Who would accept a 'normal', or single resign here?

[diane]

So, you are white - would you accept the single point resignation here?

And if you were blue, and your resignation was refused, would you:

a) grumble and play on and hope to win to show that idiot...
b) become abusive, because that normally wins people over to your point of view
c) having been dropped rather than being allowed to incorrectly resign, go on and make up a new nick 'diane_is_A_biatch', because that will probably resolve the whole situation  

[socksey]

YES!      I saw the nick but did not know the story behind it!   

socksey



"Those who do not move, do not notice their chains." - from socialist revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg born in 1871

[ah_clem]

Somebody's been using the oin command again I see.

[dorbel]

I would refuse a two point resignation here. White has to be worth more than that by playing on.

[vegasvic]

I had something smilier to this ... guy resigned a single game and there were plenty of gammon chances .

He said "take it or leave don"t waste my time "
i left and complained and gagged the  jackass!!

but i must add his new nick is not far off from the truth 

[ah_clem]

I would refuse a two point resignation here. White has to be worth more than that by playing on.

Really?  You think that the backgammon chances are that high?

We're looking at a pretty sure gammon here, so we'll gain likely gain 2 points.  If he comes back to win, the swing will be three points.  My back-of-the-envelope calculation says that you'd need to win three times as many backgammons as losses in order to come out ahead by refusing the 2-point resignation*.  I'm not seeing that - I'd say that losses and backgammons are roughly equally probable.

*this is somewhat distorted by the match score - backgammons are particularly valubable for white due to match length.

[lewscannon]

definitely 'c'

[dorbel]

Yes I would agree that a bg is as remote as a loss here (probably both around 1%), but that is now and cubeless. This is rather like those occasions when you hit the opponent when he has born in 14 men and you have a closed board. Your gammon wins and your losses are about equal (around 7% typically) but as long as you have no immediate losing sequences, you may as well play on for the gammon. When you can see a losing sequence, you can decide whether to cube or not. Here and now, you might lose this 1% of the time and you might win a bg 1%, but it is certainly worth going on for a while, because you can't get any worse! I am willing to bet money that if you take 2 points here, you are being short changed. Not by much, but as it is risk free this roll and you can still cash when you like anyway, may as well go for it.

[ah_clem]

Yes I would agree that a bg is as remote as a loss here (probably both around 1%), but that is now and cubeless. This is rather like those occasions when you hit the opponent when he has born in 14 men and you have a closed board. Your gammon wins and your losses are about equal (around 7% typically) but as long as you have no immediate losing sequences, you may as well play on for the gammon. When you can see a losing sequence, you can decide whether to cube or not. Here and now, you might lose this 1% of the time and you might win a bg 1%, but it is certainly worth going on for a while, because you can't get any worse! I am willing to bet money that if you take 2 points here, you are being short changed. Not by much, but as it is risk free this roll and you can still cash when you like anyway, may as well go for it.

Um...if you cash later  you only gain one point, not two.  Waiting only makes sense if the offer to resign two points remains on the table for the rest of the game, but I doubt that it does.

I'd take the two points now, and hope that my next opponent has purchased a ticket on the clue train.

[dorbel]

 A 1,000 game live cube Snowie rollout shows that you are worth 2.14 points in this position.

[ah_clem]

If the equity is 2.14, then it would presumably be a loss of .14 to accept the 2-point resignation.

Just out of curiosity, how many backgammons does blue lose, and how many single points does he win?

[dorbel]

In this position, Snowie gives White 1.3 backgammons and thinks that she will lose 0.9 games out of 100. Backgammons are of course particularly valuable here and White should take some risks to go for it if the chance arrives further down the line. Imagine the scenario later (admittedly unlikely here) where Blue has closed his board with two spares on the ace and still has a man on the bar. White has 6 checkers left, 2 on the 2pt and 4 on her 1pt. How do you play 2-1? In that position, there are about 3.5 gammons to 5.4 losses (cubeless). Is 2-off, 1-off correct?

[ah_clem]

Imagine the scenario later (admittedly unlikely here) where Blue has closed his board with two spares on the ace and still has a man on the bar. White has 6 checkers left, 2 on the 2pt and 4 on her 1pt. How do you play 2-1? In that position, there are about 3.5 gammons to 5.4 losses (cubeless). Is 2-off, 1-off correct?

Sorry, I need a picture:

[ah_clem]

The question is whether to go for the backgammon or take the sure gammon. (yeah, it's still possible to backgammon him or lose with the safe play, but the chance of these are so small that I'll ignore them.) 

If we go for it, he hits 11/36 or about 30%.  When he hits, we lose the gammon, but still manage to win about 66% of single games. (GWC  = 6(N+1) where N is the number of checkers we have borne off)

If he enters but doesn't hit, he escapes the backgammmon 100% of the time.  The only way to win a backgammon is for him to roll a 1-1, and even that only works about half the time since he has another roll to enter and escape the homeboard.

So my rough estimate is that the backgammon is about a 1-in-72 proposition, or about 1.4%.
We win a single point about 20% of the time, and we lose a single point about 10% of the time.

For money play (no Jacoby), there is no way in hell that this is a double.  For a three point match, I'd have to get out the match equity tables (which I haven't memorized yet)  but I'm doubtful that it's worth risking a 30% point loss relative to the sure 2 points in order to chase after a 1.4% chimera.

