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Testing empirically backgammon rules of thumbs

Posted By: Timothy Chow
Date: Saturday, 28 July 2012, at 12:10 a.m.

In Response To: Testing empirically backgammon rules of thumbs (Bob Koca)

Your examples aren't too implausible, but I still think that in practice, very few players would double in those positions when playing against another human. You don't need a deep understanding of match equities to see that in the first position, handing your opponent the cube here gives her the opportunity to win the match in this game. Anyone strong enough to recognize this as possibly a correct technical double is likely to be playing a weaker opponent and will want to hold the cube for that reason.

Your second position is slightly more plausible but again, I suspect that very few would double here in practice.

When reviewing Hickey and Storer's book, I did point out to them that their occasional comment along the lines of "this play is correct at any match score" might not be technically accurate and I recommended removing it, especially since their book consists only of money-play problems. However, in their defense, it's not far wrong in practice since super-gammon-go scores are so rare. 1 in a 1000 was my off-the-cuff guess but if it's wrong, I think it's more likely to be an overestimate than an underestimate of the frequency.

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