Hi Achim,
I recently downloaded GNU backgambmon and was gratified that the programmers have made use of my work on doubling cube models and have made appropriate acknowledgement.
As you may be aware, I did quite a lot of work with Snowie over a short period six or seven years ago in helping them develop cubeful models for matches. The general approach, for both money and match play, was to estimate equities where the cube is fully dead or fully live for both players. The effective equity was then interpolated between these two extremes based on cube-usage factors (dependent on future volatility and other similar factors). The developers of Snowie considered both the simple case of a cube usage value (ie, for both players) and two separate values (ie, separate for each player).
Looking over my work more recently, I came to the conclusion that my way of looking at the refined model (with separate values for cube usage for both players) was flawed to some extent, particularly with regard to cube-centred equities. I had originally considered interpolation only between the two extreme cases of dead-dead and live-live cube values. In reality there are four extreme cases:
Dead-Dead Cube dead to both players
Dead-Live Cube dead to Player 1 but fully live to Player 2
Live-Dead Cube fully live to Player 1 but dead to Player 2
Live-Live Cube fully live to both players
These four points may be imagined as four corners of a rectangle, with Player 2 cube-liveness being the measure on the axis of Dead-Dead to Dead-Live. Similarly, Player 1 cube-liveness being the measure on the axis of Dead-Dead to Live-Dead.
I would be interested in your ideas on the value of developing this approach.
Could you advise me on how I can incorporate within GNU the following downloads from your website:
* One-sided race database reaches the midpoint - A one-sided race database that extends to the 13-point is now available for download.
Regards,
Rick Janowski