I'd play safe. 2-off 2/1. 

[ah_clem]

Oops, I forgot about the cube action.  If we're hit, we'll turn the cube, he'll take and we're playing for two points again.  In some ways, this makes the calculation simpler.

Revised: my rough estimate is that the backgammon is about a 1-in-72 proposition, or about 1.4%. We lose two points about 10% of the time. Risk vs reward calculation:

In terms of match equity, if we play it safe we go to Crawford up 2-0.  That's a match equity of .75 and serves as the base. If we lose 2 points, the roles are reversed and we will have an equity of .25.  And of course if we manage to win a bg, that gives us an equity of 1.0.  So, we're risking .5 equity to gain .25 equity.  Seems to me that we'd need twice as many backgammons as losses to make it worth trying for bg, and we're nowhere near close to that.

Of course, in the real FIBS world, one would have to calculate the probablity that your opponent would drop if you take too much time analyzing this roll instead of just moving.... (c:

[dorbel]

Oops, I forgot about the cube action.  If we're hit, we'll turn the cube, he'll take and we're playing for two points again.  In some ways, this makes the calculation simpler.

Not so, if we are hit, we double and this is a huge pass.

Revised: my rough estimate is that the backgammon is about a 1-in-72 proposition, or about 1.4%. We lose two points about 10% of the time. Risk vs reward calculation:

The snowie rollout suggests that there are 3.5% backgammons here after taking two men  off. We never lose two points because we never lose at all, see above.

In terms of match equity, if we play it safe we go to Crawford up 2-0.

Not so, after the safe play, only 50% of the games are a gammon.

Playing safe (2/off, 2/1) is a mega blunder. 2/off, 1/off wins as I said above, 3.5% backgammons and it also wins a lot more gammons, about 59% instead of 50% after the safe play. You never lose because if you are hit, you double from the bar which is a big cash in this position. If this was a money game with no jacoby, the aggressive play is still correct, although not by quite so much and it's still a cash if you are hit. If it was 0-2 Crawford, it becomes a toss up which to play, because now you will lose sometimes and also your gammons have very little value.

[ah_clem]

Not so, if we are hit, we double and this is a huge pass.

I am remembering something wrong then.  There is a formula that gives the approx. GWC for a single checker on the bar against a closed board. It's named after someone who's name I believe begins with a T, but I can't find a reference right now.  It says something like GWC = 6(N+1) where N is the number of checkers borne off, but this gives 66%, so I must be remembering the formula wrong.  Anybody remember it?

The snowie rollout suggests that there are 3.5% backgammons here after taking two men  off. We never lose two points because we never lose at all, see above.

gnubg agrees with the 3.5% figure.  What I missed is that we may roll doubles next roll, so Blue dancing is not the only way to get a bg.

Not so, after the safe play, only 50% of the games are a gammon.

Yes, I missed that too, and was surprised by the rollout that so many wins were not gammons.  Thinking of the gammon as a sure thing is a big error - by giving blue an extra roll with the safe play, we give him more chances to bring the runner around.  Perhaps this is the easiest way to see the right move over the board - he needs 5 transitions to bear off a checker, the "safe" play gives him three rolls (six dice) to do it.

Here's the rollout, but I'd never understand it without your astute observations.


   1. Rollout          2/off 1/off                  Eq.:  +2.049
       0.949 0.583 0.035 - 0.051 0.000 0.000 CL  +1.949 CF  +2.049
      [0.000 0.001 0.001 - 0.000 0.000 0.000 CL   0.003 CF   0.003]

    2. Rollout          2/1 2/off                    Eq.:  +1.835 ( -0.214)
       1.000 0.505 0.003 - 0.000 0.000 0.000 CL  +1.835 CF  +1.835
      [0.000 0.003 0.000 - 0.000 0.000 0.000 CL   0.006 CF   0.006]
        Full cubeful rollout with var.redn.
        1296 games, Mersenne Twister dice gen. with seed 845026322 and quasi-random dice
        Play: 0-ply cubeful prune [expert]
        Cube: 0-ply cubeful prune [expert]

[dorbel]

The placing of all the checkers matter so much when one side has born off a number of checkers but then gets hit and faces a closed board. We can see here that having two of out three spares on the ace is very weak and with the third checker in the outfield, you won't get any choice as to where that goes either. If it was a game early in a long match and those two spares were on high points, it might be a close take, but not here wherever they are as you need more than normal to take in the first game of  a three point match. I like to think of it as needing 30% and add in a bit for owning the cube.
As a very general rule, I like to consider myself a small favourite with 9 men off, 10 men might be enough for an initial double, 11 enough for a redouble and 12 enough to get a cash. Adjust all these for where the checkers are, look at the stock exchange closing prices, consider the weather forecast and look at your horoscope, before shipping it in.
I think we've just about covered al the bases here!

[rebcalale]

R u a moron? What does it matter when the dice r so, and let me make this clear, BIASED.  Game decisions like this r only of interest when the dice are valid and that will never be the case on fibs.  Get a life and if u have to post at least post about the subject for this thread.  SAD

[ah_clem]

R u a moron?

rebcalale,

You've made three posts today, calling people "moron" "idiot" and "jackass" among other things.

I'd suggest you change your tone, or your next call will be to say "goodbye".