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What and Why?

Posted By: Chuck Bower
Date: Saturday, 14 January 2012, at 6:07 p.m.

In Response To: What and Why? (rambiz)

First question I see is "what is White's GamePlan?" Behind 40 pips (after accounting for these dice and White's subsequently being on roll), he's not going to race. He needs to hit a shot and the checker on the 23-point helps that cause so he will keep it there at least until Blue makes his 3-point.

Second question: what is Blue's GP?" Get home safely and bear off, with the option of cubing White in or out. (White's takepoint is in the low 18% range.) White is not thinking about winning a gammon, even though there is some (limited) gammon vig. Blue only needs three points and a gammon win has one point of overage. Just concentrate on avoiding getting hit.

How can Blue best convert this to a win? One way is to get that back White checker out of his hair by pointing on it. That means getting builders in position. The second concern is getting the outfield checkers home without leaving direct shots. (It would also be nice to avoid indirects but that may not be easy.) The 11-point is out of direct range so these checkers are less of a liability. In particular the 10-point -- in direct range of White's anchor -- is the bigger issue.

With all that intro it's time to look at the candidates:

12/5: brings a builder into direct range of the 2-point.

12/8, 11/8: brings two builders into direct range, although both on the same point and both on a point Blue might be willing to give up in order to Point-on-Head (PoH).

A question now is, if Blue puts the spare on the 5-point, how much of an advantage is the 8-point to be used as builders? Yes, they PoH more quickly but at the risk of five entering indirect shots (for both 6-3 and 6-4 rolls). And there's another downside -- loss of the 8-point. Recall that clearing the 10-point is a major issue for Blue and the 8-point helps facilitate that.

Putting all the pieces together (and assuming I haven't missed a candidate play completely :) it looks to me as though adding two spares to the 8-point is better than one spare placed on the 5-point.

12/8, 11/8

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