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Attack or race or prime?

Posted By: Smcrtorchs
Date: Tuesday, 13 November 2012, at 9:35 a.m.

In Response To: Attack or race or prime? (Timothy Chow)

I think that you have to race with 22/18 6/5

While hitting wins blue some time, it is only the first step of a blitz and white's board looks good enough to stop you from trying doing all those steps together. Also if you move a checker to the ace, it will be hard to make the points you want later and finally white's blots are almost were you would like them to be, so attacking would include only tempo gains and no positional gains.

Prime would seem natural. After 13/9, 21/20 undups (removes the duplication if undups is not really used as a word) the fours and gives more numbers for blue to escape. 6/5 looks a bit better though to me as many numbers for blue would play better on his side of the board and this seems more important to me and it may last for more rolls. If blue tries a priming play, white will attack the lone blot with the hope of picking up the second blot as well. Blue will need his fours to enter so making the 9 will be difficult. Blue will be trying to do two things at a time and since white's board is better and white will have 8/36 numbers to hit blue's blot directly, I would at least look for another choice and compare.

22/18 6/5 is the other choice and it is not bad. White might miss first of all. White's 8 point is stripped and if he wants to hit from the midpoint he will have to strip it as well. But if white wants to win, then it will be him who will have to do 2 things at a time (escape and attack). Note also that 22/18 6/5 does not doom blue's priming chances. All game plans will be available in the future as well. The key for me is that if blue escapes his last checker then his advantage will be big. And this is true even if white's forward position gets a bit better. So blue will have many turns to try and escape and he does not have to do it immediately in order to win. As both plays have advantages and disadvantages, I believe that this is what makes the running play best.

Messages In This Thread

• Attack or race or prime?
  Timothy Chow -- Monday, 12 November 2012, at 7:27 p.m.
  • Attack or race or prime?
    neilkaz -- Monday, 12 November 2012, at 11:08 p.m.
  • Attack or race or prime?
    Mr Majestyk -- Tuesday, 13 November 2012, at 12:10 a.m.
  • Attack or race or prime?
    Smcrtorchs -- Tuesday, 13 November 2012, at 9:35 a.m.
    • Attack or race or prime?
      Mr Majestyk -- Tuesday, 13 November 2012, at 11:12 a.m.
  • Attack or race or prime?
    ah_clem -- Tuesday, 13 November 2012, at 2:57 p.m.
  • Truncated rollout: Attack or race or prime?
    Timothy Chow -- Wednesday, 14 November 2012, at 1:33 a.m.
    • Truncated rollout: Attack or race or prime?
      Daniel Murphy -- Friday, 16 November 2012, at 12:36 a.m.