playBunny: I stand corrected!

grenv: Comedy should never be routine

playBunny: What if I'm an impressionist?

Marfitalu: That's my understanding.

Marfitalu: Well -- I think of gammon and the cube as part of the package. Of course, it would be possible to count gammons and backgammons in multiple point matches, but it would be odd. If there's no cube, I am used to the idea that I am playing for one point only. There is a significant difference in strategy.

txaggie: It makes very little sense to count gammons in one-point matches or matches without the cube. It's rarely done, and it isn't done here.

playBunny: You need to go and read the description of a 10 points match! This is not a 10 game match, but a match to 10 points.

Marfitalu: I don't think there is a difference, is there? There is a difference for games where draws are possible. If draws were possible, then each player would earn half a point toward the 10 point goal in a draw, but draws would not count for anything in a 10 wins match.

I'm enjoying being #1 in two gammon variants at the same time, as I did when I was #1 in BG -- but I don't expect it to last!

ZEROZERO: Nothing kinky, please, I have a weak heart

playBunny: It certainly was a curious pattern, and brought out my monkey curiosity as well :)

Czuch Chuckers: I thought the game was called go-moku

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gomoku

playBunny: So every blocked player is a Pandora's box of vituperation waiting to be unleashed . . . reminds me of something one of my partners once said: "One day the sky will be black with chickens coming home to roost!"

Pythagoras: Are you suggesting that only Type A personalities can be blocked? ;-)

BIG BAD WOLF: Thanks BBW :)

playBunny: Which is what we have here, if I'm not mistaken.

grenv: As far as I know there is no rule against doubling a dead cube. Since by definition it cannot give the doubling player an advantage, I don't see why there should be a rule against it. The only harm that I can see is that an inattentive player might drop, but rules are generally not imposed to protect players from their own sloppiness.

I believe that the number of games required to "stabilize" the ELO formula is quite high, around 500 games. (On FIBS, the formula stabilizes at 400 experience points, I believe. Experience points are the total of all your match lengths, so a 7 point match counts as 7 experience points regardless of the final match score.) Until you reach that number of games (or matches, here), your ELO adjustments will be increased by a factor that gradually declines to zero (or 1, I suppose, since it's a multiplier) as you gain experience. The great majority of players don't have that much experience. It's difficult to speculate about the effect this has on average ratings, but it must have some effect. I think the most important consideration is that successful players tend to stay and play more often than less successful players. (This is a correlation, not necessarily cause and effect.) Thus, a player who enters the pool and initially loses a lot of points may go away, or even just change his identity, leaving the low rating in the pool of averages. I believe this tends to drag down the overall average. This is one reason I based my earlier speculations on the average of the top 50 established BKR. The drop-out element is unlikely to be represented in that group! (Putting aside those few players who enjoy initial success, fly to the top of the ratings, and stop playing to guard that inflated status).

pentejr: As my message indicates, I averaged the ratings of the top 50 players. These were the top 50 established BKRs.

BIG BAD WOLF: There does appear to be a correlation between average games completed and average ratings. I compiled these for the top 50 players in each variant. Here are the results (Variant/average rating/average completed games):

Crowded-1870-169
Nack-1901-195
Race-
1912-201
Hyper-2145-801
Back-2219-792

Note that, with the exception of Backgammon, the averages in both categories are in rank order.

Inexplicably, I am having trouble with line breaks in this message.

I am wondering what explains the different patterns of ratings in the various backgammon variants. I am puzzled why there are so many more 2000+ ratings in Hyper and regular Backgammon than there are in Crowded, Nack and Race. Is it possibly just a function of the number of games completed? There are probably many more completed games in regular backgammon because it is the standard and more popular than any of the variants. There are more complete games of Hyper because the games are short; it may also be more popular than the other variants. Does anyone have another explanation?

skipinnz: That really has no bearing on the question.

skipinnz: What do you have against bears?

Czuch Chuckers: I think it's rather arrogant for you to presume to tell me what I can or cannot be indifferent to. Moreover, the assertion is ridiculous on its face. Anyway, I'm bored with this discussion, and won't participate further.

Pythagoras: Sometimes you don't want a specific number of pencils; you just want to be able to write something down. That's when you ask for "a pencil". Whether I give you one pencil or a box, you got what you wanted and what you asked for.

Czuch Chuckers: But you may still say "a pencil" if you are indifferent to the number of pencils you receive; that is, if you want at least one pencil. Of course, if one pencil will not do, you won't say "a pencil", you will specify the number that you need. "A pencil" is to be used only when you want exactly one, OR are indifferent to the number.

