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BGonline.org Forums
Impact of Jacoby rule on checker play
Posted By: Timothy Chow
Date: Friday, 1 October 2010, at 12:39 a.m.
In a comment on today's position, Phil Simborg wrote:
Also note that in a money game, with the cube in the middle and gammons having no value because of the Jacoby Rule, you can and should take chances to significantly improve your position that you might not make if the cube were turned or in a match where a gammon on a 1 cube might be painful. (emphasis mine)
I see this kind of reasoning all the time but I want to verify with the experts here that the impact of the Jacoby rule on checker play is being overstated. In my experience, the only time that the Jacoby rule has a significant impact on checker play is when the cube is centered but there is a reasonable chance that one or both players will suddenly (within the next roll or two) become TG (or would be TG if it weren't for Jacoby). In the vast majority of positions where a "normal" bold play is a candidate, Jacoby makes no difference to the right play. In particular, the phrasing "gammons have no value because of the Jacoby Rule" seems to me to be highly confusing and misleading to the average player. It makes it sound like they don't have to assess their cubeless gammon losses when choosing a checker play.
The main value of the Jacoby Rule, as I see it, is that it prevents donkeys from perpetrating an infinitely long sequence of missed D/T, missed D/T, missed D/T, ..., missed D/P, missed D/P, missed D/P, ..., all the while thinking that they're TG. For expert players it's just an annoyance—something that usually makes no difference but that rears its head just often enough to be irritating.
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