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| Congratulations to David Levy, who is ranked number 48 in Iancho Hristov’s Summer 2012 PR Ranking. David is listed before several top players, including Justin Nunez, Jeremy Bagai, Paul Magriel and others, who are much better known.
The two reference positions below dovetail nicely with the ones David gives in his post. I first encountered them in Paul Magriel’s famous work. The question in both is whether Blue should risk the loss of a backgammon in order to retain his small chance of hitting. In the diagram on the left, White has 3 checkers remaining. Unless White rolls doublets, Blue figures to get a shot. And when White rolls a non-doublet that includes a 1, Blue gets a shot at two blots. If he can pick them both up, he may be on his way to a coup classique. On balance, he will win enough games to justify the many backgammons he will lose. In the right-hand diagram, White has 4 checkers remaining. If White can avoid rolling a non-doublet 1, he will never leave a shot. He will leave a shot when he rolls a non-doublet 1, but will almost never leave 2 blots. The only way that can happen is after Blue hits White, and then White is forced to split his remaining inner-board point. Blue should take his lumps, and run off the backgammon now. |
eXtreme Gammon Version: 2.03 |
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Mike |