It's a weird one for sure. Why not hit in the outfield when this leaves basically no shots whatsoever? (calm down those of you who saw [55] hits, I said 'basically' because it's only one shot and that shot was already so good for the opponent I'm ignoring its existence) Normally hitting would be pretty routine as it sends a man back and more to the point, now gives us next turn to roll some potential outfield making numbers with our newfound builder on tour 12pt.
Perhaps it's that the rest of the game is still along way to go and we'd like to have another checker in the outfield for mobility reasons. Perhaps it's because hitting the checker doesn't gain us that much as now the opponent has two checkers he can wiggle out of our home board all while keeping his 20pt anchor until the time is right. If we don't hit that checker maybe that becomes harder for him to do? It's tough to say and it's a tough play but I have to believe our bot overlord when it's clear enough.
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| XGID=--a--bD-C---aB---bCbbc-bBA:1:1:1:61:0:0:3:0:10 | |||||
| Blue to play 61 | |||||
| 1. | Rollout1 | Bar/18 | eq: -0.366 | |||
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| 2. | Rollout1 | Bar/24 18/12* | eq: -0.409 (-0.043) | |||
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| 1 1296 Games rolled with Variance Reduction. Moves: 3-ply, cube decisions: XG Roller | ||||||