First Mover Advantage
David Basil Wildgoose
the player who plays second. His reasoning is based on the chances of
hitting a blot, and the possibility of getting doubles on the dice,
both of which are obviously denied to the player who moves first.
I'm not convinced, but I would like to know what the true facts are.
We occasionally play for money. I was thinking of offering to always
go first with whatever we roll...
Gregg Cattanach
poorly the first roll is. Remember, it's a race :) There is some
compensation for the 2nd player that he can roll doubles, but every first
roll (except 41) gives you some advantage (from a high of 0.153 for 31
to -0.002 for 41 by my rollout data). If he'd let you have the first roll
in every game, this would be a good proposition for you.
Gregg C.
"David Basil Wildgoose" <wild...@operamail.com> wrote in message
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Ryan Long
You should make that offer, since he is wrong. Backgammon may be a complicated race, but
it is still a race. Moving first is always an advantage since it makes your pip count
lower than his, whereas the second roll is a double only 1/6 of the time. Even when it is a
double, it is not always better (pip-wise) than the first roll.
Not all opening rolls leave blots. Nor is it a given that the second player should hit a
given blot. He's again trading a guaranteed advantage for a possible advantage. If the
possible advantage had a much greater payoff, this strategy would be correct. That's not
the case.
Jive Dadson
>
> A friend of mine insists that in backgammon the advantage lies with
> the player who plays second. His reasoning is based on the chances of
> hitting a blot, and the possibility of getting doubles on the dice,
> both of which are obviously denied to the player who moves first.
>
> I'm not convinced, but I would like to know what the true facts are.
Most opening rolls give the first player a clear advantage. Some, like 2-1 are less clear, but if opening with 2-1 is a disadvantage, it is a very small one. So your friend is wrong.
>
> We occasionally play for money. I was thinking of offering to always
> go first with whatever we roll...
How good a friend is he? :-)
J.
Adam Stocks
been widley known for many years, and has been confirmed beyond reasonable
doubt by the neural net bots. Of the opening rolls, most will give player1
a nice, but not overwhelming edge, but a few will give only a slight edge,
or barely measurable edge. Most notably, an opening roll of 4-1 gives
player1 a 0.008 disadvantage, according to Snowie3 3-ply, although even this
is too close to call without long rollouts. Most of player1's gain comes
not from being first to have blot-hitting chances (although that helps), but
from an extra move's worth of early positional development by making points,
placing builders etc., not to mention the 4 or so effective piplead from
being 'on roll' at the start, all of which player2 then has to counter.
Adam
"David Basil Wildgoose" <wild...@operamail.com> wrote in message
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Dfranc2
player.
My analysis using JF equities and roll probabilities gives
a very small plus for 1rst roll (dbls don't count):0.037
Alef
non-double roll is 5.83 and general race advantage of being on roll is 4.08,
so before the second player rolls he's down on average just 1.75 pips.
Though I suppose enough matches are lost by 1 pip or 2...
-Alef
Alef
alefro...@nospamthankyou.mac.com wrote on 8/12/02 7:16 pm:
Ooops! I divided by 36 instead of 30, the average non-double roll is 7 --
which is pretty obvious really. So the second person to play is down close
to three pips on average.
-Alef