Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 07:42:03 01/29/06
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This reminds me of a "hobby" of mine, playing blackjack. Card counters often discuss the many "basic strategy departure index plays" and ask "how important is it to learn the indexes for the uncommon plays like when to double 8 vs 6 and the like?" The answer is in two parts: (1) the hands are not very common, which means playing them correctly or incorrectly will not have a great influence on your long-term winning edge; but (2) when the situation comes up, and you have a big bet on the table because of the positive count, suddenly that "not very important play" can be the difference between a couple of hundred bucks and zero. So while they are not used often, when they are used it is sometimes critical. I have seen Crafty win many KRP vs KR endings where its internal evaluation thinks it is a draw because the enemy king is too close to the promotion square, but due to a subtle rook move it is exactly one square too far away. This is nice to know if you enter some long combination where the final position is the resulting KRP vs KR ending, and you just traded everything away in a winning position to reach what you hope is a really winning position.
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