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Precision Count

Posted By: Phil Simborg
Date: Thursday, 20 July 2017, at 1:22 p.m.

In Response To: Precision Count (Florin Popa)

I am not sure a precision count in Backgammon would be that important an indicator for several reasons:

1. There are many matches were even a high (poorer) PR player will match the computer a very high percentage of the time, and other matches where even a Giant will not match the computer on many moves. It simply depends on the rolls and how complicated the match is. In other words, the number of times a player matches the computer may be more of an indicator of how complex or difficult the rolls and match was rather than how well the player performed.

2. There are many times a player will not match XG's best play but may be off by .001 and other times where he will blunder, and if they count the same, that is of very little value. When the error is very small, it may well be that the error is XG's and not the player's at all.

I am not qualified to say how important this is for chess, but I can say that for backgammon, it seems that the PR is a much more important indicator of how much the player matches the computer.

Now, on the subject of using this information to determine if a player was cheating on line, this might be helpful. Years ago when we had our $25 on line chouette every day on Fibs, Doug Roberts was able to discover that one of the consistent winners was cheating as virtually all of his moves mirrored Jellyfish's moves...which was the strongest bot we had at the time. That could hardly have been a coincidence. Truth is, the guy was stoopid to cheat like that...he should have made the second or third best move more often and only cheat on the important and bigger decisions, and even then, he should make sure to be wrong once in a while. It amazes me that cheaters are so arrogant to think they can play under 2.5 PR (or even under 4 PR if they are not a known-giant) on line consistently and not think they will be caught or at least suspected.

Messages In This Thread

• Precision Count
  Bill Calton -- Thursday, 20 July 2017, at 2:57 a.m.
  • Precision Count
    Florin Popa -- Thursday, 20 July 2017, at 9:09 a.m.
    • Precision Count
      Phil Simborg -- Thursday, 20 July 2017, at 1:22 p.m.
      • Precision Count
        Florin Popa -- Thursday, 20 July 2017, at 3:11 p.m.