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Scale of Open/Intermediaate Players

Posted By: Maik Stiebler
Date: Friday, 1 May 2009, at 7:29 a.m.

In Response To: Scale of Open/Intermediaate Players (Jason Lee)

Really, I did not intend to give strategy tips in this thread. This is about the gnubg error rate method. My point is: Steering (and even blundering) towards positions with forced decisions is better than the gnubg method says it is. Which does not necessarily mean it is good.

so I'm going take "steering" to mean intentionally giving up equity to make forced decisions later more likely. If you replace "forced" with "easy", then I think this is a good thing.

Now we are not talking gnubg anymore, but backgammon strategy. I'm much less passionate about this subject, but I want to point out that

1. "steering" can indeed be very gentle. Take two opening moves which are a tossup in technical equity, but one of them leads to more blitzes (passively or actively). That does not seem far-fetched at all, does it? Maybe this is what you mean: If you are gently steering towards positions where you face forced decisions, you usually hope that your steering does not work, because then the dice work your way (although against your steering ;-) ) and make you realize the upside of your strategy, which does usually not involve your being on the roof. I totally agree. Seen in this light, I also see that "steering" might be a misleading term. But still, the concept works. I'd choose the opening move that leads to me being blitzed more often, because if they are technically a tossup, there must be a large upside, and if I am not lucky, at least I can't make any errors while being blitzed, but my opponent can.

2. when I wrote the sentence you're picking on now, I did write "easy" decisions, and that forced decisions are a subset/example of those. If you cannot play the positions well that result after you are blitzed and the blitz fails, but your opponent does, (gently) steering towards positions where you are blitzed may be a bad tradeoff, for example.

But if you insist on keeping "forced", then I think you're giving up equity now

What is really relevant is that in the process of steering you do not give up more equity than the equity you expect to gain when the steering is successful. It's not relevant if the easy decisions are also forced (other than that "successful steering" becomes an ambivalent term, because it usually involves unlucky dice).

in order to give up more equity later.

I don't understand. Surely you can't give up equity while you are in forced moves mode?!

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