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Philosophical Question on 'Wrong D/P is not an Error'

Posted By: Rich Munitz
Date: Wednesday, 9 December 2009, at 3:05 p.m.

In Response To: Philosophical Question on 'Wrong D/P is not an Error' (Robert Maier)

"If it's statistically plus, we are suffering from Fancy Play Syndrome. If it's statistically minus, we are playing better than the guy who never makes a wrong double."

Not quite. There is a presumption that a player has the choice of doubling "correctly" and "getting fancy". The "control" test is not the perfect player, but rather the player who is attempting to minimize error rate rather than win the match and thus is always trying to make the technically correct decision. That player will not play perfectly and will have some amount of cube error rate. Ultimately the question is whether the "getting fancy" player's incremental errors relative to the "minimizing ER" player are greater or less than the total error made by the opponent. And note that the player who attempts to double correctly may still profit from cube errors of the opponent. Where it gets messy is with "missed double" errors. If you know that your opponent takes everything, you may get zinged for multiple missed doubles on the way to your opponent eventually making a single bad take.

Bottom line - I think there is value to a separate set of analysis stats: "induced cube errors", so that a player can consider the effectiveness of their doubling strategy in producing errors in their opponent. In fact this stat already exists. It is simply the opponent's "Take/Pass" error rate.

Of course, the same principle applies to checker plays. Making small errors to complicate the position with the hope of inducing larger errors from the opponent later on.

At the end of the day, what seems to matter most is the difference between the player's ER and the opponent's ER. And an Elo rating based on sustained match results in a playing population is the best long term measurement of ones effectiveness at outplaying ones opponents.

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