Fighting for the 5-point, how does it work?

[thomasblank]

Hi all,

I've been reading articles to help me progress from a rank beginner to an advanced beginner. I have trouble understanding the idea of fighting for your 5-point. Namely:

The opponent plays 24/20, 13/8. You are to play 53. Your strongest play is supposed to be 13/5. That's completely counterintuitive for me.

The way I see it, the opponent is the favorite to hit back, which means that he regains his slot (or worse, makes it) AND hits you on your inner board as a juicy bonus.

Could someone please explain me this? Thank you!

Thomas

[Hardy_whv]

What's making the 3-Point good for? It can have some blocking value, sure. But your opponent has already passed the 3-point with one of his checkers. If you don't hit with 13/5* he will very likely either further run with this checker, possibly getting into safety reaching his midpoint or his own outer board or anchor on the 5-point with any 4 or a 31. Then your make 3-point has very limited value, as the opponent has already passed beyond that point. So your two checkers on the 3-point are out of play for quite some time to come.

Hitting on the other hand prevents your opponent from anchoring and with a little luck he can't hit and you make the 5-point. If you are hit, you get behind in the race. But the race has only limited value in the beginning of the match. If you have escaped one checker with a 65 (24/13), you try to preserve this advantage in the race of course, but if you are not ahead (after 54 from the opponent and a 53 by yourself you are actually 1 pip behind), the race doesn't matter much.

Therfore hitting a lonely checker on the 5-point is very often the best choice.

Hope this sounds reasonable?

Hardy 

[thomasblank]

Thanks, I understand it better now.

[blitzxz]

The way I see it, the opponent is the favorite to hit back, which means that he regains his slot (or worse, makes it) AND hits you on your inner board as a juicy bonus.

Positional advantage is lot more important then race in the beginning of the game. So practically you're exchanging chance to win positional advantage to chance to lose pips. If you can make the 5-point that advantage will last rest of the game incrising your chances to win what ever happens. Protecting pips only guarantees that your opponent have more time to take the advantage himself. Opening is essentially fight for this iniative. Hitting loose may work or not but you have to at least try or you're already giving up. If you lose the hitting contest it is still not the end of the world. You might still anchor and continue with solid holding position and recycle you checker(s) back to the game.

[dorbel]

An intelligent question well answered. The main reason for hitting is I think to make it harder for your opponent to make the point. Owning your opponent's 5pt is very strong, controlling his outfield and allowing you great freedom of choice in upcoming moves, as you don't have to worry about gammons or scary cubes. Note that even at 1-away, 2-away Crawford, where you want to limit gammons, you still hit and the closest good alternate is actually 24/21, 13/8!

[paulie]

An intelligent question well answered. The main reason for hitting is I think to make it harder for your opponent to make the point. Owning your opponent's 5pt is very strong, controlling his outfield and allowing you great freedom of choice in upcoming moves, as you don't have to worry about gammons or scary cubes. Note that even at 1-away, 2-away Crawford, where you want to limit gammons, you still hit and the closest good alternate is actually 24/21, 13/8!

This is interesting.  What about the opening move?  GnuBG says make the 3 point whereas Magriel thinks 13-8, 13-10 is stronger probably for reasons similar to what you stated.  Since I have been using GnuBG, I have used the 5-3 to make the 3 -point.  What's your opinion on this?  Should we sometimes ignore what Gnubg is telling us and use Magriel as the bible?

[dorbel]

In a word, no. Magriel's brilliant work came from his own head, without assistance from any bot. Like the bible, it was written in a time when less was known. 13/8, 13/10 was then the standard opening because the master players of the seventies laid great emphasis on slowly building points in order. The game plan was less dynamic than it is now. Many of the positions in "Backgammon" can be shown to be incorrectly analysed, but it is still a book well worth reading, not to gain knowledge, but to gain an understanding of how to think about the game.

In those days, players who wanted to test their theories about a play used to do manual rollouts, playing the position over several hundred times, by themselves or with a friend. The results were not particularly accurate, because of mistakes in the play and and because the trials were inevitably too small, but what they did gain was some understanding of the ways in which a position can pan out. They also gained some confidence which was useful when encountering the a similar position later. This technique is still very useful, but neglected today. When you make a blunder, set your bot to play the position against you over and over again, analysing each attempt, until you can play it to the end at a level that satisfies you. That is the sort of work that will pay you in results.

Paul Magriel's nickname is X-22. To test for himself whether safe or risky play was more likely to be successful in the long run (and that chapter in his book is worth the price of the volume on its own), he played an entire 64 player tournament with half the players electing safe plays and half risky! X-22 won the tournament with its risky plays. He is still today a brilliant player and lecturer and incidentally, one of the nicest men I have ever met, but he makes the 3pt with an opening 5-3 you can be sure!

[paulie]

Paul Magriel's nickname is X-22. To test for himself whether safe or risky play was more likely to be successful in the long run (and that chapter in his book is worth the price of the volume on its own), he played an entire 64 player tournament with half the players electing safe plays and half risky! X-22 won the tournament with its risky plays. He is still today a brilliant player and lecturer and incidentally, one of the nicest men I have ever met, but he makes the 3pt with an opening 5-3 you can be sure!

Although I've heard of the experiment, I didn't read anything about it in the copy of the book I have, "Backgammon".  Are you referring to a different book?  There is a chapter on bold play vs. safe play which I found very enlightening; is that the chapter to which you are referring?

[dorbel]

Yes.