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BGonline.org Forums
Speed Gammon Stats & Baffle Box
Posted By: Henrik Bukkjaer In Response To: Speed Gammon Stats & Baffle Box (Phil Simborg)
Date: Tuesday, 21 May 2013, at 9:07 a.m.
Hi Phil
I think it varies a lot from player to player, how much you suffer at speed.
I'd say from 0.5 PR to 3 PR. Some players not comfortable with the speed setup, might even go higher, if they start to make pure oversights and thus blunder in positions they would surely not blunder in, had they played their normal tempo - but that is not players who normally are playing near 3.5 I suppose.
I'm trying to gather data on this very subject, but it takes some time, because you need to make sure, that you avoid any cherry-picking (both in matches and player sampling).
As for your questions regarding rules and setup:
1) I completely agree with you, that baffle-box should be preferred in speed matches. One thing is your mentioning of the half a second time saved, and the fewer miss-rolls, but another thing is the tendency for players NOT to shake properly when getting stressed on time, thus generating possible disputes of shaking and rolling properly. This was one of the reasons, why we changed the rules for bafflebox preference, in the DBgF rules more than 10 years ago, allowing tournament directions the discretion of choosing bafflebox rules (option, preference or obligated), just as what you use for clocks! That way, tournaments can be arranged where players know going in, that bafflebox can be mandated on their matches.
2) I disagree with your view on stopping the clock if dice fall of the table. While your argumentation at first glance seems reasonable, I think for all practical purposes it's not so straight forward and fair.
Consider this:
A) Even though you are allowed to stop the clock to pick up your dice, you loose time in the process. You have typically spent 4-6 seconds picking up your dice, shake them and roll off the table, until you can get to pause the clock. Once you have recovered your dice and your clock is started, you will again have to spent a few seconds shaking and rolling them. The net outcome, I'd assume, is a loss of about 3-5 seconds when throwing your dice overboard.
B) If the clock keep running while the dice is not on the table, you can be damn sure that the opponent in some cases will not be dedicated to recover the dice as fast as possible. He might even get tempted to not find them at all or prolong the process in any possible way, giving himself a huge advantage on the clock. This sort of angleshooting should not be possible, and certainly I wouldn't think winning a match this way, is appropriate punishment for someone rolling of the table.
C) It would lead to a bigger advantage having to roll in the non-bearoff side (and given the US view of strict RHS rolling, that's an unfortunate combo).
D) On some board/cup combinations, the playing surface being bouncy felt, the board having not so high walls, and the cup having lips that makes rolling a bit hard to control, a miss-roll can happen to the best of us - it is not necessarily a result of an "out-of-control" player, who just needs to learn how to roll. Unless of course you view good rolling as being so soft, that the dice doesn't even get to bounce of the checkers and the walls of the board?
E) Bafflebox is the proper solution, not a rule change for harder punishment.Cheers,
Henrik
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