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BGonline.org Forums
Ten Things I Hate About the BG Experience
Posted By: Matt Cohn-Geier In Response To: Ten Things I Hate About the BG Experience (Barry Silliman)
Date: Tuesday, 28 October 2008, at 10:26 p.m.
Of course to the the novice player the skillful player will appear to be luckier because he positions himself better for more good rolls, but I doubt if GnuBG or Snowie are talking about this type of "apparent" luck when they attempt their luck calculations for a match.
Why not? I am not really an expert on the mathematics, but I believe this is essentially how GnuBG and Snowie calculate luck. Luck is the actual deviation from the evaluated equity of the position.
There have been some arguments as to whether the luckier player always wins or merely almost always wins. The game itself is a game of chance, so getting lucky is actually the only way to win the game. If you never get lucky you will never, or almost never, win a game of backgammon.
Player A assumes that he will outplay his opponent 100% of the time.
Player A accepts that he will only win 60% of his matches.
Then, let's just say that the "luck" of the game will overcome his skill superiority in 40% of his matches.
OK, fair enough. Then luck is the percentage of the time where you outplay the opponent (how do we determine this? lower ER?) but still lose the match. That differs from the usual mathematical definition of luck above, but it seems fair to me. However, if when you outplay your opponent he will still win 40% of the time, then the game is 40% luck. If you only outplay your opponent 75% of the time and he outplays you the other 25% then even though you are a 75% favorite to outplay him he only gets lucky 30% of the time. The other 70% he must win through "skill".
I do not claim to have a Zen-like perspective on backgammon, but I generally do not steam, no matter how far behind I am on the scoresheet or however big of a favorite I was before I just lost a match-ending backgammon. I've seen these things happen so many times that I've just gotten used to it, I guess. Plus I understand the basic statistical theory involved: in the short run, you will either win or lose; in the long run, you will win, if you play well. Lowering your long-term equity by making bad decisions is the worst thing you can do. From this I don't understand how someone can play badly because they're on a bad run lately. The only thing that accomplishes is hurting your long-run equity, and therefore also your short-run equity.
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