Game 1, move 3: Herd 4-3

[diane]

[ah_clem]

We're behind in the race, but we have a great anchor.  We can afford to make bold moves.  Bringing two down threatens to do serious damage to  our opponent.  If he escapes or hits, we're no worse off.  But if he fails to hit or escape we're positioned to clobber him.

Bring down two - only 7 shakes hit for our opponent, but many many more  are devastating for our side. And we can recover quite nicely from a hit.

[diane]

You can tell when things just got a whole lot trickier when you have 4 votes and 4 different opinions! 

Someone will have to have a rethink - or make their case.

[note - if the tie isnt broken, my favourite move gets it - unless you have talked me out of it!]

[stog]

Spoiler

ok i'm switching my original vote of 13/9 8/5
8/1* no need to do this at this stage

13/10 8/4 and 13/10 13/9 both do what my original choice attempted to do, but 13/10 13/9 strips our midpoint, so i go with 13/10 8/4

[close]

[ah_clem]

13/10 8/4 is a reasonable play and may well  be best - it's bold where bold play is called for.  If we're not hit, any 2 4 5 or 9 covers it.  But I like bringing down two better (D) - slotting the four leaves 14 shakes to hit while D only gives up 7.  Granted slotting gives more chances to make the four point, but D gives almost 75% to make either the 4 or the bar point.  My take is that the slightly smalller chance of making a good point next time is worth paying to leave half of the hitting numbers.  D also brings an additional checker into the zone, making a blitz more realistic.

Either must be better than hitting loose on the ace - with only nine checkers in the zone a blitz is premature.

[ah_clem]

Well, glad that we finally got this move sorted out.

rollout:

Spoiler

Here are the top four plays.  Hitting loose is not among them and 2-ply analysis has it as a double whopper so I didn't bother to roll that out.

gnu likes D best, with the quiet 13/9 8/5 not too far behind.  Perhaps Diane was trying to do us a favour by making that move instead. 





    1. Rollout          13/10 13/9                   Eq.:  +0.221
       0.541 0.131 0.003 - 0.459 0.067 0.003 CL  +0.156 CF  +0.221
      [0.001 0.002 0.000 - 0.001 0.001 0.000 CL   0.004 CF   0.008]

    2. Rollout          13/9 8/5                     Eq.:  +0.177 ( -0.044)
       0.527 0.125 0.003 - 0.473 0.059 0.003 CL  +0.130 CF  +0.177
      [0.001 0.002 0.000 - 0.001 0.001 0.000 CL   0.004 CF   0.008]

    3. Rollout          13/6                         Eq.:  +0.111 ( -0.110)
       0.511 0.112 0.003 - 0.489 0.057 0.003 CL  +0.088 CF  +0.111
      [0.001 0.002 0.000 - 0.001 0.001 0.001 CL   0.003 CF   0.007]

    4. Rollout          13/10 8/4                    Eq.:  +0.104 ( -0.117)
       0.514 0.130 0.003 - 0.486 0.088 0.003 CL  +0.077 CF  +0.104
      [0.001 0.002 0.000 - 0.001 0.001 0.001 CL   0.004 CF   0.009]
        Full cubeful rollout with var.redn.
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[close]