Newsletter for 2 March 2004

In with March!

Tournament News

• First place: Tom Fahland
• Second place: Jason Lee
• Third place: Adrian Costa

Four matches were played on the clock on Tuesday, which greatly helped to speed up the tournament after a slow start.

As always, late entries are acceptable -- that's part of the beauty of an open ended bracket which allows for late entries and reentries. But we definitely encourage people to show up on time if possible. For your sake, that gives you the most opportunities for reentry in the even that you lose.

Current Master Points Standings

 1. Jason Lee        31
 2. Bruce Haight     25
 3. Adrian Costa     23
 4. Tom Fahland      11
 5. Cyrus Mobedshahi 10
 6. Marcia Karen      9
 7. Sho Sengoku       8
 8. Osman Guner       7
 9. Fred Kamgar       1
10. Sam Mehri         1

Problem of the Week

Pip counts: White 99, Black 76

What would you do?

Last Week's Problem of the Week

11 point match, White leads 4-0. Black to play 6-5. Pip counts: White 155, Black 194

After entering with the five, we have to move the six, and there are five legal moves. All of them seem reasonable. 21/15 and 20/14 have the benefit of outfield control. If we have to choose between those two, 21/15 has the benefit of keeping communication between checkers, while 20/14 duplicates twos. 13/7 duplicates twos as well, although Black really isn't interested in making his bar point. 24/18 doesn't seem too strong -- White will probably be happy to swing away and hit with impunity, thanks to Black's nonexistent board.

After a long rollout, GNU seems to like 21/15 best. GNU seems to favor the flexibility, diversification, and communication.

#		Ply	Move	Equity
	1	R	bar/20 21/15	-0.353
			0.393 0.083 0.002 - 0.607 0.209 0.016 -0.353 0.000 0.000 0.000 - 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000
			Truncated cubeless rollout (depth 11) (trunc. at one-sided bearoff) with var.redn.
			46656 games, Mersenne Twister dice gen. with seed 962784960 and quasi-random dice
			Play: 0-ply cubeful
			Cube: 0-ply cubeful
	2	R	bar/20 13/7	-0.367 ( -0.014)
			0.391 0.089 0.003 - 0.609 0.221 0.020 -0.367 0.000 0.000 0.000 - 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000
			Truncated cubeless rollout (depth 11) (trunc. at one-sided bearoff) with var.redn.
			46656 games, Mersenne Twister dice gen. with seed 962784960 and quasi-random dice
			Play: 0-ply cubeful
			Cube: 0-ply cubeful
	3	R	bar/14	-0.377 ( -0.024)
			0.383 0.082 0.002 - 0.617 0.211 0.016 -0.377 0.000 0.000 0.000 - 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000
			Truncated cubeless rollout (depth 11) (trunc. at one-sided bearoff) with var.redn.
			46656 games, Mersenne Twister dice gen. with seed 962784960 and quasi-random dice
			Play: 0-ply cubeful
			Cube: 0-ply cubeful
	4	R	bar/20 24/18	-0.381 ( -0.028)
			0.385 0.082 0.002 - 0.615 0.220 0.016 -0.381 0.000 0.000 0.000 - 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000
			Truncated cubeless rollout (depth 11) (trunc. at one-sided bearoff) with var.redn.
			46656 games, Mersenne Twister dice gen. with seed 962784960 and quasi-random dice
			Play: 0-ply cubeful
			Cube: 0-ply cubeful
	5	R	bar/20 8/2	-0.444 ( -0.091)
			0.362 0.083 0.003 - 0.638 0.233 0.021 -0.444 0.000 0.000 0.000 - 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000
			Truncated cubeless rollout (depth 11) (trunc. at one-sided bearoff) with var.redn.
			46656 games, Mersenne Twister dice gen. with seed 962784960 and quasi-random dice
			Play: 0-ply cubeful
			Cube: 0-ply cubeful

See you next week! Keep tossing those cubes,
J. Lee