I am taking indefinite break from posting, but this thread was just too good to ignore. If you don't like negative words toward yourself , you probably should skip the rest of this post.
There are thousands of positions which could be described as reference positions that could be found right here, on the forum, or elsewhere. Every position is a reference position to some, but not others. You wrote it yourself, " I've got only a few I actually consider reference. " So, here is my advice to you: If you want to get better at this game, do some work! You already got help from others. For example when you open your favorite bot , you are getting help of that guy with " ironic-arrogant-prick-like tone" -- as you describe -- every time you click on evaluation button. Perhaps it is time for you to do your own work now? You don't like reference positions? Change them then. Change it any way till you like it. You like everything ready for you to pick and absorb? Maybe you should consider hiring a mentor for this purpose. Mentor will gladly do your work for 50-200 dollars/hour. There is hardly any difference when someone say "arrogant -prick" or " arrogant-prick tone". Meaning hardly changes. No matter how you want to call him, he e-mailed you his opinion in his personal e-mail. You, however, attacking him publically. It sounds to me like you hated to see his e-mail and decided to get even. The problem though is that I see that you are, and not he is, wrong. So, here is my question to you: Does truth hurt?
Finally, you need to be more specific on what you are asking. If you aren't, you may find help useless to you. Here is a reference position to you. I will call it "chicken or egg?" problem. XG has a difficulty figuring out this one. Evaluations range from Double/Pass to ND/Beaver. I hope you can roll it out. No need for a long rollout. 36 games will do it.
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| XGID=aBBBBCC------------bbbbccA:0:0:1:00:0:0:3:0:10 | |||||
| Blue on roll, cube action? | |||||
| Analyzed in XG Roller++ | No double | Double/Take |
| Player Winning Chances: | 45.520% (G:0.146% B:0.018%) | 45.520% (G:0.146% B:0.018%) |
| Opponent Winning Chances: | 54.480% (G:0.759% B:0.008%) | 54.480% (G:0.759% B:0.008%) |
| Cubeless Equities | -0.0956 | -0.1913 |
| Cubeful Equities | ||
| No double: | -0.1374 | |
| Double/Beaver: | -1.1507 (-1.0133) | |
| Double/Pass: | +1.0000 (+1.1374) | |
| Best Cube action: No double / Beaver | ||
| Percentage of wrong pass needed to make the double decision right: 32.0% | ||
eXtreme Gammon Version: 2.03