Problem of the Week #19: July 12


Cash game. Black owns the cube. Black on roll.



Black to play 5-3.

I would split with 24/21, trying to escape my back checkers, and hit loose with 6/1* as a tempo play to keep my split back men from getting attacked and / or closed out, and to give myself the chance to possibly pull off a lucky blitz myself. The alternative 24/16 hardly leaves white with any bad numbers, allowing him to either run his back man out or blitz the checker left on the 24 point, the latter of which could be crushing for black.

i think the problem with splitting the back checkers is that you turn white's brittle position full of dead and semi-dead checkers into a somewhat more flexible position with attackers. if you just leave the checkers on the 24 pt be, white's board/prime will start to deteriorate with a bad roll next turn.

i don't think 6/1* can be right since currently white needs a combo roll to escape, so there's really no need to hit loose and potentially give him the chance to enter on the 4 or 5 pt. plus i think its way more important to try and make the 4 and 5 pts in order to prime white's last checker.

instead i think you should either make the 4pt with 9/4 7/4 or just double slot with 9/4 8/5.

i probably wouldn't have even considered 9/4 8/5 if it weren't for last week's problem, but it seems like the best option since 9/4 7/4 gives white all 6s to escape except 61.

I think that white's board is a huge consideration here. Last week he had no home board, this week he has a pretty good home board. I think this is a big factor against the double hit.

I am not really sure what move I like yet, but I am pretty sure I don't like 9/4 8/5 or 9/4 7/4. They both give white rolls that are very positive allowing him to advance a back checker and hit while he has a very strong home board. I also don't like a pure escape move since you leave yourself very vulnerable to being locked out.

I think if you can harass his back checker a little bit, his home board will start breaking down and you can wait on that a little. Right now I waffle back and forth between 9/1* and 6/1* 24/21. Because his position is so far forward I think 6/1* and 24/21 do a lot of good things and duplicating 1s for white can't be all bad either.

No splitting please ty...Nothing on that side of the board can be close.

But wow this is sort of classic bold play vs safe play stuff....

If you want to really nit it up you can try 9-6/8-3, but that just cant be as good as either making the 4 point or the ultra sadistic double slot.

I really like making the bolder play when we hold the cube, so I really hate the nit variation....now between the 2 others:

a.Making the 4 point looks very natural, and if he doesnt roll a 6 or the bigger 4's you have plenty of counterplay

b.I used to make this double slot play and plays like it alot. (maybe thats why i stopped playing hahahah) ..What is cool about it in this spot is that if he doesnt roll the 3 or 4 you are really in business. I dunno it might be too biig here but I would really love to see this rolled out.

This is a good one.

We just rolled the only number that allows us to start escaping our back checkers, which has to be done eventually, why would we not start them moving now? I don't understand voluntarily starting to crunch our front position because we're afraid to take a risk that's more or less inevitable.

well, a 3 or 4 by white is already a really good roll, and it doesn't get that much better for him if he hits in addition. black gets gammoned more, but at least when he's on the bar he can keep his home board and he still has his ace point game which gives him some winning chances

if black hits with 6/1*, white's board cannot start to breakdown since white will be on the bar.


but black is behind in the race in this problem, so shouldn't he be more reluctant to break contact first? also i don't understand how either 9/4 7/4 or 8/5 9/4 start to crunch position. if anything they give white's position the chance to crunch before black's has to. if black moves 9/4 8/5, then most rolls that do not hit black begin to crunch white's prime. the ones that don't that i can think of are 11, 21,66. if white hits, oh well, black's now on the bar, but his position cannot crunch on the bar.

and of course black has really good rolls after 9/4 8/5 if white misses

Not moving the back checkers starts to crunch black's position because it takes the rest of the play out of his remaining spares and forces him to start burying checkers unless he rolls a 3 soon, at which point he's forced to break his anchor anyways. Not splitting actually appears more dangerous to me than splitting because, barring some very lucky sequence, black's position will likely have deteriorated once he's finally forced to.

24/21 6/1* doesn't even begin to break contact when both side have men in their opponents home boards, so that consideration shouldn't influence the decision.

say black moves 9/4 8/5. if he gets hit, his position is not in any immediate danger of crunching. of white's rolls that don't hit, most of them are quite bad rolls for white. 21 and 11 are the only good non hits i think, filling in white's 4 point. but the rest aren't very good. 66 61 62 are bad , but 51 52 55 65 are really bad rolls for white. 51 52 55 allow white to run with 6s, and 65 lets white hit and run with 6s. so really the danger of black's position crunching isn't too bad.

I play the double slot because it's win-win for black. If white hits, that means black's board is preserved and he gets some extra timing for his ace point game. If white misses, white begins to crunch and black has a strong chance of making another home board point, making white's escape even harder, causing more home board crunching.

There are about 20 different considerations here. This is a very difficult spot.

All things considered, I like 24/21 6/1* because 1's, 4's, and 5's are duplicated for Villain. When in doubt, hit. We have the cube and cannot get doubled out, and have the chance to offer a very efficient double in many scenarios with this play. Meanwhile we make progress on both sides of the board.

I'm rusty on absolute equities in these types of positions but I'm guessing hit/dance/double is a very favorable scenario for Hero. Or it might be a beaver, who knows. But the point is that by mixing it up, Hero can find a powerful cube turn in many lines.

This could all also be horribly wrong, of course. But that's my line.

P.S. Double-slotting is suicidal IMO. If we are hit, life is grim, and if not, White can't play sixes and CAN play many other numbers comfortably, and now we have a huge mess to clean up and two checkers still stuck. The fact that White can't play sixes if we just hold the Ace-point is a pretty big consideration in general for doing something active here.

i like the "nit" play 9-6 , 8-3 .
If white escapes our timing is not so bad , if not his prime is crushing very quickly. still we have 2 chekers in 8 position to work on.
Escaping seems bad because that gives white ful capacity to hit and attack.
the double slot is just a little better than escaping imo. The most important thing seems to me to lock the ace point athismoment.

In a cash game, owning the cube, I like the double slot here. It's higher risk, higher reward. If villain does not immediately roll a 3 or a 4, we go from a decent-sized underdog to a large favorite unless something very weird happens on the next roll. It's the one play I see that threatens something crushing, immediately. Even if he hits, our timing for the ace-point game is helped by the hit so we're not completely out of it yet (and in this position I'd say we're behind anyway), and we get to play it out to the end. I'd say go for it. Very good problem though, with a number of reasonable options.

--Scott

Why would Black be a "large favorite" after double-slot/whiff? It looks like a huge mess to me, with two blots to cover, very few builders, and two men to escape. Too many tasks to accomplish, too many nightmare sequences.

If White hits, then his gammon chances just skyrocketed, and with two high open points, Black has a pretty bad configuration for an Ace-point game.

If White misses, Black's often going to have to attack on the Ace-point anyway after the next roll. Might as well attack now, get the back men moving, and hope for the best.

That said, it's still a very complicated position. It wouldn't shock me if something totally bizarre like 7/2 7/4 was best, "letting" white escape, but because White can now play sixes, Black can keep reasonable timing for a variety of possible game plans. Or maybe back to 9/4 7/4 which somebody suggested above.