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Serious Backgammon Errors - Late Loose Hits

by Douglas Zare
1 September 2007

Douglas Zare

The most serious errors in backgammon are not necessarily the largest. Just as more equity is given up on checker play errors than cube blunders, common errors may contribute more to your error rate than blunders in rare positions. According to Walter Trice, failing to hit loose in the late game is one of the most common errors. In fact, his June 2006 column covered a variety of these positions. In this column, we'll look at one situation: Loose hits late in the game when you have a 5 point board. Opportunities such as these commonly occur after your opponent breaks a high anchor

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Subject: Re: Serious Backgammon Errors - Late Loose Hits

From: TheRake

Date: 10 Sep 2007 02:48 EST

Douglas

You say "more equity is given up on checker play errors than cube blunders". In his Encyclopedia, Kit Woolsey says at the start that "it is generally agreed that cube decisions are the most important decisions in backgammon".

Please would you comment on these apparently opposing views ? Since in Snowie-speak, an "error" is less serious than a "blunder", I'm quite surprised by your view.

Ray Kershaw

Subject: Re: Serious Backgammon Errors - Late Loose Hits

From: Ian Shaw Member has a photo available

Date: 14 Sep 2007 06:24 EST

"more equity is given up on checker play errors than cube blunders" because you have a lot more chequer plays during a game to get wrong. Many cube decisions are so trivial they are barely worthy of the name, and you don't have cube decisions at all once you have doubled, or at scores where the cube is dead.

The build up of small chequer-play errors will outweigh your cube errors.

Subject: Re: Serious Backgammon Errors - Late Loose Hits

From: zare

Date: 15 Sep 2007 16:59 EST

Ian gave a good answer to Ray's question.

I'd like to point out my August 2003 column, "Cube vs. Checker Play." I analyzed real data, and found that all top players and almost all advanced players have significantly lower cube error rates than checker play error rates. The gap grows even larger if you look at the actual equity given up rather than EMG. Tough cube decisions are exciting, but checker play decisions involve much more equity overall.

Unfortunately, this has been confused with work by someone else, who showed that adding a specified amount of noise to cube evaluations harms bots significantly less than adding the same amount of noise to checker play evaluations. That's a very different result, but my conclusions were attributed to him.

Douglas Zare

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