Hi!

The other day I ran into this odd situation:



I don't have the race and I don't have any attack so what do I have?

What if the cube is in the middle?

What if the score is 0-0?

Best regards,
TP

The short answer is that you have a lot to gain and little to lose by doubling. Now for the longer answer.

You're trailing 0-2 to 5 and you own a 2-cube. If you don't double and lose this game, you'll trail 0-4 to 5 Crawford. You have to win 3 games in a row to win the match if no game is a gammon. Three in a row is 12.5%. Toss in the odd chance of a gammon and we'll take that up to roughly 15%.

So if you double and then lose, you'll have cost yourself 15% MWC (match winning chances). That's your risk from doubling.

Now what's your upside from doubling? If you double and win, you'll be leading 4-2 to 5 Crawford. Your opponent now must win two in a row. so you're a 75% favorite. If you don't double and win, you're 50%. So your gain from doubling is 25%.

So doubling means you're risking 15% to gain 25%. You can do that as an underdog. Roughly you need to be 15/40 = about 40% to double. Looking at the position it's clear you're some kind of favorite, so double.

I'll add that you do have a sort of attack. You will likely close the 2 and maybe even improve your distribution this turn. He will be forced off the anchor with any 6, and then you can pounce.

Hi!

Thanks for your reply!

Yes an MWC calculation is needed here to come up with the right cube action here.

At 0-0 it was a no double and with centered cube it was also a no double.

Best regards,
TP

PS. I noticed a couple of BG studio related postings went missing so perhaps this forum has had enough of those postings for some time...