return to indexE-mail me at kwoolsey@netcom.com
I've been trying to print off your "Crawford and Beyond" article in this month'sissue - but the end of each line is missing. Is this intentional to stop theunauthorised circulation of the articles? I am aware that I can read the articleoffline - but I like to take a print out and read it on the tube (subway :). Canyou let me know if this can be rectified.
David Robbins
I think this has to do with the fact that a few of the lines in the textrequired me to format it so as to make the lines extra long so it comes outlooking right on the screen. Try downloading the file onto your hard drive,getting rid of these lines with the coding, and then printing it. Or usethe following suggestion which looks like a solution to the problem.
Kit Woolsey
I found a way around it - when I click the print button and the printing menupops up it is possible to change the SIZE of the pages to be printed. Iadjusted it to 90% and everything became fine. But in the future it would bedesirable (at least by me) to be able to fit the info from your magazine onregular pages. In the first three issues it was not a problem. Thanks.
Ilia Guzei
Excellent. This kind of cooperative effort where the solution to a problemis shared by all is what makes working on this magazine and being on theinternet in general so enjoyable.
Kit Woolsey
I can't find a link from the message board to the members page. Thus, Ihave to type in a URL to get out of the newsgroup function. My smallsuggestion is to add such a link (or make it more prominent -- I havenever found it)
David McAdams
Originally I had such a link from the index page back to the GammOnLinemain page. However I replaced it with a link to the program which allowsthe user to create board diagrams. This seemed more important, sinceeverybody reading the bulletin board has the URL of GammOnLine. Unfortunatelythe bulletin board generating program allows only one such link to beentered. I suppose I could modify the program to put in the desired linkback to GammOnLine, but that would require a fair amount of work on mypart (I'm really not much of a programmer), so it is well back on my listof improvements to make.
Kit Woolsey
In the process of trying to improve my 1800 games grid rating (how did you ever get over 2000?) I have been rolling out back games on Snowie. With excellent timing I find the 2-3 to be slightly better than the 1-3, followed by the 2-4,3-4,3-5,2-5,1-4,4-5,1-2,1-5,1-7 in that order. Although I have often read that a good backgame wins over 50% the rollouts on Snowie only come in at about 47% for the best ones, and most are more like 42% or worse. Does this jive with your understanding or is Snowie so bad at back games that these results can't be trusted?
Bruce Haight
In Bill Robertie's Advanced Backgammon, problem 170, he gives an exampleof a very well-timed 1-3 backgame. He claims to have rolled it out a lot,and that the backgame side wins almost 2/3 of the time. I don't knowwhether he was using the cube in the rollouts; obviously if the backgameside has the cube available that will make a considerably difference in theresults. His 2/3 figure seems high to me, but it is quite safe to saythat an expert playing a really well-timed backgame will win over half thetime.
So, how does Snowie handle backgames? In the initial stages it handles themok, building the board decently and doing what it can to avoid crunching.However once a shot it hit, Snowie's play is inferior to expert play. Itdoesn't appreciate the value of building a prime and trying to jar a secondchecker loose. It is more inclined to go straight for a closeout.
Because of this weakness, it is true that rollouts of back games can'tnecessarily be trusted. Back games will tend to do better than the rolloutsindicate. How much affect this has on other positions which might leadinto back games, such as early slotting, is anybody's guess.
Kit Woolsey