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Pip count in the bear-off

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12-12-2014 , 01:38 AM

bleep69

grinder

Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 483

This situation came up otb last night:

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I passed without even doing a pip count, I looked miles behind. To my surprise, when I plugged into XG this morning, it recommends a take, despite most of the formulae coming up with a pass.

Which is the best one to use over the board in terms of being able to calculate, and why would XG take this?

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12-12-2014 , 07:53 PM

_Z_

adept

Join Date: Jul 2004 Posts: 720

Many strong players use "Effective Pip Count" -- EPC. Here's one long article on it --
http://www.bkgm.com/articles/Zare/Ef...unt/index.html
Actually I have not read this one, but I know the author and he knows his stuff, so I'm sure it's good.

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12-15-2014 , 01:40 AM

bleep69

grinder

Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 483

Thanks Z, will take a look.

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12-21-2014 , 05:00 PM

TheRealFatboy

centurion

Join Date: Sep 2013 Posts: 165

its a clear take, not huge tho. i been working on this a lot recently-its difficult to learn, i didn't add up the hours i spent. its over 100 for sure.

the reason i chose to work on end game bear off cubes is because its easy to find people who drop and I cash on their mistakes. for that reason it seemed to be the highs and best use of my time, i prefer $ play and this is working out good. its worth learning

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12-23-2014 , 03:21 AM

bleep69

grinder

Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 483

I presume you are using the Thorp count then if you are taking?

Surely using rollouts it would be possible to determine which method gave the best results, and therefore which method was best. The others would then disappear. Why are there 4 different methods of doing this one thing?

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12-23-2014 , 03:39 PM

TheRealFatboy

centurion

Join Date: Sep 2013 Posts: 165

Quote:

Originally Posted by bleep69

i use Keith, sorta not a 100% tho, this is a good example where I like the take and Keith doesn't. the striped 4 point imo makes this a take-now that could be very wrong, however thats how i arrived at the decision to take, which is against Keith(rarely I do deviate from Keith count).

Keith is easy to learn. I dont have the experience yet to learn the others well enough to use them., there are times when Keith is not as good as it is here(even tho i take and Keith drops). for example if you have 2,3,4 checkers on outer points then Keith is a bit fuzzy.

I'd like to be able to give you a better answer but i don't have the qualification.

Last edited by TheRealFatboy; 12-23-2014 at 03:49 PM.

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12-24-2014 , 02:56 AM

Aaron W.

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Sep 2002 Posts: 30,132

Quote:

Originally Posted by bleep69

Surely using rollouts it would be possible to determine which method gave the best results, and therefore which method was best. The others would then disappear. Why are there 4 different methods of doing this one thing?

I believe different counts are better at different types of situations, but I couldn't tell you which is which (mostly from lack of practice and experience). I don't think you'll find that one is consistently better than the others, and none of them will get it right all the time.

A single formula that works for all situations would likely be too complex to be useful.

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