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BGonline.org Forums
More wins or more gammons? My new rule of thumb.
Posted By: Rich Munitz In Response To: More wins or more gammons? (christian munk-christensen)
Date: Monday, 29 November 2010, at 5:00 p.m.
My sense here is that we are talking about a very strong position whichever play is made. While escaping will certainly win more games, it is unlikely to win too many more games since making the 4 point is so strong anyway. However, it does seem to me that making the 4 point will win quite a bit more gammons, so that's my choice.
An interesting way to look at it here is that the pool of losses that can potentially be converted to wins is small to begin with (perhaps 20%), while the pool of wins (perhaps 80%) that can potentially be converted to gammons is quite large. If each of our plays convert 10% of its target pool, there will be 4 times as many gammons gained by one play as opposed to wins gained by the other play. Ignoring score, if this were a simple 0.50 gammon price situation, with a potential 4:1 gammon:win payoff, we're getting paid 2:1 to pick the gammon play if we simply had no idea about the position. At 33% losses / 67% wins, the loss pool is exactly half of the win pool and the odds balance the gammon price. So it seems a reasonable rule of thumb that if you just can't clearly figure out the trade-off between wins and gammons, that you should "guess" the gammonest play if you think you win more than 2/3 of the time regardless of what you do and "guess" the winningest play if you think you win less than 2/3 of the time regardless of what you do. (Obviously the actual gammon price will shift this tipping point).
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