Newsletter for 12 October 2004

The nights get longer as October backgammon keeps us warm.

Tournament News

1st place:  Tom Fahland and Osman Guner (split)
3rd place:  Jason Lee

Winner:  George Alessi

The club welcomed Gary Oaks, a BCSD player from many years ago, along with a visitor from out of town, George Alessi. George won a four-player blitz tournament in his visit.

Current Master Points Standings

 1. Sho Sengoku      94
 2. Bruce Haight     81
 3. Jason Lee        79
 4. Tom Fahland      71
 5. Adrian Costa     66
 6. Osman Guner      44
 7. Fred Kamgar      38
 8. Eric Sedehi      29
 9. Henry Chaboki    25
10. Bruce Discher    18
10. Cyrus Mobedshahi 18
12. Mark Weiner      11
13. Marcia Karen      9
14. Ryan Knowles      8
14. Ned Cross         8
16. Kismet Hancer     6
16. Greg Kopp         6
18. Stan Krimerman    4
18. Vito Volpetti     4
20. Chris Rosin       3
21. George Alessi     2
21. Jon Vietor        2
23. Maira Costa       1
23. Sam Mehri         1

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.

Problem of the Week

Pip counts: White 162, Black 167
Position ID: 4HPhASjgc/ABMA Match ID: cAnyAAAAAAAA

Gammon Go is a match score situation (say down 6-5 in a 7 pt match at Crawford) where you strongly need a gammon. Gammon Save is where your opponent is Gammon Go, and so it becomes a priority for you to not lose a gammon. We know what a Money game is -- but when we have a match where the score does not affect the cube decisions significantly as compared to a Money game, we call such a position Money. Double Match Point is, of course, a position where both players need to just win the game to win the match -- the upshot being that gammons and backgammons are meaningless. This can be a score like 6-6 in a 7 pt match, but the cube can turn any match score into Double Match Point. For instance, if one player leads 4-3 in a 7 pt match, but the cube ratchets up to 4 -- then the game becomes Double Match Point.

Common abbreviations for those: $, GG, GS, and DMP.

Last Week's Problem of the Week

Double Match Point. Pip counts: White 10, Black 16
Position ID: kwAAABkAAAAAAA Match ID: cAk1AAAAAAAA

Black must decide whether to place his checkers on the 1, 2, and 6 points (We'll call this position 126), or one checker on the ace and two on the four point (Position 144). We can analyze which is better by considering how many ways it takes Black to bear off in one or two rolls.

To see which is better to get off in two (or fewer) rolls, let's count the ways that Black DOESN'T get off in two rolls, in a cross-section of 1,296 two roll sequences by Black:

Position 126 Two roll sequences by Black that do not bear off 12 followed by 11, 12, 13, 14, or 23 18 ways 13 or 14 followed by any ace 44 ways 23 followed by 12 4 ways 11 followed by 11, 12, 13 5 ways 71 ways

Position 144 Two roll sequences by Black that do not bear off 11 or 12 followed by 23 or any ace 39 ways 13 followed by 11, 12, 13, 23 14 ways 14, 15, or 16 followed by 12 12 ways 23 followed by nondoubles 60 ways 125 ways

Finally, we check how many ways we can get off in one roll. Position 126 gets off in one roll on double threes or better, while Position 144 gets off in one roll on double fours or better.

So, we conclude that Position 126 is better than Position 144, as there is a higher probability of bearing off in any number of rolls.

GNU agrees with this assessment:

#		Ply	Move	Equity
	1	7	6/1 4/2	-0.139
			0.431 0.000 0.000 - 0.569 0.000 0.000
			7-ply cubeless
	2	7	6/4 6/1	-0.200 ( -0.061)
			0.400 0.000 0.000 - 0.600 0.000 0.000
			7-ply cubeless

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