By Phil Simborg: The two things that excite me most about backgammon are: watching my opponent open his wallet, and rolling a set of doubles. But there's a downside to rolling doubles: every time you roll them, you double the chances of making an error!
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    20 Aug 2008
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  Phil Simborg
 
Phil Simborg
The Joy of Sets
by Phil Simborg
16 July 2008 Back to Articles

The two things that excite me most about backgammon are: 1) watching my opponent reach into his wallet, and 2) rolling a set of doubles.

Whoever came up with the idea that you get to move twice as much when you roll doubles was a genius: he added great excitement to the game. And it happens about one of out every six rolls (more often than that if you are playing against the computer!).
 
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2.
Subject:  Re: The Joy of Sets
From: 
SvempaSnake
Date:  28 Jul 2008 08:24 EST

Hi, nice article.

Regarding the double two:

I was surprised to see that taking off four checkers would be the best move here. I would have taken just two checkers off. I double checked that with GNU which confirms two checkers off is fine (three checkers off seems even better with a small margin). The interesting thing though is that if black owns the cube taking four off seem to be a huge blunder, that wins fewer games and fewer gammons and the extra backgammons doesn't help much.

Maybe the cube should be in the center like in the diagram? Then it still doesn't make any sense to me since white would have to settle for 1 point because of the jacoby rule.

Good problem anyway in which shows how unsafe the "safe" move is here.

Summary of what I got from GNU:

Money game, black owns the cube on 2:

4/off 2/off(2) 1,65 4/off(2) 1,63 4/2(4) 1,48 VERY BAD 2/off(4) 1,25 Worse!

/Sven-Olav Norén

3.
Subject:  Re: The Joy of Sets
From: 
RichMunitz   Member has a photo available
Date:  11 Aug 2008 23:08 EST

Here's my quiz.

4/off(2) means:

a) 4 off the 2 point

b) 2 off the 4 point

P.S. I'm sure Petko only made that play because it was more fun. All things equal, that's a great play against a weaker opponent. When things go bad for black, the result will be a complex position in which black will squeeze out more equity than indicated by the rollouts (perhaps even the backgame that Petko was secretly hoping for). The passive play pretty much makes the rest of the game free from skill.

 

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