• Cube vs checker PR's in addition to winning vs losing PR's.

    From MK@21:1/5 to All on Tue Jan 16 12:06:14 2024
    I have reasons to believe and to predict that
    average PR's of humans against bots will be
    comparatively lower in games lost and higher
    in games won.

    I dared all to share their average winning and
    losing PR's but unfortunately (and expectedly)
    nobody did so (at least not yet).

    I suppose it must be true that when children
    close their eyes and don't look, the monsters
    under their beds are gone... ;)

    So now, I'm taking the subject one step further
    and predicting that average cube PR's of humans
    against bots will be higher than checker PR's,
    perhaps both in games lost and games won, but
    especially so in games lost than in games won,
    because the so-called "cube skill theory" is a
    big cow-pie and people can get away with higher
    cube errors than checker errors.

    Once again, I dare all of you children to be
    brave and look under your beds... ;)

    MK

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  • From MK@21:1/5 to All on Tue Jan 16 12:19:36 2024
    On 1/16/2024 12:06 PM, MK wrote:

    especially so in games lost than in games won,

    I meant the opposite. Sorry.

    While here, I may as well go another step further
    and bring in the cube errors in relation to cube
    values but I will keep it at this for now because
    I don't have a clear enough idea on this yet. It
    seems that cube errors will be bigger at higher
    cube values, which at least in my case seem to be
    more often in games that I win than I lose. Feel
    free to volunteer your observations and opinions.

    MK

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  • From Timothy Chow@21:1/5 to All on Thu Jan 18 08:12:25 2024
    On 1/16/2024 2:06 PM, MK wrote:
    I have reasons to believe and to predict that
    average PR's of humans against bots will be
    comparatively lower in games lost and higher
    in games won.

    Related observations have been made by John O'Hagan and
    Douglas Zare.

    https://www.bgonline.org/forums/webbbs_config.pl?read=163763

    https://www.gammonvillage.com/backgammon/magazine/article_display.cfm?resourceid=6355

    In particular, they suggest that when you're losing, you often
    have easier decisions to make and so that will tend to lower
    your error rate. They suggest that this effect occurs not only
    when humans play against bots but when humans play against
    humans.

    ---
    Tim Chow

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  • From MK@21:1/5 to Timothy Chow on Fri Jan 19 17:56:31 2024
    On 1/18/2024 6:12 AM, Timothy Chow wrote:

    Related observations have been made by
    John O'Hagan and Douglas Zare.

    Only three paragraphs of Zare's article is
    free to read but even with that little, it
    is interesting that he is the only one who
    mentions luck along with skill in the same
    sentence.

    One of my arguments on this subject is that
    "luck+skill=1" is a cow-pie. Obviously Zare
    won't say this. So, I wonder what more did
    he say about luck in the rest of his article.

    To repeat my argument: winner has always more
    luck, thus more luck = less skill, thus less
    skill = more errors, higher PR...

    In particular, they suggest that when
    you're losing, you often have easier
    decisions to make and so that will tend
    to lower your error rate.

    I skimmed through the posts in the bgonline
    thread, looking for keywords and skipping
    most of the dwelling on the details of their
    common arguments as you summarized above.

    Unlike me, all you guys are both worshiping
    believers who will never admit that cubeful
    equities are inaccurate. They need to find
    explanations that won't shake their faiths.

    Bob Coca questions "Is there data indicating
    this?" But how can any data indicate their
    explanations based on decisions being easy
    or difficult?

    You comment that XG won't count sufficiently
    easy decisions as decisions at all. Bot how
    does XG know if a decision is sufficiently
    easy or not? For that matter, how can humans
    know?

    I think you had participated in a few past
    discussions about determining the difficulty
    of positions, to find out that it's not easy
    if not nearly impossible to do.

    They suggest that this effect occurs not
    only when humans play against bots but
    when humans play against humans.

    In humans against humans, players are much
    likely to deviate from the bot play, and PR
    is measured by the bot. In humans against
    bots, at least the bot is totally consistent
    and human is less likely to deviate from the
    strategy to achieve the best PR.

    Anyway, what would Occam's Razor say here..?

    MK

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