Answers to the Friday quiz! How did\u00a0you do?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Problem 1: 9-away\/9-away<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

After 13\/11*, white has a 3-point board with 9 1\/2 men in the zone.<\/p>\n

Where to play the 6? Having a better board and more men back calls for a bold play. But 13\/7 is too bold and 22\/16 is too meek. The happy ground is 13\/5, giving White the same 3 attackers without incurring the risk of Red rolling a 7.<\/p>\n

Problem 2: 9-away\/9-away<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

White has a\u00a0better board, race, market losers, and gammon chances. The question is whether White is too good. The bot says yes, but OTB (over the board), it might\u00a0be best to double, because if Red takes more than one out of 13 times, White gains equity.<\/p>\n

Problem 3: 3-away\/8-away<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It’s oh so close, but running offers the best chance. Generally, all things equal when you’re ahead in the match, running is the better option.<\/p>\n

Problem 4: 8-away\/3-away<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Far behind in the match and an even # of points away, White goes for the gammon with 8\/2, 6\/2.<\/p>\n

Basically, if we take some Crofford scores out of the equation, with a big lead in a match you should run, and with a big deficit you should make a point.<\/p>\n

Problem 5: 8-away\/3-away<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

White is 28 pips behind in the race but has a better board for analysis purposes because White holds Red’s 5-point. White also has many market losers: any doubles, 6-1, 4-2, 5-4, 6-4, and 6-5. And with Red holding White’s 1-point, White has reasonable gammon chances. So the double seems clear.<\/p>\n

The danger for Red is to give White the opportunity to win 4 points with a gammon. At this score, with Red ahead, it’s a pass.<\/p>\n

Problem 6: 4-away\/8-away<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In the same position as Problem 5 but leading in the match, White doesn’t have as much of a double. The game will soon become volatile, and owning the cube is worth a lot to Red at this score. By the way, XG needed some convincing of this: the ++ analysis doesn’t even think it’s a double. But a 1296 rollout gave XG 99.7% confidence that a double is correct.<\/p>\n

What was a clear pass for Red at 3-away, 8-away becomes an easy take at 8-away, 4-away, with the away numbers in this paragraph adjusted to Red’s point of view.<\/p>\n

Problem 7: 2-away\/9-away<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

White must leave a shot.\u00a0Generally, it’s correct to slot in the home board vs. the bar. But XG doesn’t think that’s a good idea in this position. The visual answer lies in the dice distribution:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The XG-recommended play is the second of the two charts.<\/p>\n

White has a few sequences that really pay off (see upper left of both charts) while reducing the number of sequences that really hurt (see lower right of both charts).<\/p>\n

And the Winner Is…<\/h4>\n

Congratulations to Dmitriy Obukhov<\/em>, who gave 5 correct answers and earns 100 GammonCoin*. Dmitriy contributed to the comments above. Well done, Dmitriy!<\/p>\n

Stay tuned next Friday for our next quiz. Subscribe below to be one of the first to receive the quiz.<\/p>\n

*What’s GammonCoin? GammonCoin was minted by GammonPoints<\/a>\u00a0to reward players for playing and winning at local, national, and international competitions. GammonPoints tracks local tournaments and ranks players on a level playing field.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Answers to the Friday quiz! How did\u00a0you do? Problem 1: 9-away\/9-away After 13\/11*, white has a 3-point board with 9 1\/2 men in the zone. Where to play the 6? Having a better board and more men back calls for a bold play. But 13\/7 is too bold and 22\/16 is too meek. The happy … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Answers & Winner to the Friday Oct. 5 Quiz”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":113,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p95EAI-pI","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/voiceofbackgammon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1594"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/voiceofbackgammon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/voiceofbackgammon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voiceofbackgammon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/113"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voiceofbackgammon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1594"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/voiceofbackgammon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1625,"href":"https:\/\/voiceofbackgammon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1594\/revisions\/1625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/voiceofbackgammon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voiceofbackgammon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voiceofbackgammon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}