Hi All. Is there an easy way to understand equity figures as in the example below:



The top line I get. I just read those as percentages (with 1 equal to 100%).

The Cubeful Equity info, I don't get. A lot of the analysis in the threads here use these to give the results, but all I can understand is the bit where it says "Double/Take"!

Also, is it actually important to understand these in order to improve my game? I can't see anyone working these out in that format OTB?

Yes, it is important to understand them.

Let's start with the "no double" line. The equity is +0.406 - I will call it +0.41 for simplicity. This means that the expected gain per game is 0.41 points. So if you played out 100 games starting from this position, without doubling, you would expect to be +41 points. This is a combination of predicted wins, losses, gammon wins, gammon losses, doubles, redoubles, takes, and passes.

Now look at "double, take". This means that after that action, the expected gain per game is now 0.44 points. So in 100 games, you would expect +44 points. That's an improvement, so the correct action is double, although not by very much.

Compare "double, pass". If that happened in all 100 games, you would win a point every time, for +100. That would be a huge gain, and hence a huge blunder for the opponent to pass.

How accurate are these estimates? Usually pretty good, but not always. For best accuracy, you can have the bot do a rollout. This means it actually plays out those 100 games, preferably more, and adds up the real result. Usually when people post solutions to problems here, the data is from a rollout.

Hope that helps.

Those are no percentages.

Cubeless means without using the doubling cube, like you will do at home. If you play for 1 dollar you will win on average 36 cents. If you calculate the information of the next line, you get 0.359 (= 0.590 + 2x0.271 + 3x0.014 - 0.410 - 2x0.102 - 3x0.014)

If you double and the opponent takes, you win 0.439.
If you double and the opponent passes, you win 1. So ofcourse he should not do that.
If you don't double, you win 0.406. So by not doubling at this moment you have 0.033 less profit on average.

Roughly you might draw inferences from those numbers when you are an expert player, but I rarely look at the above line. But it is interesting to know how bad or good your double, take, pass is.

Many thanks guys, that makes a lot of sense to me now.