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Phil Simborg's 5-5 revisited

Posted By: Timothy Chow
Date: Monday, 23 August 2010, at 9:56 p.m.

In Response To: Phil Simborg's 5-5 revisited (Keene)

I totally agree with you about the slipperiness of the term "understanding" and I totally agree with you about choosing one's battles. But I totally disagree with you about the limited value of trying to "understand" (whatever that means) this particular position.

You've raised some issues about using GNU vs. XG, and 5a1a Crawford versus DMP. These are reasonable questions, but from my experimentation so far, I don't think these will make a big difference. I'll probably roll them out to be sure. These minor issues will certainly not explain the HUGE change in equity that comes from shifting the position of the spare. If the differences in question were just 0.015 or something then I agree that trying to figure out the "explanation" would be of limited value. But when shifting a spare changes the difference between two particular plays from +0.050 to -0.100, and the "explanations" that people are coming up with don't make any sense, then it is defeatist to just ignore the position and move on. This particular position won't arise in any of my own games, but similar ones will. Trying to get safely past a double anchor when the opponent is on the verge of crunching is not such an unusual situation. At the moment, I don't even know whether I should be thinking about the position strategically or tactically. Is it hopeless or worthless to try to understand that? If you think so then I don't know how you expect to be able to improve your game.

Messages In This Thread

• Phil Simborg's 5-5 revisited
  Timothy Chow -- Monday, 23 August 2010, at 2:03 p.m.
  • Phil Simborg's 5-5 revisited
    Casper van der Tak -- Monday, 23 August 2010, at 2:33 p.m.
  • Phil Simborg's 5-5 revisited
    Keene -- Monday, 23 August 2010, at 3:41 p.m.
    • Phil Simborg's 5-5 revisited
      Timothy Chow -- Monday, 23 August 2010, at 4:12 p.m.
      • Phil Simborg's 5-5 revisited
        Casper van der Tak -- Monday, 23 August 2010, at 4:45 p.m.
      • Phil Simborg's 5-5 revisited
        Keene -- Monday, 23 August 2010, at 9:06 p.m.
        • Phil Simborg's 5-5 revisited
          Timothy Chow -- Monday, 23 August 2010, at 9:56 p.m.
  • Phil Simborg's 5-5 revisited
    Matt Cohn-Geier -- Monday, 23 August 2010, at 5:29 p.m.
    • Phil Simborg's 5-5 revisited
      Timothy Chow -- Monday, 23 August 2010, at 8:20 p.m.
  • Phil Simborg's 5-5 revisited
    Keene -- Monday, 23 August 2010, at 9:09 p.m.
  • Phil Simborg's 5-5 revisited
    Timothy Chow -- Thursday, 30 September 2010, at 1:06 a.m.