Running Gammons

While many of the positions I used are uncommon, the idea of running gammons comes up more frequently. For example, if you have an anchor and trail by 50 pips and your opponent has a strong board, it may be much more dangerous to leave a shot than when you trail by 30 pips. A hit will increase the running gammons.

In the near race position, Red's doubles may be efficient. They come from getting hit, then either hitting back in the bearoff or racing well. Either of these could lead to some efficient doubles, though it is less likely than in a long race.

I think your question about the gammon price is really about how many gammons Red needs to win in order to correctly play on for the gammon with 6% losses. When Red owns the cube, winning over 12% (net) gammons makes it clear to play on for the gammon. However, it may be right to play on with 1% gammons, as long as Red will be able to double later to eliminate the cubeless losses from producing cubeful losses. In this position, Red's cube access is not nearly as useful, but it still allows Red to shrink White's cubeful wins from, say, 6.0% to 5.8%. That means Red only needs about 11.6% gammon wins to justify playing on, lower than the 12.0% a gammon price of 0.5 would suggest, and much lower than the 14.0% suggested by a gammon price of 0.43.

When you are too good to redouble, the gammon price is often greater than 0.5.

Douglas Zare