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BGonline.org Forums
A good test position for XG3 beta?
Posted By: scotty In Response To: A good test position for XG3 beta? (Timothy Chow)
Date: Tuesday, 12 August 2014, at 7:13 p.m.
for what it is worth, i didn't keep any data, but i played a similar position thousands upon thousands of times back in the 1980's.
my position differed in that I began with a prime in the opponents board, and tried to roll the prime to contain a single checker. The single checker started on the bar. The prime rolled the dice first, with 3 checkers on each of the 1,2, 3 points, and two checkers on each of the 4,5 6, points.
About 50% of the time, the prime had at least 7 checkers off when the single checker side had born off. That number of 50% is only a 'gut feel'. I rarely counted games, but played this form of 'solitaire backgammon' perhaps 10,000 times. What conclusions can be drawn from this?
If you hit your opponent while he is bearing off, and you have a closed board, then if he has a total of 7 checkers remainging on the board, he is a very slight favourtite, and if he has 8 checkers remaining, you are a very slight favourite. And i think the bots bear this out.
in the above position, blue has 8 checkers remaining, but white does not have perfect containment. Inspite of the rollout, above, i think that blue has no more than 60% wins, possibly just better than even, say 55%, and good opportunities for gammons. In my opinion, blue should not give the cube here, as he might want to use it later to cash.
I'm not an expert on the game, and certainly not competent with the cube. I'm not a gambler either, but i would put money on white with 2-1 odds in this case, and play it all day long :D
btw, i also played a variation where there were two checkers on the bar vs. a rolling prime. The two checker variation was more difficult to beat, because the strategy for the two checkers was to point as close to the prime as possible, forcing the prime to 'slip and slide' to let a checker through. Often times, the second checker would escape while this was happening. The two checkers would leapfrog each other, staying as close as possible to gain the greatest opportunity to point on the nose of the prime.
I'm surprised that the rollout says double/drop. I think this would be an easy take for white. If it is a error, i'm sure i'll make that mistake for as long as i play backgammon.
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