Re: Dybamic Cube Strategy #3

pauldepstein@xxxxxxx wrote:
Derek Ray wrote: 
Frankly, though, it should be self-evident to anyone who has played any
sort of high-level competition where luck is involved and a single loss
sends you home -- at least to anyone who understands how to win.

It's the same reason you don't throw long passes when you're trying to
run the clock out in football.
... the same reason you trade pieces instead of making crazy sacrifices
when you're already up a Knight in chess.
... the same reason you fold Aces when you're about to make the money in
a poker tournament, and two other people are already all-in.
... the same reason Tiger Woods lays up in front of the 18th green
safely when he's got a 3-stroke lead, instead of trying to make a birdie
and hitting the sand trap.
... the same reason when, at 1-away/2-away Crawford, you work toward a
position which, although it may have slightly less winning chances for
you, also has less gammon chances for both players.

If it doesn't make sense to you at this point, it probably never will.
Sometimes the math won't support the decision; to that, I have only to
say that the math doesn't support the idea of any single player
consistently finishing near the top of BG or poker tournaments, either.
  But somehow they do.  Are they just that much better than everyone, or
do they consistently take their risks in such a fashion that they avoid
situations that would put them out of the tournament entirely?


But Derek, it is absolutely false to say that anybody finishes
"consistently near the top of BG tournaments".  [I don't know about
poker, but my impression is that you are indeed correct on poker].

Well, now I'm not sure I believe that entirely. We peons seem to know an awful lot of names that we otherwise wouldn't know, and either we attribute a fair bit more credit than we should to the words and articles of one-time tournament winners, or something else is afoot.

You repeatedly say that a loss "sends you home".  However, all that is
needed for the analysis is to realise that winning is preferable to
losing.  In scenario A, perhaps winning the match leaves you a
millionaire, and losing makes you go home miserable with nothing.

You're going to have to get lucky to win the tournament anyway; that much is a given. Would you rather play pure percentages and hope for good luck, or skew your play to avoid major swings from bad luck, and hope for a tiny bit more good luck than usual?

See above examples (even given that there is no luck in chess, the example remains somewhat valid; the full effects of an unexpected sacrifice usually cannot be calculated in the time available over-the-board, so both players shift over into "intuition" and positional experience).

In scenario B, perhaps the players are playing the match for ten cents.
 Theoretical discussions of cube actions and checker play use only the
assumption that winning is desirable, and make no distinction between
scenarios A and B.

Inherent fault in the theoretical discussions, by the way. If ten cents doesn't matter to you, then it doesn't matter and you can make all kinds of incorrect "fun" moves. The position under discussion was from the Eldorado Open, a major tournament with (hopefully) a meaningful cash prize at the end and possibly even partway to the end. The difference _does_ matter between "must win" and "be nice to win"; one's a focus on short-term, THIS TIME outcome, one is a focus on long-term +EV.

I did read your responses to Bob and Raccoon.  I remain unable to
understand your "free catchup" principle.  (And nothing you said here
clarifies the matter to me.)

Then I'm not sure you'll ever understand. Reread the examples; they illustrate the concept quite well, although none of them is exactly identical, of course. Some will require subject knowledge, which is why I tried to provide multiple examples.

A further point is that "avoiding situations where you would be out of
the tournament entirely" is not an option.  Losing is not particularly
suprising even if you reach a stage where you are 1 away and your
opponent is 5 away.


.... If you cannot avoid the situation, then you cannot avoid it.

When I hand you a coin and say "heads I win, tails you lose", there's no way to minimize your bad luck. You're in the position you're in, and that's all there is to it.

--
Derek

insert clever quotation here
.

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