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BGonline.org Forums
Better tools, less disinformation
Posted By: phil simborg In Response To: Better tools, less disinformation (Keene)
Date: Friday, 5 November 2010, at 9:55 a.m.
After reading all the posts, giving this much more thought, and talking about several related ideas with Perry over dinner last night, I agree that all of these factors mentioned are contributors to the ability of some to achieve great heights far faster than other.
However, more and more I am coming to believe that the approach to learning is a very large factor. Let me give you one example that came up in my discussion with Perry that illustrates the point. We looked at a position where I made the mistake of slotting when it was better to simply clear a point (I was up in the race and I was slotting my open 5 point when I could have just cleared the 9 point, and my opponent was holding my 3 point).
I had received excellent comments on the position from David Rockwell, which really helped me understand the difference between when you slot and when you don't. With David's help, my understanding of the position, I thought, was complete. Then Perry pointed out that it was no where near complete.
In order to fully understand whether or not to slot I needed to know how much more equity I had by making the 5 point, if successful, than leaving it open and trying to bear off from there. If I was taking a risk, I needed to know what the reward was in order to properly weigh risk/reward.
I have no idea how to calculate how much safer my bear off is with the 5 closed compared to open, but Perry does...he has a reference position assuming the opponent has a closed board for this.
Also note that in this position, my opponent's board was not closed, the 3 and 4 point were open. So even if you know the reference position, you have to be able to estimate the relative difference with various open points. Here again, I have no clue.
So what makes Perry better than I. At some point in his study he saw the need to learn just how costly an open 5 point is in the bearoff if your opponent holds your 3 point if the opponent has a closed board, and he saw the need to learn how to adjust for variances in this position.
Perry spent more time truly learning about this issue and, provided he has the memory skills and concentration skills over the board, he will certainly play these kinds of positions better than I will more often.
When a similar position comes up again, Perry is clearly more likely to play better. While I instinctively knew that I was better off with the 5 point made (that's why I slotted it), I had no idea how much better it was so that I could compare the upside to the downside of getting hit.
So in this example, one thing that makes him a better player than I is not the total hours studied, but how and what he studied. It didn't even occur to me that I needed to go to this depth to make the right decision, and even David's excellent analysis of the play didn't get into this issue (though I am sure David was aware of the factors but just didn't take the time to go into them).
A true study of this one position, as Perry states, could take several hours to consider all the potential variables and risk/rewards of all the associated positions, then taking into account the cube and score and POG adds many more variables.
This is typical. When I discuss a given play or cube action with a WC player, I often hear about a feature of the position I didn't even consider, and that is clearly an area that separates a WC player from the rest of us.
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