Sometimes, when I come up with a positon, Nack Ballard gives not an answer, but a question. He uses a methodic alteration of the position for the tool of simulation to get the key-points. The ‘inner board’ strength is a concept to evaluate the ‘Blitz/Attack Value’. The ‘Blitz/Attack Value’, after rebirth from the attacked depends also from the points made, addressing their ‘purity’, adding to the value in sum some ‘Prime/Position Value’.
A containment position is a fickle beast. As we know, being is not presence. It is torn apart, always in the threefold structure of time, the given, the actual, the virtual. There are postions, where the given is an overriding factor, like high anchor, holding positions. You sit on your anchor, try to make the inner board better, making the board in purity. Nothing happens, until the turnover appears, the shot.
Not so the containment position. There are static features, the ‘given’, which contain value for the ‘virtual’. But the containment army, here three safeties in the backfield, is small. They produce ‘actual’ value dominated by the concepts of ‘tactics’ and ‘safety’. They have to move. Barely producing a value – for example outfield control – in the next moment, because they have to go, the value is gone. So the containment position is a mixture of positional values, static, and hypergammon values, dynamic and delicate.
A containment position is a way through Scylla and Charybdis. The sirens are singing the song of the given, purity and positional tasks, whereas Odysseus has to bring his boat through the hazards of the now, the actual highly changing from move to move. The captain has to balance. A slight change of the border, the given, can produce a different answer, which risks must be taken, to address the hazard, to overcome the virtual with the best result.
There are vertical ontologies. They produce a more rigid framework, whereas every thing has its place, mortals and heaven, earth and gods. A theory of backgammon, produced from chess players, might be an example for this, trying to identify universal concepts, creating the world as a crystallised, stony urbanity.
But the world of modern backgammon is perhaps better to tackle with a flat ontology, an example for this would be the ‘prince of networks’, Bruno Latour, where the power lies in a an acteur/network relationship, the value of things dependent from their relationship, which is overriding the thing in ‘itself’.
The most advanced approach could be for my taste an ‘Assemblage Theory’ in the design of Manuel DeLanda, a ‘new’ materialist and realist. It is a blend of the thing and his value in itself a n d the relationship of the things to other things (perhaps this is also the approach of Marc B. Olsen). You can regard a Backgammon position as such, as an assemblage in toto, their value. The things have value, in their own, but this value is also alterated through their relationship to other things in this assemblage. What is never to forget: the time, as the strings, which is holding the world together, changing it, and within the things and their value.
In this perspective of an observer, we’re perhaps in the fluid phase of a peasant agriculture, to belabour the growing and dying of every little plant, whereas even the ‘evil prime forest’ can arise, with his graveyard of the made ace-point, as an aspect, which can be take into account.
You can make a screenshot of every three positions. You will see then the phenomen of the borderline, how scylla and charybdis are changing for the vision of the captain, sailing home for the cash-out. The numbers of the rollout will produce the inherent noumena, the value 'as' numbers. But when you are like Odysseus enclosed by water, over the board, there is only little help from the numbers. You have also to make a heuristic/hermeneutic approach, to overcome the shady monsters, waiting for you at the coastline and in the forests. Getting hold of the wrong end of the stick, sometimes there is a bend necessary.
Making the 'Prime/position Value better, the graveyard of the 'evil prime forest' vanishes. The value of 'outfiel control' is growing.
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| XGID=a-BBCBC-----A---AA--d-cbb-:0:0:1:61:2:0:0:5:10 | |||||
| Blue to play 61 | |||||
| 1. | Rollout1 | 17/11 16/15 | eq: +0,992 | |||
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| 2. | Rollout1 | 17/11 6/5 | eq: +0,978 (-0,013) | |||
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| 3. | Rollout1 | 17/11 4/3 | eq: +0,976 (-0,015) | |||
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| 4. | Rollout1 | 16/10 6/5 | eq: +0,974 (-0,018) | |||
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| 5. | Rollout1 | 16/9 | eq: +0,970 (-0,022) | |||
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| 1 1296 Games rolled with Variance Reduction. Moves: 3-ply, cube decisions: XG Roller | ||||||
eXtreme Gammon Version: 2.10, MET: Kazaross XG2
Making the 'Prime/Position Value' worse, hurting the purity of the prime. Suddenly the urgence for closing the board is growing, the aspect of 'hypergammon', 'tactics', comes into play.
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| XGID=aBB-CBC-----A---AA--d-cbb-:0:0:1:61:2:0:0:5:10 | |||||
| Blue to play 61 | |||||
| 1. | Rollout1 | 16/9 | eq: +0,839 | |||
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| 2. | Rollout1 | 17/11 16/15 | eq: +0,821 (-0,018) | |||
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| 3. | Rollout1 | 17/11 6/5 | eq: +0,785 (-0,054) | |||
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| 4. | Rollout1 | 16/10 6/5 | eq: +0,771 (-0,069) | |||
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| 5. | Rollout1 | 16/10 12/11 | eq: +0,757 (-0,082) | |||
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| 1 1296 Games rolled with Variance Reduction. Moves: 3-ply, cube decisions: XG Roller | ||||||
eXtreme Gammon Version: 2.10, MET: Kazaross XG2