Not quite 24 hours yet but I want to post the next decision in this series.
OTB, seeing that a backgame didn't hold much hope, I tried 23/18 for outfield control, but White has a four-point board and 23/18 leaves 21 return shots. There's really no advantage that 23/18 has over 6/1*.
The choice between 6/1* and 13/8 is much closer. 6/1* leaves 12 return shots (including 33) while 13/8 leaves only 4 return shots and they're not as devastating. At GS, 13/8 would be mandatory, but it just doesn't have much upside and almost resigns Blue to saving the gammon. Still, safety matters here and the decision is close.
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| XGID=aa--CaE-B---bA-a---bcbbABA:1:1:1:51:4:4:0:7:10 | |||||
| Blue to play 51 | |||||
| 1. | Rollout1 | Bar/24 6/1* | eq: -0.765 | |||
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| 2. | Rollout1 | Bar/24 13/8 | eq: -0.785 (-0.020) | |||
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| 3. | Rollout2 | Bar/24 23/18 | eq: -0.835 (-0.070) | |||
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| 1 2592 Games rolled with Variance Reduction. Dice Seed: 2 Moves and cube decisions: 3 ply 2 1296 Games rolled with Variance Reduction. Dice Seed: 2 Moves and cube decisions: 3 ply | ||||||
eXtreme Gammon Version: 1.21, MET: Rockwell-Kazaross