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"stripping the midpoint"

Posted By: Timothy Chow
Date: Thursday, 6 January 2011, at 9:36 p.m.

In Response To: "stripping the midpoint" (Chuck Bower)

Chuck wrote:

I believe the preservation of spares on the midpoint for the sake of spares is controversial. It also may be hard to test.

True. Every rule of thumb is controversial. Why make the 5pt? Because it's the 5pt? Despite the power of this heuristic, it's still just a heuristic. One doesn't do anything for its own sake, other than maximize equity (or MWC). I wasn't suggesting otherwise, just pointing out that stripping the midpoint is a heuristic that might be helpful in this position.

It's also true that every rule of thumb is tricky to test. Change one feature of the position and you change some others. Still, you can address this issue by considering multiple variants of the same position. Worried that my adjustment disturbs the race too much? Then come up with another variant that compensates for the change in the race. Worried that the second variant disturbs yet another feature? Then come up with a 3rd, 4th, 5th, ... variant.

In other words, I have no problem with being skeptical of verbal explanations—my impression is that among BGO readers I'm more skeptical than most—but I claim that the right way to be skeptical is to back up your skepticism with your own set of variant positions.

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