FIBS Board backgammon forum

Quick enumeration of possibilities:
2 rolls (44, 55) miss but even up the race - so give us 50% of those
17 rolls miss, and leave us 15 pips ahead or more in the race. After any of those we recube and ought to get a pass (we'd need to roll 6 or below or a blocked double and have a single shot hit and we're still not quite dead even then, which I believe puts us in pass territory). Wins to us.
17 rolls hit. Grim, but however Linus plays it we will have most rolls containing a six as a quick comeback - in some we leave a single shot to get put back on the bar, and we can still slime our way out, in others we hit, then have time to pick up a second man and squeeze a gammon out. Let's be cautious and say a bit less than half of our sixes lead to victory - which gives us about 2 wins out of those 17.
That puts us 20-16 ahead. In which case it's a dead easy take and not a double.

Just noticed the options... in a money game I'd be beavering...

take

I'm fairly sure that it is a mistake to cube here and that it would be an even bigger blunder to drop.

It's 4a 4a so our live cube takepoint is somewhere around 20%.  But a recube to 4 has a takepoint of 33%.

We definitely have 20% here, so the take is a snap. 

Is this a cube?  Well, one could argue that there's a bunch of market losers (17 shakes to hit, and then we dance 70% of the time), and this is often a strong argument for sending the cube.  But here I don't think Linus is even 50% to win.  As Trice pointed out, 50% to hit is not 50% to win.  Our strong racing lead and his open 6 point combine to make for far fewer than 17/36 winning chances by hitting. 

And when he fans, the elevated takepoint on a recube probably means it's a cash when the cube is turned.  So, cubing means  forgoing the residual wins he gets when the cube is in the center.

All that said, I'm not sure it's a cash for us when he misses, either with a centered cube or with owning the cube on 2, although I am eager to find out.  (c:  There's a big gap between 20% and 33%...

Take.

Yes, it would be a do-deca-whopper for us to pass here. 


XGID=-BCBCBBb-----A---aa-bbcbb-:0:0:-1:00:1:1:0:5:3

X:Herd   O:Linus
Score is X:1 O:1 5 pt.(s) match.
+12-11-10--9--8--7-------6--5--4--3--2--1-+
| X           O  O |   |    O  O  O  O  O |
|                  |   |    O  O  O  O  O |
|                  |   |          O       |
|                  |   |                  |
|                  |   |                  |
|                  |BAR|                  |
|                  |   |                  |
|                  |   |                  |
|                  |   |       X     X    |
|                O |   | X  X  X  X  X  X |
|                O |   | X  X  X  X  X  X |
+13-14-15-16-17-18------19-20-21-22-23-24-+
Pip count  X: 61  O: 84 X-O: 1-1/5
Cube: 1
O on roll, cube action

Analyzed in Rollout
No double
  Player Winning Chances:   41.08% (G:0.56% B:0.01%)
  Opponent Winning Chances: 58.92% (G:2.61% B:0.07%)
Double/Take
  Player Winning Chances:   41.12% (G:0.52% B:0.01%)
  Opponent Winning Chances: 58.88% (G:3.26% B:0.28%)

Cubeless Equities: No Double=-0.208, Double=-0.546

Cubeful Equities:
       No double:     -0.256
       Double/Take:   -1.102 (-0.847)
       Double/Pass:   +1.000 (+1.256)

Best Cube action: No double / Take
Percentage of wrong pass needed to make the double decision right: 28.7%

Rollout:
  1296 Games rolled with Variance Reduction.
  Moves: 3-ply, cube decisions: XG Roller
  Confidence No Double: ± 0.004 (-0.260..-0.251)
  Confidence Double:    ± 0.006 (-1.109..-1.096)

  Double Decision confidence: 100.0%
  Take Decision confidence: 100.0%

  Duration: 58.6 seconds

eXtreme Gammon Version: 2.10, MET: Kazaross XG2