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The interesting 41T 1st roll move

Posted By: Matt Cohn-Geier
Date: Sunday, 18 October 2009, at 5:24 p.m.

In Response To: The interesting 41T 1st roll move (David Rockwell)

Why does the simple T move cause all of these changes in the best response?

Splitting gets much more dangerous with each additional man in the zone. It is not too dangerous yet when opp has 9 checkers and they are all stacked on the 6 and 8 points. It is significantly more dangerous than when there are 10 checkers there and significantly less dangerous with 8.

However, the ace point is actually a particularly bad anchor to have. When your opponent is mainly looking to blitz & not to prime (stacking checkers makes it much more difficult to prime, though 4 on the 8 is not very many yet) you should hang on to any anchor until you have some protection (i.e. a stronger board/prime, some duplication, etc.). With only a one point board the game hasn't really developed yet regardless of how many checkers he has aiming at you. You should still get off the ace point as soon as you reasonably can. Given the choice between splitting and not moving at all, you should split. However making progress on your side of the board goes far up in value and any hit forces him to forgo improving his forward position (duplication, if you will). Note that it is more important than on the opening roll for opponent to unstack with rolls like 11, 31, 42. 44 is slightly worse but 44 is horrible anyway if you split.

If you play S after opp brings down checkers you are going to spend your next roll or two playing on both sides of the board or basically achieving a holding game where you are behind. If you play $ you are still stuck on the ace point but you can concentrate entirely on building your forward position if you get missed. If you get hit you are back to the losing holding game thing.

Note that there really is significant "duplication" after 51S-21$. If you can believe slotting into a double shot here, surely slotting into a single shot must be better.

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