Everyone knows that the best way to position your spares is on the 4pt, 5pt, and 6pt. But sometimes what everyone knows just ain't so. In this sort of position, with two checkers closed out and a huge race lead, it's better at DMP to put the spares on the 3pt, 5pt, and 7pt. For money, one also has to take into account gammons, and the position here represents the cusp point.
Admittedly, playing the checkers to the 4pt, 5pt and 6pt isn't going to lose you much equity, and there are other positions (e.g., when White has two on the bar and 13 checkers off) where playing to the 3pt, 5pt, and 7pt will lose you significant equity. But given how widely known the rule of thumb about the 4pt, 5pt, and 6pt is, I'm a little surprised that I haven't seen this reference position anywhere before.
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| XGID=bBBBBCBA--A-c-----bbbbb---:1:-1:1:61:0:0:0:0:10 | |||||
| Blue to play 61 | |||||
| 1. | Rollout1 | 10/3 | eq: +1.821 | |||
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| 2. | Rollout1 | 10/4 7/6 | eq: +1.820 (-0.001) | |||
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| 1 5184 Games rolled with Variance Reduction. Dice Seed: 271828 Moves: 4-ply, cube decisions: XG Roller+ | ||||||
eXtreme Gammon Version: 2.19.207.pre-release