Nigel Richards - One-in-the-bag pre-endgame analysis (CSW15)

Moves with equal percentages of wins, losses and draws are sorted descendingly according to the following heuristic:

H := (points scored with the move) + (mathematical expectation of the player's highest score next turn) - (mathematical expectation of the opponent's highest score next turn)

While this heuristic is generally good, the ordering according to it should be taken with a grain of salt; for selected examples, we give a better sub-ranking of the moves according to the mathematical expectation of the final spread of the game.

Example 1

This example between Jesse Day and Nigel Richards is taken from here. Jesse was 6 points behind.
His rack: ACEHLMR
Unseen tiles from his point of view: AEEIKRTU
Game in gcg format

Jesse played the winning move [MERC N3 28 AHL].

The only moves that never lost were:

Example 2

This example between Nigel Richards and Esther Perrins is taken from here. Nigel was 26 points behind.
His rack: EGNNPSV
Unseen tiles from his point of view: AAEFGORT
Game in gcg format

Nigel played [DOVEN C11 18 GNPS], drew an A and stole the game!

The only moves that didn't lose all the time were:

Example 3

This example between Nigel Richards and Pichai Limprasert is taken from here. Nigel was 54 points behind.
His rack: AAEPRST
Unseen tiles from his point of view: IINORSSU
Game in gcg format

Nigel played [WEEP D1 18 AAERST], a losing move. Intuitively, it looks like he needed to bingo to win the game; but, his opponent could always block all of his bingos after [WEEP D1 18 AAERST]. Indeed, here are the final spreads of the game from Nigel's point of view after each pick (hover over a spread to see an optimal endgame sequence):

Only these two moves did not lose all the time:

Surprisingly maybe, Nigel's opponent could not have prevented him from bingoing had he played one of these moves and had he picked the N.

Example 4

This example between Brett Smitheram and Nigel Richards is taken from here. Brett was 4 points behind.
His rack: ?AEGLRV
Unseen tiles from his point of view: AEEEINPS
Game in gcg format

Brett played [ERF J4 16 ?AGLV], a move that won if he picked the S, drew if he picked the I and lost otherwise.

The six best moves were:

Example 5

This example between Nigel Richards and Dave Wiegand is taken from here. Nigel was 6 points ahead.
His rack: AAILQTY
Unseen tiles from his point of view: DEEELRRU
Game in gcg format

Nigel played the winning move [LAZY 13B 32 AIQT].

The exhaustive list of winning moves is:

Nigel's move was actually best according to the mathematical expectation of the final spread of the game. Here are the final spreads of the game from Nigel's point of view after each pick (hover over a spread to see an optimal endgame sequence):

Example 6

This example between Nigel Richards and Goutham Jayaraman is taken from here. Nigel was 12 points behind.
His rack: DDINOOU
Unseen tiles from his point of view: ?AAEEIJR
Game in gcg format

Nigel played [ANI 13L 13 DDOOU], one of only two moves giving him a chance to draw the game. Worth noting is that this move blocked BREDE 14K and kept ODD 13H.

The two moves that offered drawing chances were:

All other moves lost all the time.

Nigel's move was actually second best according to the mathematical expectation of the final spread of the game. Here are the final spreads of the game from Nigel's point of view after each pick (hover over a spread to see an optimal endgame sequence):

Return to next steps page

This site uses web cookies, click to learn more. Our privacy policy. © Ortograf Inc. Updated on March 14th 2022. Informations & Contacts.