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Closeouts And The EPC

by Douglas Zare
1 February 2005

Douglas Zare

Closeouts And The
Effective Pip Count

by Douglas Zare

This following position was discussed after a recent chouette. If Red doubles, can White take with 6 checkers off, but with gaps and checkers on high points? How close is the decision?



White has 6 off.

It is easy to count the checkers borne off, so everyone does that. People often overlook or underestimate the difference between White's position and a speed board. This causes serious cube errors

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Subject: Re: Closeouts And The EPC

From: PhilSimborg Member has a photo available

Date: 04 Feb 2005 07:46 EST

Articles such as this by Zare disgust me. They keep pointing out how much skill is required to truly play backgammon at a high level. One of the reasons I, and others like me, are playing backgammon instead of Chess, Scrabble, and other games of high skill levels, is that we know, even with our intelleck, there's enough luck in the game that we can occasionally win, even against far superior players. The more people like Doug point out how much skill there is, the less people like me will be attracted to the game. Too much learnin' ruins it for everyone.

Phil Simborg

Subject: Re: Closeouts And The EPC

From: zare

Date: 04 Feb 2005 13:29 EST

I'm sorry you feel that way.

Your comments about learning apply not only to this article, but to almost all serious modern books and articles on backgammon.

My goal as a columnist is not to point out arcane, difficult techniques most players can't expect to master. I want to illustrate ideas lazy players like me can use over the board while keeping the game fun. I want to break new ground, but I also want to make backgammon theory more accessible.

One consequence of the development of the backgammon literature has been that experts have a lower edge over nonexperts than ever before. It's much easier for nonexperts to develop good habits and to get good feedback. Though backgammon is a deeper game now than it once was, it takes months rather than years to progress from a novice to a competitive open-flight player. I like these changes, and I'll continue to encourage these trends in my articles.

I've enjoyed your backgammon writing in the past, Phil. Though I'm not an editor, I'd like to see you write the type of articles you want to see and submit them to GammonVillage.

Douglas Zare

Subject: Re: Closeouts And The EPC

From: OpenWheel

Date: 04 Feb 2005 16:47 EST

I suspect that was just a little tongue in cheek fun by Phil.

Good article Douglas. I've really been wanting to know more accurately what was going on with the cube in these types of positions. Robertie's 501 helped me with some reference positions but this puts sort of a 'why' on it that will help me remember and make better decisions.

I really enjoyed this one.

Subject: Re: Closeouts And The EPC

From: zare

Date: 04 Feb 2005 18:29 EST

I hoped so, but I didn't want to write a humorous response in case he was serious. There is a real issue to consider: How does backgammon appear to potential players? One reason I don't play Scrabble competitively is that it appears to require a tremendous amount of memorization of useless words. I hope my work doesn't seem to imply that playing backgammon well requires many painful calculations over the board or require memorizing METs to 4 decimal places; I rarely do anything complicated over the board.

I enjoyed writing this column. After I found the borderline positions, I was very surprised to see their epcs so close to each other. Smoothy is fun to use, too.

Douglas Zare

Subject: Re: Closeouts And The EPC

From: OpenWheel

Date: 08 Feb 2005 05:43 EST

You have a point.

I remember a Kazaross interview from about '95 (I saw it in an archive somewhere) where questions were fielded. Someone said that they wanted to be a good backgammon player but didn't want to spend hours memorizing all sorts of charts and formulas so they were a bit turned off. And Kaz said something to the effect of he couldn't think of any charts you really needed except maybe some basic equities. And that he didn't do the deep calculations over the board that sometimes came up in the post-mortem analysis of a position.

So he encouraged them to focus on learning sound positional fundamentals without worrying about needing to be calculating everything over the board.

But for me, when I see some numbers on something it does seem to help me remember the issues involved.

Subject: Re: Closeouts And The EPC

From: robadams Member has a photo available

Date: 19 Mar 2005 06:05 EST

Thanks very much for this article. I've tried in the past to simply memorize a bunch of reference positions, but it's just too difficult for me... including your earlier aggression index which was difficult for me to understand (my fault, not your article's). This seems quite easy by comparison and I'm looking forward to studying these close-out positions more deeply now.

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