Pythagoras: I don't see any inconsistency. "A pencil" means at least one pencil; and that's the farthest off topic I've been allowed to be in quite a while ;-)

Czuch Chuckers: As you yourself said, it's indefinite; it doesn't imply "one" or more than one.

Czuch Chuckers: I disagree. If I ask you for a pencil, I have no objection to receiving two or more!

playBunny: "a" is called the indefinite article for a reason -- "a pencil" is the opposite of "no pencil" and implies nothing at all as to number. Of course context is still important. In the context of pencils the essence of the question is whether one has the tools necessary to write something down; number is not significant. In some cases, the expectation is that there will be either exactly one or none of the specified item, and if more than one are present, a simple affirmative could be misleading. Thus, a bigamist, when asked "Do you have a wife?", should answer: "Yes, I have two."

If you want to elicit information about the number of pencils a person has, "Do you have a pencil?" is the wrong question. It would be better to ask: "How many pencils do you have?", "Do you have an extra pencil?", "May I borrow a pencil?" etc.

playBunny: I think you mean the former Dailygammon procedure?

grenv: To be frank, I like the present system. It is clear and unambiguous, and we don't get into tedious arguments about players offering to resign a single game in order to avoid being gammoned.

Dailygammon has just implemented a system in which the server forces a resignation in clear cut situations, and resignations are otherwise not allowed (except for match resignations). That works well also.

In short -- the less complication and the fewer opportunities for individual choice, the better, in this context.

Hrqls: It was fun for me when I did it . . . when it started to be a chore, I quit.

Hrqls: Yes, I just realized you're not talking about collecting every game, just the ratings pages. That should not be a problem for anyone. Probably not worth the trouble of writing a program :-)

Hrqls: I still wouldn't do that without Fencer's permission, because it will be a drain on his bandwidth (Of course, given the autorefresh feature, he may not care about bandwidth). The only reason I did it on IYT was because they denied my requests for access to the database.

ColonelCrockett: alanback. This happened years ago, I used to have a webpage with ELO ratings for all the games played on IYT. Got to be too much work, and then they shut me down anyway.

playBunny: I used to do that at ItsYourTurn. Compiled ELO ratings by collecting the results of all tournament matches. I wrote a script -- I think it was in Perl -- that did it all automatically. That got me banned from IYT for a short time for using too much of their bandwidth!

WhiteTower: You're not far wrong ;-)

On winning the first and only anti-backgammon tournament sponsored by me :-)

grenv: Does that make me the first?

Czuch Chuckers: If a person is ignorant, your time is better spent educating him than insulting him. If he is truly a fool, nothing you can say will change that, so why take that negativity upon yourself?

grenv: Hm . . . at least one dictionary defines "scorn" as "look down upon", so you may need to amend your choice of words.

grenv: That's where experience comes in :-) It's a good reason to double early, before the position becomes complex.

Wil: If you are 1 away from winning and your opponent is 2-away, you should drop any double when your chance of winning the current game is below 50%. The same is generally true in any case where your opponent is an even number of points away. If your opponent is an odd number of points away, then you should take any double unless you are seriously concerned about being gammoned.

Again, the percentages should be modified if you think you know you are better than your opponent or he is better than you.

Czuch Chuckers: Depends upon when you are measuring the advantage. At the start of the game, it would be unfair to say "Player X needs 7 wins, Player Y only needs 4." However, once you make the assumption that one player is ahead 6-0, you aren't at the start of the match anymore. I don't care who the players are, I'd rather be ahead 6-0 than tied 0-0. At the start of the match, both players have an equal likelihood of getting to 6-0, so the rules don't favor either of them.

alanback: It's a good idea to read a book (or a chapter) on doubling strategy. Many of the answers to these questions are common sense once you think about them, but wouldn't be intuitively obvious to a beginner. A good example is the take/drop question. You know that the outcome of the match will be decided by the result of the current game if you take, and by the outcome of the next game if you drop. Your chances of winning the next game are 50-50 (modify this if you think you can estimate the relative skills of yourself and your opponent); you should take if your chances of winning the current game are more than that, drop if they are less.

Czuch Chuckers: See my earlier post as to when the leader should take or drop. In general, take if you are ahead in the current game, drop if you are behind.

Czuch Chuckers: It's obviously not true that the early loser has an advantage. I think that what you mean to say is that it's not as hard to catch up as it is to get ahead, and I think that is clearly true. Nor is that necessarily a bad thing.

Czuch Chuckers: Yes. What do you have to lose?