Stick writes:
If I remember correctly Walter spells this out pretty plain in
simple. You should start by knowing that a plain single shot is 11
shots. That's to say a blot 1 pip away is 11 shots. You will need an
ace to hit it, and you can roll 11 combinations containing an ace, 61,
51, 41, 31, 21, and 11. Remember there are two different ways to roll
all the rolls except doubles, you can roll 61 or 16, so it's actually
61, 16, 51, 15, 41, 14, 31, 13, 21, 12, and then there is only one way
to roll doubles because each die must contain the same number, so add
11 to the mix and that's 11 hitting number for a direct single shot.
Once you can visualize this and accept this as fact it gets easier.
Now say there's a blot two pips away. You start off knowing it's 11
shots because your dice must contain a two, so again, 62, 26, 52, 25,
42, 24, 32, 23, 21, 12, and 22 make 11. On top of that any
combination of the dice that add up to two, in this case 11, gets
added [as long as ones aren't blocked] giving you a total of 12
numbers to hit a blot two pips away.
It is important enough to be able to count shots, and as Walter goes
on to explain, it helps in other situations also (like endgames being
able to figure out how many rolls take off checkers). In general, if
you want/need to leave less shots, bring the checker closer to where
the hitter is.
1 pip away - 11 shots (61, 51, 41, 31, 21, 11)
2 pips away - 12 shots (62, 52, 42, 32, 21, 22, 11)
3 pips away - 14 shots (63, 53, 43, 32, 31, 33, 21, 11)
4 pips away - 15 shots (64, 54, 43, 42, 41, 44, 31, 22, 11)
5 pips away - 15 shots (65, 54, 53, 52, 51, 55, 41, 32)
6 pips away - 17 shots (65, 64, 63, 62, 61, 66, 51, 42, 33, 22)
[hope I got that right lol]
So if you're forced to leave a shot and the only thing you're
concerned with is minimizing that amount of shots (safety) it's best
to leave the blot as close as possible. I doubt this helped much as
all that information was contained in Bootcamp but I thought I'd give
it a try, I've never tried to explain it to anyone so if you have any
more questions just ask.
Stick
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