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BGonline.org Forums
Difficulty in explaining wastage/overage
Posted By: Jason Lee
Date: Thursday, 2 January 2025, at 10:25 p.m.
I lead a study session which is populated by beginners/intermediate players, with a wide variety of playing experience. We have a regular in these sessions who is a long-time intermediate player, let's call him Gabriel. He frequents ABT events, you may even know him. Gabriel is very unlikely to see this post.
There are two concepts where my explanations are getting NO traction. They are similar.
Concept #1: Wastage in bearing off. When talking about this, I said that typically, moving checkers deep into one's board will incur wastage -- we may end up bearing off those checkers with large numbers, thereby not getting full value out of our roll. Gabriel pushed back with the argument that "Once a checker is on the ace point, it's impossible for me to miss!" Gabriel came away from the discussion 100% convinced that dumping checkers onto the ace point is a strong play.
Concept #2: Overage in match play. I was discussing that the gammon value on a 4 cube at 5-away/5-away is lower than for money/unlimited. Gabriel said, "This feels just like your explanation about wastage that I still think is wrong. What do you mean gammons are less valuable? A gammon wins the match! What could be more valuable than winning the match?"
I tried to expand the discussion to what value you get out of gammons on a 16 cube when 17-away/17-away. I was utterly gobsmacked to find out this hypothetical fell on completely deaf ears. Several people (not just Gabriel) could not understand what I was saying AT ALL.
I have tried, with almost no success, various analogies, like "What is the value of a touchdown vs. a field goal when you're down by one point late in a football game?" or "What if you have a gift certificate for $20 that you use on an item worth $12, and the store doesn't give you any change?"
For wastage, I cannot get Gabriel to comprehend that we are trying to compare two positions of the same pip count. Every explanation incurs the same nonsense rebuttal: "But if all my checkers are on the ace point, I can't miss when I bear off!"
Not only am I having trouble explaining this to the intermediates/beginners, but OFTEN when I explain my troubles to strong players, they don't seem to understand what my issue is. The strong players fully understand wastage/overage, but don't understand how on earth I could possibly be having trouble explaining this.
I am at my wits end. Qualitatively, I think wastage/overage is an easy idea, even if you have no clue how to compute or interpret the underlying numbers.
There are a variety of possibilities, any number of which might be true.
- I am underestimating how difficult it is for the average player to understand this, and this is NOT easy.
- Gabriel simply lacks the intellectual ability to understand these ideas/arguments.
- I am absolute shit at explaining these concepts.
JLee
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