2022 - Position 89

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Match Play. Red leads 8-0 to 11. Should Red double? If doubled, should White take?

It always scary to double with a large lead but two points get Red to Crawford and that is very useful indeed. Note also that White won’t redouble immediately as he will retain some chances from 0-10 down if thing go badly for him and so the redouble is not automatic.

By Ward/Trice the point of last take is 53 pips. White’s Trice count is 59 pips. Each extra pip is worth about 1.5% in winning chances therefore White will win this position about 82% of the time (assuming a base take -point of 23% with an active cube). A rollout shows the exact figure to be 81.6%

Once you do the match equity calculations, which are too long to do in a simple blog posting, it becomes clear that White has a comfortable take but Red would be blundering if he didn’t double this position.