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  • New variant

    From pepstein5@gmail.com@21:1/5 to All on Thu Apr 13 09:21:24 2023
    Tired of getting the same opening positions all the time?
    Bored with the limited variety of middlegame and endgame plans?

    Well, why not try EpsteinGammon for your fun and excitement?
    The players play a series of matches where each match consists
    of exactly two games.
    In the initial game of each match, the initial position of the cube is randomly selected
    between the three options: 2 owned by White, 2 owned by Black,
    or centred at 1.

    In the initial game of each match, an initial legal position is randomly selected
    among the class of legal positions.
    The second game after the match starts with the same position as
    in the previous game but, for fairness, the players change colours.
    So, if the first game is hugely favourable to one player, the second
    game will be just as favourable to the other player.

    Paul

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  • From Timothy Chow@21:1/5 to peps...@gmail.com on Mon Apr 17 09:14:01 2023
    On 4/13/2023 12:21 PM, peps...@gmail.com wrote:
    The second game after the match starts with the same position as
    in the previous game but, for fairness, the players change colours.
    So, if the first game is hugely favourable to one player, the second
    game will be just as favourable to the other player.

    I once proposed a similar idea, except that instead of randomly chosen positions, each player could choose their own favorite position.

    In other words, you come to the showdown prepared with Epstein's
    Favorite Position (EFP) and I come to the showdown prepared with
    Chow's Favorite Position (CFP). We play 2n games, each starting
    with EFP, and switching sides each time. Then we repeat with CFP.

    This would force people to master a variety of strange positions
    that don't normally arise in backgammon.

    To make sure the games don't take too long, perhaps there could be
    a requirement that the total pip count of the starting position be
    no larger than 350.

    ---
    Tim Chow

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