Backgammon Match Equities

Match Equities

Does it matter which match equity table you use?

From:   Klaus Evers
Address:   none
Date:   15 November 2005
Subject:   Is the Ortega/Kleinman MET really way off ?
Forum:   GammOnLine

As an Intermediate player, I never made up much thoughts about METs. My first introduction to that subject came with the fine book of Ortega/Kleinman: "Cubes and Gammons near the end of a match". That was an eye-opener for me, and from that point on I kept the current match score into account while playing matches; esp. at -2; -4. Recently I had a discussion with an expert on FIBS, and he looked at me like I came from the stone ages when I told him I still used Ortega/Kleinman's MET. Another player (good, but not WC) said it didn't matter much, as long as you at least use one at all and stick to it. Who's right?

Marty Storer writes:

Choice of MET is "important" in the sense that if you can get anything at all out of a MET, you want it to be as accurate as possible. Every driblet of equity counts, and saved driblets can mean many monetary units over your lifetime. It's "unimportant" in the sense that the good player said. Both Ortega- Kleinman and a more modern table (e.g. g11) will steer your plays and cube actions in the same direction. You need to know when (at what scores and in what types of positions) to be aggressive, and when to be conservative. For example, how is a score of -3 to -2 different from pure GG (-2 to -1 Crawford)? What are examples of how you play differently at those two scores? I submit that the answers won't depend much on the specific MET. Though the specific MET will occasionally point you to different decisions for the same score, that won't happen too frequently or with too great an equity difference. Much more important is to be able to look at the score and "feel" the strength of the bias towards conservativism, aggression, simplicity, or complexity. First you want to get to the Zen-like state of having the right feelings: to instinctively or involuntarily start steering your play in the right direction. The beginning of such a state is to start slotting and building at GG, versus splitting and running at GS. Then you can make refinements: adding more reference positions to your memory; trying to figure out how much to change strategy against much stronger players (e.g. you'll play simpler positions better than complex positions, but complex positions are more volatile, so, how do you play opening 51 at -3 to -3 against Neil Kazaross? how does your take-point change in a straight race? in a holding game? etc.); refining strategy against weaker players; and there's really no end to refinements you can make. So if you've already memorized a Woolsey-Heinrich-like MET, you can keep using it for a while, with no really bad consequences. But if you want to be as accurate as possible, ditch Ortega-Kleinman/Woolsey-Heinrich for g11 or for one of the built-in bot MET's. Once you start looking deeply enough into positions for Gammon Price to be important, you'll definitely want the most accurate MET you can get.

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