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Counting Positions

by Douglas Zare
1 June 2005

Douglas Zare

Is backgammon solvable by a database? If the entire game is too complicated, which aspects of the game can be solved by databases? To try to answer these questions, we need to count positions, and take a look at the storage capabilities of computers.

This article won't help you directly at the table. It surveys some of the databases that are currently available or will soon be created

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Subject: Re: Counting Positions

From: DBrthrtn Member has a photo available

Date: 05 Jun 2005 15:51 EST

"As far as I know, hypergammon has not been solved for match play (except DMP) or with table stakes."

Do METs specifically geared toward hypergammon exist yet? I'd love to know, at least approximately, what the Crawford game and 2-away equities are, even for a 3 point match. I suspect the answers may be quite different than backgammon match play.

Subject: Re: Counting Positions

From: zare

Date: 07 Jun 2005 09:17 EST

People have constructed METs based on the backgammon and gammon rates for cubeless money games of hypergammon. These may be steps in the right direction, but even for Crawford 2-away, the actual equity may be different. If the players thought they were playing a cubeless money game, both sides would make errors at Gammon Go, but there is no guarantee the leader would make the same quantity of errors as the trailer would. For regular backgammon, it appears that the trailer can make more profitable adjustments than the leader at Crawford 2-away.

Douglas Zare

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