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BGonline.org Forums
Philosophical Question on 'Wrong D/P is not an Error'
Posted By: Rich Munitz In Response To: Philosophical Question on 'Wrong D/P is not an Error' (Matt Cohn-Geier)
Date: Friday, 11 December 2009, at 4:12 a.m.
"I have found that I tend to do best (in general) by cubing about when a bot would cube. I tend to get more wrong passes and wrong takes in those positions."
I agree with the "in general" part. That is because most non-doubles are obvious takes. And you shouldn't recklessly piss away equity in those situations.
But I am a strong believer in the Woolsey rule. I may not be sure it is a cube, but I may also not be entirely sure about the take either. And if I am not sure, I know there's a good chance that my opponent is not sure. So you make the decision to double and allow your opponent to make the error at the risk of making one yourself.
There are often positions that look scarier than they really are. And frequently such perceived scariness is at its maximum right after something bad just happened to the opponent, or after you just rolled some joker. You just know that your opponent's fears are stirring. So you ship the cube knowing it is probably not a double and apply maximum pressure and even more fear. And after they think for about 5 seconds, you just know the pass is inevitable. I am amazed at how often I can steal points in this manner.
Finally, of course, there are established tendencies of particular players. Some players are takers, some are passers, some don't like big cubes, some are gammon shy, etc. You are a fool if you seek to play with the lowest possible error rate and ignore this valuable information. These players have different doubling windows than the bots. You can't play against the bot's doubling window, you need to play against your opponent's. As Yogi Berra said: "you can observe a lot by watching".
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