Newsletter for 1 June 2004

No time for a June Swoon!

On Tuesday, 1 June 2004, the Backgammon Club of San Diego met. The gang's all here, so we had a tournament.

Tournament News

11 people entered an 16-player bracket on Tuesday night. We had the following tournament results:

First place: Eric Sedehi
Second place: Sho Sengoku
Third place: Tom Fahland / Bruce Haight (split)
Blitz winner: Jason Lee

For the fifth week in a row, Sho Sengoku played in the tournament finals.

A blitz made it to fruition this week, and Jason Lee won the blitz to break the 2nd place tie in the overall standings.

Current Master Points Standings

 1. Sho Sengoku      46
 2. Jason Lee        40
 3. Adrian Costa     39
 4. Bruce Haight     38
 5. Tom Fahland      30
 6. Fred Kamgar      25
 6. Osman Guner      25
 8. Cyrus Mobedshahi 18
 9. Eric Sedehi      16
10. Henry Chaboki    12
11. Marcia Karen      9
12. Greg Kopp         6
13. Mark Weiner       3
14. Bruce Discher     2
14. Ryan Knowles      2
14. Chris Rosin       2
17. Maira Costa       1
17. Sam Mehri         1

Sho maintains first place overall. Jason Lee is six points behind, Adrian Costa seven back, and Bruce Haight eight points off the pace, all within striking distance.

The point leader at the end of the year will be named the BCSD Player of the Year, and the top 16 in the Master Point standings will be invited to the 2004 BCSD Tournament of Champions, to be held in early 2005.

53rd Gammon Associates Invitational

Don't miss out on your chance to enter the 53rd Gammon Associates Invitational on June 11-13, 2004 in Beverly Hills. There should be several BCSD players in attendance.

Problem of the Week

Seven point match -- your opponent opens with a 2-1 and splits. You roll 2-1. What's your move?

Last Week's Problem of the Week

A position from the 3rd round of the Open Consolation of the FIBS 2004 Spring Backgammon Tournament:

+-24-23-22-21-20-19-+---+-18-17-16-15-14-13-+

| |

| | | |

| 1 |

| |

+--1--2--3--4--5--6-+---+--7--8--9-10-11-12-+

Black leads 3-1 in a 7 point match. Black on roll. Cube action? Pip counts: White 116, Black 55
Position ID: s9sAsAF7twMEAA Match ID: cAngABAAGAAA

White will get a hit on the next exchange 247 out of 1296 times. This can be calculated by looking at each roll that leaves a shot and subsequently calculating the number of hits that White gets. This isn't enough to take, even at this match score, especially considering that Black has significant gammon chances. Time to cut bait.

Cube decision

Rollout cubeless equity +0.766 (Money: +0.666)

Cubeful equities:

1. Double, pass +1.000

2. Double, take +1.414 +0.414

3. No double +0.667 -0.333

Proper cube action: Double, pass

Rollout details

Win W g W bg Lose L g L bg Cubeless Cubeful

Centered 1-cube 0.740 0.195 0.000 - 0.260 0.010 0.000 +0.766 +0.667

Standard error 0.000 0.000 0.000 - 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.001

Player White owns 2-cube 0.741 0.201 0.000 - 0.259 0.011 0.000 +1.836 +1.414

Standard error 0.000 0.000 0.000 - 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.001 0.001

Truncated cubeful rollout (depth 11) with var.redn.

46656 games, Mersenne Twister dice gen. with seed 971971776 and quasi-random dice

Play: 0-ply cubeful [expert]

Cube: 0-ply cubeful [expert]

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

Output generated by GNU Backgammon 0.14-devel (HTML Export version 1.123)