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Pure play vs. skill related adjustments

Posted By: Mislav Kovacic
Date: Thursday, 7 October 2010, at 1:01 a.m.

In Response To: Pure play vs. skill related adjustments (Christian Munk-Christensen)

I'm definitely for adjustments. Of course, it all depends how weak someone is. 55-45 and 60-40 aren't really huge skill differences. Here in local tournaments I get to play against some people where I feel I'm at least 70% favorite or more - now THAT is huge. If I am playing someone REALLY weak (again hard to define it with EXACT numbers) I want the match to last as much as possible because longer the match more time for my skill to prevail. With that in mind I tend to do things which lengthen the match and avoid big swings of luck: 1) I pass marginally correct cubes if the position is very gammonish for my opponent (exception is when the game is very complicated and I know he/she is going to mess it up) 2) I avoid giving and taking big cubes 3) I double a bit later in races (avoiding the luck swings of them rolling extremely well and possibly giving me very annoying redouble)

Also, really weak players usually have horrible cube handling meaning they either pass too much or take too much (or a bit of both). If it's a longer match, I'll try to see during the first game or two which of the 2 categories they fit in and then adjust my doubling according to that. If I see them snap-take a pass, I'll tend to double a bit later etc.

I don't adjust the checker play as much, but there are examples when I even do that. For example, some people are terrified of blitzes or primes and they'll snap-pass even the completely harmless looking blitz or prime. Against these people, it obviously pays off to play more aggressively - bringing more builders down instead of going for an anchor because that will get me closer to the type of position they might (very) wrongly pass in the near future.

This sounds like an awful lot of adjustments but in fact these all are (and should be) only MINOR adjustments, equity-wise. But I do feel they give me an additional edge against really weak opponents.

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