The OSRDB makes the play that bears off in fewest average moves. The real
objective is to bear off in fewer moves than your opponent. Usually these are
the same thing, but not always, as we discussed above. Many of the times when
one needs to make desperation plays would be included in the two-sided
database, so we can forget about them. There are still times in longer races
when it is right to make a desperation play, either pull off a miracle win or
to improve your gammon chances when the win is certain. I'm wondering whether
there is a way to take account of these factors while using the OSRDB.
The distribution of rolls required to bear off for either side is appromimately
normal, and Jorn is already thniking about including this in the database.
Is there some algorithm that compares two independent normal distributions, and
which can maximize P(Ra < Rb) where Ra and Rb are the number of rolls each side
requires to bear off? This sounds like the sort of thing that statisticians would
have got nailed by now.
-Ian