Quote:
Originally Posted by lostin transit
When I first started learning and playing bots, my post-game analysis floated in a sea of crimson, interspersed with rolling waves of green. Just occasionally, there would be a small and solitary black island: a move which was actually correct - whoopee.
Things are better now; XG tells me I only blunder every twelve moves, and that my error rate is about one in six, putting me in the hinterland between advanced and expert. Most mistakes are on double rolls, and I assume that’s normal for everyone - after all, they offer four times the chance to do something stupid, and people always seize such opportunities. But what’s really weird is that a huge percentage of these are 33s - it seems this superabundance of threes makes me cross-eyed or something. I just cannot get them right. Is this only me, or do you have cursed rolls of your own?
It's not an illusion -- 33 and 44 are actually the hardest rolls to play well, on average.
Here's why:
Doubles are harder than non-doubles, because you have many more plausible choices, hence more chance to make an error.
The easiest doubles are 55 and 66, because you have the fewest reasonable choices. Since the rolls are big, you'll often have only two or maybe three plausible plays.
Next are 11 and 22. Here you have lots of plays, but since the numbers are small, they don't create as many different type positions. If you can't create a key point with 11, for instance, you'll have a lot of choices which are only slightly different from each other.
That leaves 33 and 44 as the toughest rolls. The numbers are big enough so that the resulting positions are very different from one another, and small enough so there are lots of them.
Q.E.D.
