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Who is the favorite to be the #1 BG Giant?

Posted By: Phil Simborg
Date: Sunday, 31 January 2010, at 12:20 p.m.

In Response To: Who is the favorite to be the #1 BG Giant? (Stick)

This morning at 9 AM I will be giving a shortened version of the very test you describe. It will only be 10 positions, checker play, but I have had help and input from Perry, David Rockwell and MCG on the problems, and they are challenging. It will be interesting to see who gets the highest scores. We will not know the scores of anyone other than the highest, as my goal is not to expose or embarrass anyone but to crown a champ and to use this as an learning experience as we discuss the difficult plays and the concepts behind them. (Everyone will also get a hard copy take-away).

In Pittsburgh we will do the same thing, except that one will be all cube problems.

And yes, this is a test of knowledge, not necessarily of ability over the board against an opponent.

As for the Giant voting, had I known when I cast my vote that Nack was dedicating his time to Backgammon (see article on my web site) I would have put him No. 1. The criteria is "intentionally" loose as they want you to include people who are "active" in backgammon without defining exactly what that means. Nack is certainly not as active as Falafel and Mochy in tournament play, but add his teaching, writing, and just what he puts on this site, and he would certainly qualify in my mind.

When you start comparing Nack, Neil, Sander, Mochy, Falafel and people at that level, I don't think anyone could ever say, definitively, which is better--not only are they close and probably all have tiny areas where they are just a little better or worse than the next one, but when you get down to differences of under .03 on a play, I'm not convinced that even the longest rollouts can be said to be correct compared to what one of them might think...so we can't even have confidence in those results.

(In my tests, the differences between the best and next answers is enough to have relative confidence.)

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