpZW98s-zI/view

I am looking forward to hearing what people with a higher level of mathematics / analytics think.

Is it possible that Chabot is deserving of more recognition than he received?