Game 2, move 2: Herd 4-1

[diane]

move?

[ah_clem]

Spoiler

My initial play was to bring down one from the midpoint and then move one of the runners up to his three point (I think that's better than making the 2-point anchor).  But slotting the 5 point is also a reasonable play after bringing one down and that is tied with slotting both five points.

Seems to me that 13/9 is mandatory - the spare on the midpoint isn't doing us any good, an if we move it forward we have a chance to make it useful.

As for slotting both 5 points, there's a rule of thumb (from Magriel IIRC) that you shouldn't split and slot at the same time.  That's why I favored 13/9 23/22 - we're already split, so the slot would go against this advice.  The thing is, this advice probably doesn't apply once he's sprung his builders, so I'm fine with slotting while split.

Playing 24/20 not only puts a checker utg, but if we simultaneously place a juicy blot in our homeboard with 6/5 he'll be quite willing to hit loose.  Granted, an exchange of hits cuts in our favor, but this seems a bit loose to me.  So I'm switching my vote to 13/9 6/5.

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[Julia_H]

Spoiler

I'm going the other way - I think the spare on the mid is still useful in the longer term in containing a hit man, and I also think we can't afford to let White build up outfield points with impunity. If we sit back we're only going to get occasional fly shots until we find ourselves stuck with a juggernaut rolling towards us; if we step up to his five point we'll likely spark off more contact that is overall beneficial to us.

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[ah_clem]

Since we're playing cubeless we can do the rollouts more or less immediately instead of waiting.  Here's this move:

Spoiler

Bottom line here is that it doesn't matter very much which play we make.  gnu slightly prefers the running play - remember that when gammons don't help and you're just trying to win a single point the race is more important than usual - but the two vote getters are within a whisker of the margin of error.  I'd need a much longer rollout before claiming any of the top five plays are really better than the others.  Nice to have such easy choices.

Note that making the 22 point here is a whopper.




    1. Rollout          23/18                        Eq.:  -0.124
       0.442 0.115 0.017 - 0.558 0.071 0.002 CL  -0.124 CF  -0.124
      [0.002 0.006 0.003 - 0.002 0.002 0.000 CL   0.004 CF   0.004]

    2. Rollout          24/20 6/5                    Eq.:  -0.127 ( -0.003)
       0.441 0.123 0.013 - 0.559 0.071 0.002 CL  -0.127 CF  -0.127
      [0.002 0.006 0.002 - 0.002 0.002 0.000 CL   0.003 CF   0.003]


    3. Rollout          13/9 6/5                     Eq.:  -0.131 ( -0.008)
       0.439 0.123 0.010 - 0.561 0.075 0.002 CL  -0.131 CF  -0.131
      [0.002 0.005 0.002 - 0.002 0.002 0.001 CL   0.003 CF   0.003]

    4. Rollout          24/20 23/22                  Eq.:  -0.138 ( -0.014)
       0.435 0.119 0.018 - 0.565 0.074 0.002 CL  -0.138 CF  -0.138
      [0.002 0.005 0.003 - 0.002 0.002 0.000 CL   0.003 CF   0.003]

    5. Rollout          23/22 13/9                   Eq.:  -0.138 ( -0.014)
       0.436 0.128 0.014 - 0.564 0.081 0.004 CL  -0.138 CF  -0.138
      [0.002 0.006 0.002 - 0.002 0.002 0.001 CL   0.003 CF   0.003]
        Full cubeful rollout with var.redn.
        1297 games, Mersenne Twister dice gen. with seed 916626560 and quasi-random dice
        Play: world class 2-ply cubeful prune [world class]
        keep the first 0 0-ply moves and up to 8 more moves within equity 0.16
        Skip pruning for 1-ply moves.
        Cube: 2-ply cubeful prune [world class]

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