Quote from: PersianLord on December 08, 2010, 01:36:08 AM
7/1*-2/1
No fancy moves here as we're inches away from getting rid of Zorba. I don't like giving him a possible ace-pt game by hitting.
Interesting. I would characterize 7/1* 2/1 as the "fancy" move and 13/12*/6 as the boring safe move. I suppose the choice here is basically which scares you more: a 1/18 fly shot from the bar or the possibility of facing a poorly timed 1-5 backgame that will most likely turn into an ace-point game.
If we hit on the 12-point I estimate he anchors ~50% of the time (11/36 to enter right away, and then diminishing possibilities with subsequent rolls). An ace point game wins about 20%, so hitting on the 12 seems to give him about 10% GWC.
If we hit on the ace point he has an immediate 1/18 (5.6%) chance to whack us and we lose almost all of those. Call it 5% with an immediate hit. If he whiffs, our work is not done, but we'll probably win about 95% of the time after a whiff. Since he misses about 95% of the time and wins about 5% of those we're at slightly less than 5% , so my back of the envelope calculation is that he's slightly less than 10% GWC with the ace point hit.
Thus the ace point hit seems to win more games, but not by much. It probably wins more gammons, but those don't count. OTOH, if we get gammoned, we lose the match. Hitting on the 12 won't lose very many gammons, hitting on the ace doesn't lose many gammons either, but it certainly loses a lot more than the other play. Taking the match score into consideration favors the safer hit on the 12.
I'm still not sure. I'm going to stick with my play, mainly because I've lost way too many matches by playing overly conservatively when ahead in the match. I'm certainly OK with the hit on the 12.