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BGonline.org Forums
Bearoff 8 cube
Posted By: Matt Cohn-Geier In Response To: Bearoff 8 cube (Jason Lee)
Date: Friday, 8 January 2010, at 6:40 a.m.
OK, you're just doing ordinary long division.
Is that what they are calling it these days?
I like to think of it as a series of multiplication & addition steps rather than involve division or subtraction anywhere along the way. My brain can handle 2 operations better than 4, I guess.
But like I say I would usually just approximate 24 / 97 to "somewhere around 24-26%" and stop there. This whole process would usually take me maybe ~5 minutes OTB. Unless I was playing someone very strong, as soon as I saw "it looks close" or pretty much anything other than "totally trivial take" I would just pass since I have octophobia.
When I was starting out in live play and tournaments it took me a long time to do any kind of anything (ME calcs, pip counts, just normal plays, whatever), because I put a lot of work in on every play and couldn't isolate which factors were important. As a result I was pretty slow and often ended up low on time. I can't remember the last match I had where I was pretty low on time...it has been awhile. I am not the fastest player in the world but I get into a rhythm OTB and since I started keeping a running pip count I find that I play faster and more accurately.
If I was in a bearoff like this that lends itself to math, looks close, playing against a strong player, and facing an 8 cube, it's probably one of the rare times that I would take about 5 minutes to make a decision. I am not the fastest mathematician in the world but as long as my answer is accurate it's good enough.
However, I welcome any suggestions for how I can do this kind of calculation faster, and I appreciate those made thus far by Jason, Neil, and UBK.
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