FIBS Board backgammon forum

8/3 7/4*, once more I don't think factotum can afford to leave us alone. This time, the safe alternative would also break the eightpoint and leave a gap on the fourpoint, making our escape even easier. We're miles ahead in the race and factotum has the best anchor, he should play bold.

I was with Zorba on this one, facts play seems all safe and no usefulness.  The two outer board blots are a bit  of a worry though, with that play.

Once more it's correct to hit loose, but this time the difference is smaller, probably due to the many shots the loose play leaves (4's, 7's and 8's and three blots) in combination with our stronger four point board. 8/3 7/4* loses a lot of gammons, so it's probably wrong at scores where factotum's gammon losses count normally. Here, there is no extra cost to losing a gammon. Gammon wins still count though (GammonValue = 1/3) and the loose hit, not surprisingly, wins a few more gammons as well.

    1. Rollout          8/3 7/4*                     Eq.:  +0,0216
        46,78  12,95   1,68 -  53,22  30,72   1,29 CL  +0,0216
      [  0,13   0,13   0,23 -   0,13   0,20   0,14 CL   0,0027]
    2. Rollout          8/5 8/3                      Eq.: -0,0282 ( -0,0498)
        45,04  10,68   1,47 -  54,96  16,47   0,42 CL  -0,0282
      [  0,11   0,12   0,16 -   0,11   0,17   0,07 CL   0,0024]

        Full cubeless rollout (trunc. at one-sided bearoff) with var.redn.
        2592 games, Mersenne Twister dice gen. with seed 859211562 and quasi-random dice
        Play:  2-ply cubeless prune
        keep the first 0 0-ply moves and up to 8 more moves within equity 0,1
        Skip pruning for 1-ply moves.
        Cube: 0-ply cubeful prune
        Different evaluations after 6 plies:
        Play: 0-ply cubeful prune
        Cube: 0-ply cubeful prune