| Books |
From The Backgammon Book, by Oswald Jacoby and John R. Crawford
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| White to play 5-2. |
Move two men from black twelve point to your eight and eleven points. This is by far the best play because you begin to set up a strong blocking action in relative safety. There are two weaker plays. The first is to move one man from the black twelve point to your own six point. This play risks nothing, but it gains nothing either: you are safe, but you haven’t done anything to better your position. It is possible to make the same sill, safe play with 4-3, or a similar silly, safe play to your eight point with 4-1 or 3-2, and we will dispose of all of these right now by pointing out that the man who sits quietly never falls down but also never gets anywhere.
A really bad play with 5-2 is to use the 2 to split your back men by moving one of them to the black three point. The split to the one and three points in the black board is the worst split you can have, for one important reason. If your opponent rolls double 5, he makes both his one and three points and puts both your men on the bar. In a gambling game, unless you can then bring them both in immediately your opponent will have a strong enough position to end the game by doubling you.
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Rollout
 Tom Keith 2013 |
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Money play Centered cube White rolls 5-2 1296 games with VR Checker play: 3-ply Cube play: XG Roller |
| 5-2: | Game | G | BG | Equity | ||||
| 1 | 24/22, 13/8 |
W L |
.5021 .4979 |
.1399 .1348 |
.0062 .0048 | +0.0177 |
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| 2 | 13/11, 13/8 |
W L |
.4976 .5024 |
.1505 .1453 |
.0078 .0073 | +0.0014 | (0.0163) |
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| 3 | 13/8, 6/4 |
W L |
.4876 .5124 |
.1373 .1441 |
.0063 .0078 | −0.0566 | (0.0743) | |
| 4 | 13/6 |
W L |
.4757 .5243 |
.1405 .1560 |
.0074 .0071 | −0.0943 | (0.1120) | Alternate |
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