From the Swavesey chouette. A surprisingly devastating double 6 while bearing in left Jon crying into his beer and facing a horrible double from the box:
Everyone threw in the towel, with varying degrees of abject terror. OK there are nine numbers where black dances, which seems enough to take, until you consider that white is unlikely to win all those games, since black will probably still have some shots next time. So maybe the winning chances are 20% or so – not enough, at any rate.
Or so we thought… XG says there are 27% wins here, and passing is an impressive 295 stupids.
In fact, if you close black’s board there are still around 23% chances, still enough for a close take with the cube vig!
So what had we missed? Simply that when white gets closed out he still wins 5% of the time – add that to 20% and you have a take.
2 thoughts on “Can you take a triple shot?”
Now that’s what I can a reference position!
If there were only two blots, its no longer a double for black….even if you close blacks board:
Playing with XG, the following rules of thumb appear to be true:
If you’re stuck on the bar, with your own home board closed out:
-1 blot, no double/take
-2 blot, no double/take
-3 blot, double/take
-4 blot, double/pass
Perhaps a greater mind than mine should double check that before committing it to memory.
There were 5 cubes in play, I wonder what the optimum cube response would have been if the team were able to consult on cube decisions?
Looks like it depends a bit on where the blots are – if they are on the 1,2 and 3 then it’s a drop, probably because it’s more likely that two will be hit.
It’s also going to be a drop at various match scores, leading 2 away 3 away being the obvious one.
I think the only difference if, say, the box was being doubled with 5 cubes, would be they could hedge by dropping a few. There isn’t much point though, unless the stakes are high and you want to pay for insurance.