On Tuesday, September 7, 2021 at 3:27:51 AM UTC+1, Tim Chow wrote:
XGID=-b--B-CBBA---C--adce--B---:0:0:1:00:0:0:0:0:10
X:Player 2 O:Player 1
Score is X:0 O:0. Unlimited Game
+13-14-15-16-17-18------19-20-21-22-23-24-+
| X O O O | | O X |
| X O O | | O X |
| X O O | | O |
| O | | O |
| | | O |
| |BAR| |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | X |
| X X | | X X O |
| X X X | | X X O |
+12-11-10--9--8--7-------6--5--4--3--2--1-+
Pip count X: 148 O: 140 X-O: 0-0
Cube: 1
X on roll, cube action
OTB, I would see this as very easy -- a clear ND/T. However, in backgammon, decisions that seem obvious can be wrong, particularly in quizzes.
Here, we do have market losers (for example, we hit the blot and the opponent hits an 11% dance). However, the market losers that are big passes
are few and far between. So I would wait.
Also the opponent has some nice prime-extending possibilities.
On the other hand, XG does sometimes double these sorts of positions.
Here's how I see this in full.
QF is definitely a thing -- people (probably rightly) are somewhat unlikely to post a very standard position with a very standard play (unless it's
part of an ongoing conversation like Tim's 33 problem).
Something has to be interesting for it to be worth asking about.
For example, if Tim makes a cup of instant coffee for a friend, he probably doesn't ask about the aroma, bitterness, quality of the brewing etc.
However, if he had travelled to India, learned about a type of Karnataka coffee, and offered this to a friend, then I wouldn't be surprised if
he wanted to discuss the coffee in more detail.
Therefore, bearing in mind QF combined with my XG experience, I would vote for D/T if I cared mainly about being correct.
However, I think these quizzes work better if people (try to) ignore QF and use their bg analysis and intuition.
This approach leads me to ND/T.
So ND/T for me, but I do expect (70% confidence approx) to be wrong.
This remind me of Mike/badgolferman's comment that he hopes to be wrong in the quizzes so that he can learn something.
I'm not 100% sure it's him who said this but I think so.
Paul
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)