BGonline.org Forums

Tricky 51

Posted By: Stick
Date: Friday, 5 November 2010, at 11:59 a.m.

In Response To: Tricky 51 (Justin N.)

In this type of position people realize they're significantly behind in the match and immediately get gammon greedy. They see a chance to quickly jump back into the match and momentarily suspend rational thinking. Here one of the first things you should be asking yourself is 'what's the price of gammons for me?' The answer, slightly above what it normally is for money. With that in mind what are the candidate plays:

• 24/23 6/1*
• 10/9 6/1*
• 6/1* 2/1
• 10/4
• 24/23 10/5

That seems to me like all the plays I should be considering. It is important not to gloss over positions. I am still quite often seeing strong players in over the board play not noticing a contending candidate play and whether it turns out to be correct or not I see it as a blunder. Now to chip away any candidates that quickly seem weak to me.

The first I'd toss out the window is switching to the ace point, 6/1* 2/1*. While this may immediately leave a couple less shots it may also leave less covers. Both of these factors pale though to the overall weakness of making your points out of order when you aren't completely committed to blitzing and cracking the possible priming formation you had before this ugly play.

The next play I off is 10/4. I see 24/23 10/5 as the same general theme and clearly superior to it since it keeps the spare on a higher point and gives more escaping numbers. We have many things going for us in this position and one of them is the huge racing lead. If we decide not to hit escaping the back checker will be a priority.

Now we're down to two candidate hitting plays and the safe play. It's clear to me that at dmp I would play safe. The safe play leaves a position where basically all numbers play. Next turn I can make the 3pt if I roll two small numbers, I can make the ace pt with some other medium sized numbers, and I can try to escape my back checker with the bigger numbers or combination of big/small.

At gammon go am I sure I'd hit? It's hard not to hit in such a possible at such a score but being able to eye up the problem from a distance I'm not positive it would be correct to do so. It really sets you back in so many ways to get hit which happens ~1/3rd of the time. You lose significantly in the race and now you have two men to try to escape and have forfeited a lot of your overall flexibility. You are stripped to nothing in the outfield and not much in your home board. If it's questionable that I hit at pure gammon go then this problem is a non issue, I make the safe play. 24/23 10/5.

Stick

Messages In This Thread

• Tricky 51
  Justin N. -- Thursday, 4 November 2010, at 12:36 a.m.
  • Tricky 51
    Keene -- Thursday, 4 November 2010, at 3:43 a.m.
    • Tricky 51
      Rich Munitz -- Thursday, 4 November 2010, at 4:40 a.m.
      • Tricky 51
        Frank Raposa -- Thursday, 4 November 2010, at 1:39 p.m.
        • Tricky 51
          Michael Nielsen -- Thursday, 4 November 2010, at 2:32 p.m.
        • Tricky 51
          Keene -- Thursday, 4 November 2010, at 3:05 p.m.
          • Tricky 51
            Keene -- Thursday, 4 November 2010, at 3:08 p.m.
            • Tricky 51
              Rich Munitz -- Thursday, 4 November 2010, at 4:51 p.m.
  • Tricky 51
    garyo -- Thursday, 4 November 2010, at 4:15 p.m.
  • Tricky 51
    Matt Cohn-Geier -- Thursday, 4 November 2010, at 10:29 p.m.
  • Tricky 51
    Chuck Bower -- Friday, 5 November 2010, at 1:32 a.m.
  • Rollout
    Justin N. -- Friday, 5 November 2010, at 5:15 a.m.
  • Tricky 51
    Stick -- Friday, 5 November 2010, at 11:59 a.m.