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GG aces vs a 12 backgame

Posted By: Timothy Chow
Date: Tuesday, 11 August 2009, at 2:18 a.m.

In Response To: GG aces vs a 12 backgame (Keene)

Timothy, judging by the content of your posts that I have read, you are seeking theory and ways to judge positions.

Yes, but more precisely, I'm looking for cases where a quantitative rule can be developed.

Obviously, backgammon is too complicated to be reduced to a few simple calculations. Experience is crucially important, as are general rules of thumb. But in some positions, you can actually calculate your way to the right answer. The obvious examples are pip-counts in long low-wastage contact-free races, shot-counting, and the final stages of a bearoff.

My suspicion is that there are more such opportunities waiting to be uncovered, and that backgammon theorists aren't looking hard enough for them, perhaps because they've been seduced by bots. It's very easy to succumb to the temptation to do a rollout first, and then develop a rationalization afterwards for what you "know" (or think you know) is the right conclusion. If a longer rollout (or a rollout with a different bot) yields the opposite conclusion, then you just blithely invent a new rationalization to justify the new conclusion. I've seen this many times in backgammon books and on this forum.

For this reason I think it's very valuable to try to develop quantitative formulas to cover certain recurring decisions. Yes, qualitative advice like "prime a backgame" is true, but you think neilkaz doesn't know that truism? This looks like a situation where the qualitative criteria don't yield an immediately obvious answer, and there might be a way to do a calculation that greatly improves the reliability of one's decision.

I'm still curious as to why my suggested play of 22/21 16/14* 8/7 isn't as good as 10/7 8/7. It's presumably because the risk of a dance by the opponent and of not making the 5-prime isn't worth the pips stolen from the opponent by the hit. This looks like it should be quantifiable.

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