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Plethorized

Posted By: Timothy Chow
Date: Wednesday, 9 September 2009, at 5:59 p.m.

In Response To: Plethorized (Rich Munitz)

Thanks, Rich...that was an excellent analysis. You wrote:

You look for nice human concepts to give you the correct answer here. I must disappoint you. This will be a technical decision and one where the bots ability to look at the dice combinations over the next few rolls will give better visibility into what's right than anything else.

I should clarify that when I asked for a human explanation, I was not asking for a non-calculational explanation. Coming from the chess world, I am still amazed at how seldom I see analyses of backgammon positions that are backed by thorough calculations. And by thorough calculations, I don't mean just doing a rollout on the computer; I mean something like a manual 2-ply analysis, grouping the resulting positions into suitable categories in order to understand them. (Computing the probability of a hit followed by a dance is a simple example of such a calculation.) It's true that this is a lot of work, but it's the kind of work that I would expect an author to put in when (for example) writing a book, and I don't see it much.

Anyway, in this position, my basic oversight was failing to count how many ways there would be to safety the back checker. After you point out the importance of that calculation, I feel much better equipped to study the position further.

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