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Playing the player... last one! ROLLOUT
Posted By: Daniel Murphy In Response To: Playing the player... last one! ROLLOUT (Keene)
Date: Sunday, 11 May 2008, at 5:36 p.m.
The score (after 5 games) is: white 7, blue 6 (match to 9 points)
Blue on roll winning 65% with 37% gammons ... and a take!
3-away 2-away is my current favorite "if you have to be losing the match, make it be this score" score (it's better than 4-away 2-away!).
Perhaps some players are confused by the score, half-remembering that in gammonless positions doubles on both sides are vaguely like money play, with take points of about 73% and about 75%. But there the resemblance ends. Trailer's cubes come quickly, Leader's cube is not dead but ailing, and both players' gammons do strange things to both players' doubling windows. That 73% goes down fast when Trailer has a gammonish position. And, for what it's worth, Leader's gammons lower the bottom of Trailer's doubling window, which has the effect of pushing Trailer's gammonish doubles up into the top half or third of his doubling window.
Bill Riles and Stick recently posted interesting tournament positions at this score. Some time ago, I browsed through ten years of annotated live tournament matches collected in Backgammon Magazin looking for 3-away 2-away scores. I found 14 games at this score.
Anectodotal evidence, sure, but of those 14, guess how many times the leader doubled? Only once. One other game ended was an undoubled gammon. The Trailer doubled in 12 of the 14 games, not always in time for a take.
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