Game 4, move 30: Herd 2-1

[diane]

Position ID: 7/YAAGDbtgEAAA
Match ID: UQmlABAAGAAA

Stog is obviously going nowhere, after the 4-2, herd rolled 1-1 and moved 4/off.

This 2-1 now could affect how the rest of the bear off goes, so choose wisely!

[Krazula]

Spoiler

It was an error to play 4/0 with the 11 last roll. 6/5(2) 4/3 2/1 looks better to me, so does 6/5(2) 4/2. There is almost no way that stog is going to win a race here and he have no need for gammon so clearing the 6 would have been a good idea, it would also put 4 checkers on our 5 and 2 on our 4 which is a very good way to sit to avoid leaving a shot in the next 2 rolls. Playing 4/0 made it so there are no rolls that could leave a shot this turn, but next turn there are some, now if we roll a 65 next roll we'll be forced to leave a shot, so there is 22/1296 chance that we'll be on the bar on our next roll instead of a 0 chance if we had cleared the 5 last time. But since we're in the position we're in now the best play is 6/5 6/4.

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[diane]

It was an error to play 4/0 with the 11 last roll.

I do check with gnu before doing that, it listed 4/o as the top move, but with nothing at all separating the next 2 or 3 moves. Given no one was commenting much here, even though I was trying to get some chat going about the best ways to play careful bear offs like these, I thought I would skip another 6-0 vote.

Interesting though - maybe the roll out [as opposed to 2ply analysis] will help us all understand more.  Thanks for the comments 

[Krazula]

Roll out puts my play on top, only by about .18% though, so its a bit closer that I thought.

[stog]

am i playing a bot?

[ah_clem]

Spoiler

I would have also looked carefully at clearing the 6 last turn instead of taking a single checker off.  But what's done is done, and I don't think it makes a lot of difference.

As to the current decision, which is worse: being odd-ended, or leaving a gap?  My take is that since 6/5 6/4 gives us three checkers on the five and four points, it's not really odd-ended.  Only 6-5 forces us to leave a shot.

By contrast, something like 2/off 2/1 has just as many shot forcing rolls (only 6-4), but the gap gives us some awkward rolls immediately (eg 4-2 ) and shot forcing rolls for the forseeable future.  Plus, it gives him a place to anchor.

6/5 6/4

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