| 121 |                      |
| 118 | |
| Board image courtesy of GO-Figure | |
| Cube action equity | |||
| Rollout | Money equity: | 0.477 | |
| 0.1% 4.2% 72.6% 27.4% 1.7% 0.0% | |||
| 95% confidence interval: - money cubeless eq.: 0.477 ±0.010, - live cube no redouble: 0.827 ±0.020, - live cube redouble take: 0.764 ±0.026. Rollout settings: Full rollout, 648 games (equiv. 42382 games), played 3-ply (precise), cube 3-ply, settlement 0.550 at 64 pts, random seed, with race database. | |||
| Evaluations | |||
| 1. | No redouble | 0.791 | |
| 2. | Redouble, take | 0.754 | (-0.037) |
| 3. | Redouble, pass | 1.000 | (+0.209) |
| Proper cube action: No redouble, take | 15% | ||
| Live cube | |||
| 1. | No redouble | 0.827 | |
| 2. | Redouble, take | 0.764 | (-0.063) |
| 3. | Redouble, pass | 1.000 | (+0.173) |
| Proper cube action: No redouble, take | 27% | ||
There are many lessons to be learned from this problem, most of which don't exactly deal w/the cube decision at hand. I'm Blue in this position and I'm the one who doubled. The series just before I was on the bar (one guy) and threw a number that hit. After the hit my opponent tossed an ugly 4-4 which forced him to break his board. After these events it's normal to feel 'down & out'. More specifically when this happens I'm thinking to myself "MF cube is on 16 already and now I'm going to lose to this gimpy luckbox in a series of jokers and antijokers".
Now not to pick on my opponent (but I'm going to =P) but I knew the 16/32 cube had meaning to him. It's a huge cube, no doubt, no matter what stakes you're playing for you don't want to lose a 16 or a 32 cube (esp. if there are gammons involved!). It had a lot more meaning to him than it did me though. I long ago quit playing backgammon and poker 'for money'. You shouldn't be playing at stakes where you're worried about the money. If the money puts pressure on your decision making then the stakes are too high. It's part of bankroll management and overlooked by many. If you play poker or backgammon your only job is to make the correct decisions, it has nothing to do with money. If you make the correct decisions the money will take care of itself. If it's a take, you take it, you don't take half 'to see what happens'. After the bad series and knowing that the 32 cube was a 'huge cube' to my opponent, I really had no doubt he would pass it.
I try to realize when I hit a bad series and rethink the position. It's so easy to dance on a 2 pt. board a couple of times and then on a 3 pt. board and feel down & out and then the cube gets turned and it's almost reflexive to pass and get on with the next game. You need to totally black out about what happened the last few moves and look at the position anew. I don't care what you have to tell yourself to get you to analyze it properly but shove the thoughts of "gmfdi I just bounced 3x on a 2-3 pt. board, what are the odds!?".