Hi All, first post here!

I'm a relative beginner to the game, although I played casually many years ago. I am now trying to learn the real game... not finished with Boot Camp yet.
I became interested in understanding match equity for down the road and I had a question or two: I'm using the Rockwell Kazaross MET, which I assume is the best one. (?) First, are the MWP's in the table used for anything other than calculating take point and doubles? If not, then why learn the MWP's when you can make a take point and double table and learn those instead?

Second thing. Let's assume for argument's sake that memorizing all three tables can be done in the blink of an eye. Does this provide an advantage for someone who does not yet have many hours of experience and can more intuitively reason out the correct decision?

I do realize that not all take points are based on cube doubles. Some are 4x and 8x so I think the GWP numbers in the MET would be needed, but I would think the vast majority of decisions are simple doubles. Also, Nick Blasier has mentioned Dead and Live cubes and that most take a number in between.

I'm kind of looking for the right numbers to be learning from.

I meant MWP but can't find the edit button.

You make a good point. For some common situations, it is better to have the take point memorized rather than translate from match equities to the take point every time it comes up.

But the matches equities are also used for gammon prices. So if you want to know everything, now you have to memorize one table for double point, one for take point, one for gammon price. And then, as you point out it's different for a 2 cube vs. a 4 cube vs. an 8 cube, so that's more stuff to memorize. Easier to just know one table and be able to do a little arithmetic over the board.

Again, for argument's sake, if I could memorize all that stuff it would be useful to have the match equity, take points, doubles and gammon price (not too familiar with that one yet) for up to a 15 point match. Then you'd be covered for everything, right? The only thing left to do is estimate the game win % and compare the two.

The 4 cube makes me wonder... if the double has already been accepted and the cube is turned to 4 is the risk now calculated as losing 4 games minus losing 2 games, etc and same with the reward calculation and double decisions?

Forgot about this... So you are a proponent of memorizing the MET or are you just saying if you are going to go to the trouble of doing that you only need the match equity?

https://sites.google.com/site/backga...points-and-pog

I did find these tables, although they only go up to 5 away 5 away.

Yes, I think if you knew all the double points, take points and gammon prices, that's everything that's calculable from the match equities. Though it's not as simple as comparing the game win % to those numbers. This is because the take points etc. that you can get from a MET don't take into account future cube value which varies from position to position. For example, if a match is tied, the doubling point is 50%, but typically you don't want to double with just 51% since that 50% number ignores the fact that if you don't double, you may get to use the cube later, and it ignores the fact that your opponent gets to use the cube later if they take.

Yes the procedure and equations would be the same when calculating a take point for instance. It's just if the cube is going to 4 (as opposed to 2) it would just mean you are looking at a different place in the MET to get the numbers to put into the risk vs. reward calculations.

I think the typical advice is to memorize the 1-away and 2-away numbers and use "Neil's numbers" for the rest, and that's what I've done. So if you do that, you can calculate whatever you need to calculate over the board.

But for a 5 point match I do pretty much know the take points by heart. And I do have a general knowledge of whether gammons are more or less valuable than for money at various match scores (and by how much). And then I have a lot of qualitative knowledge of how match score tends to affect cube decisions. And so that covers 99% of this stuff for me. It's pretty rare I would need to know an exact doubling point or gammon price for instance.

Sorry for the delay in reply. I assume you are talking about live vs dead cubes, right? I understand from your comments that that would have to be factored in but of course that is the same whether I calculate take points or memorize them. I could conceive of constructing a 15 by 15 matrix where each box contains a number for take point, double, gammons, so I would have three numbers for, say 6 away 10 away. I would just select the take point or double and factor in the gammon. I need to learn more about gammon math before really getting into this, though. Memorizing is pretty easy for me and I think it would reduce brain fog created by doing the math over the course of hours.