Match Series

Want to play a match series with me? I currently play on DailyGammon and on Heroes – either works.

I had a nice series like this a long time ago, back in the FIBS days, with a friend. I'd like to bring the concept back to life here.

The idea behind it

The better someone plays, the higher their chances of winning against a weaker opponent. The reverse holds too: when your opponent is stronger, a shorter match gives you better chances, because fewer rolls are made and luck plays a bigger role.

That's the lever a match series uses: the length of the next match adjusts to the result, so both players always have roughly equal winning chances – no matter how different their playing strength.

How it works

We start with a 9-point match. After every match we analyze it – I use BGBlitz, but feel free to use another program if you prefer.

The length of the next match depends on the result. What counts is the average PR across all matches played so far in the series – not the single last match:

• If the winner has the better average PR, the next match is two points shorter (the winner should have a tougher time).
• If the winner has the worse average PR, the next match is two points longer.

The series ends when the next match length would go beyond the limits:

• If you win a 21-point match with the worse average PR, the next match would have to go up to 23 – that's the cap.
• If you win a 1-point match with the better average PR, the next match would have to go down to -1 – not possible either.

In all other cases the series continues, even after a 21- or 1-point match.

Background: Originally, the steering value wasn't PR but the DailyGammon rating. For players of similar strength that didn't say much, so I switched to the PR-based variant. At first the PR of the single last match counted. In practice, though, a single outlier – an unusually good or bad match – could push the length in a direction that didn't match the actual playing strength. So now the average across all matches played so far in the series is what counts: it smooths out outliers and reflects true strength better.

A short explanation of PR and Luck can be found in the DailyGammon forum.

Interested? Drop me a short mail at hape42 or send me a message on DailyGammon or Heroes – on both servers I'm known as hape42.

Match series

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