Friday 3:08 AM

We are Pone at Hole 85, and thus we are somewhat "on target" to barely reach our next 'par' Hole 96. So far, so good.

Meanwhile, the Dealer sits Three Holes 'shy' of this same target. With the right cards played in the right fashion, we might be able to reach the Finish Line *before* our Opponent, once we obtain the Next Deal as Dealer and hopefully can score our Three Counts.

The problem here however is that in order to meet our own positional objective, it appears that we probably have to Toss (5 6), an exceedingly risky discard. Otherwise, we might also try a 'hybrid' solution and Keep (6 7 8 9) and Toss (5 9). Hold that thought.

I think we can rule out Keep (5 6 7 8) and Toss (9 9), not so much because of the PAIR in the Enemy Crib, but because it begins with only Six Points for us instead of Eight Points.

Thus, I think Keep (6 7 8 9) and Toss (5 9), with Eleven VERY HELPFUL Cuts (666, 777, 888, 99) is probably the way to go today. I say "probably" because some aggressive players may wish to try Toss (5 6), and it would be difficult to fault such a decision.

But I believe we have at least as good, if not better, chances after Toss (5 9). And s-l-o-w-i-n-g d-o-w-n a game often gives us more options as to how we might out-play or out-smart our Opponent. Thus, this discard decision is perhaps a matter of style, and I tend to be a defensive player.

After the Jack Cut, the Dealer gets Two Holes for His Heels, and has Two Points (at least) in the Crib, placing her/him another Four Points closer to winning, making our job that much more difficult, especially since the Jack adds ZILCH to our own Hand.

I'll lead the 8 Card and play a balanced approach during the pegging, as we haven't lost just yet. That will probably however come later.

   

Friday 3:19 AM

Is 5-6 a price worth paying here? I'll risk it.

   

Friday 3:41 AM

dealer needs 28, whereas 26 is the average in two deals.

hence if we give him points we can expect him to win next time on his take

meanwhile we need 36. We canot do that this time and cannot hope to do it next time either unless we score, say, 20 here.

Even if we do, our foe might go out first.

Our best hand is very obviously 7899, which scores 10 with a2345jqk (31), 12 with 10 (4), 16 with 6 (3), 20 with 789 (8).

Next to that we can consider 6789, which still tosses a 5 to dealer, and tends to score 8, while reaching 16 with 6789.

We can quickly see that 6789 is horribly inferior as a hand to 7899 in that it puts us in a much weaker position with 789, and it still tosses 5 to dealer.

A slightly more defensive toss is 89, which pretty much gives us 7 points, and might escape with nothing in dealer's crib. If this were to happen we could be starting next hand at around 95* - 103.

Here we'd be positionally far short of winning next deal, but we can sort of min-max this as either:

hold 7899, get a 17% chance of 20 points, peg defensively in that case and then have about a 50/50 chance to win next time

or
hold 5679 or perhaps something else, hope that dealer gets fewer than 26 points in two deals such that he needs to peg more than 2 on his following deal, and then ourselves score 36 in 2 one hands and a deal.

Here that latter equation means that we need 10 here (from hand + pegs), hopefully more, which surely rules out the most defensive option 79. But we could consider 89, or possibly even 99 as candidates, given that the latter might have a more favourable distribution being a pair, remembering that if we have gone for the defensive option there's not really a difference between a 20 point and a 10 point crib, as we lose in both cases, so mean scores are misleading. What we DO need is a crib of about 4 points or less.

So considering that we are in any case no better than 1 in 4 to win from this position before the deal, we can't fret too much about losing plays, because we should expect to lose the great majority of the time, just perhaps increase our winning chance from say 15% to 20%, or similar.

When considered that way it's pretty tough to chose the double run as it seems that even if we hit our big cut, we still can't possibly win this deal, and a lot of the time that juicy 56 toss to dealer's crib will mean we don't get too show our cards next time.

So I'm tossing the 99 because I think it might leave dealer's crib fairly dry but still leaves us with a shot to win on our next pone hand.

After the J cut, I'm glad not to have tossed a 5 to dealer's hand.

The question of whether to lead the 7 or 8 is interesting here, statistically 7 is more likely to be led from a pair. Obviously if dealer holds a ten card then he might be more comfortable pairing a 7, but X7 is not a very likely hold.

   

Friday 3:43 AM

Start with 10 points in the hand with a possible 20 maximum .I'll take the chance.

   

Friday 3:47 AM

Very good puzzle today Scott-We are going to need a lot of things to go our way to win this game-We need a decent hand to put ourselves in workable position for our next deal,but we also can’t fade a big opponent crib with dealer only 28 out-of the 3 realistic discards here-5-6,5-9 and 9-9 I feel that 9-9 has the best potential to be a 2 to 6 point crib-which we can live with here-JQT states earlier that 5678 is only 6 points so he prefers 6789,but we have to look at the total picture-EVERY cut will provide at least 2 points so in actuality you are keeping an 8 point hand minimum here-we will have to lead the 8 and hope the dealer doesn’t have middle cards-if the dealer plays a picture on it dump the 6 to make it 24 and not the 7 making it 25-this is a play I see many players make and they don’t realize that it could be costing them games-the most popular hand dealer could have here are 3 pictures and a 5 or 4 pictures-if he has the latter the pegging will come out the same but if he has the former you will only be outpegged 2-1 instead of 3-0 if you play the 7 on the second play-these little things are very important on 4th street

   

Friday 4:07 AM

5-9 unmatched seems least of the evils?

   

Friday 4:27 AM

I’m going to take the chance of a really good scoreby throwing 5 6.

   

Friday 4:39 AM

One again it matters more what they count with a lil more importance on getting to a desirable position here. Dumps the nines and go for that minimal non cut for all three hands here. lead the eight play off if possible. So my call is of a defensive nature here. dec

   

Friday 4:59 AM

Went defensive. Lawnet, mrob,, and dec explain the upside of this far better than I could.

   

Friday 5:22 AM

Giving the Crib as little as I can

Friday 7:14 AM

Holding a possible 16, will gt the 2 points back with most cuts. 5-9 usually not too dangerous. Almost went with 9-9 as I've been taught not to fear it.

   

Friday 7:35 AM

Grunch: untutored I could not see beyond discarding 56 and hoping for the best.

   

Friday 8:11 AM

When looking at this hand, I had to decide which discard could do the least amount of damage. Any discard that included the 5 would in all probability be extremely risky.

I felt that the 9-9, even though it gives the dealer 2 points, is the safest way to go. Any middle card as starter will still give us a decent hand. I'll lead the 8 and try to peg cautiously. We definitely need the dealer to play defensive with an X card to our lead in order to limit the dealer's pegging.

   

Friday 8:14 AM

59 not the worst 5 combination to throw, and we're holding middle cards that could help it. Also would rather play the 6 from 6789 than leading from 5678, which is one of the worst hands to do so.

   

Friday 12:27 PM

I'm in the minority. But I'm with Rob. How about Hal??

   

Friday 12:42 PM

I went 5-9, just in case an Ace or 2 is cut. 5-6 would have exploded, and 99 is too risky.

   

Friday 2:20 PM

A few choices here - 7-8-9-9 (5-6), 6-7-8-9 (5-9C) and 5-6-7-8 (9-9):

7-8-9-9: 10pts - 7½pts (Schell: 7.47) = +2½pts

6-7-8-9: 8pts - 6¼pts (Schell: 6.15) = +1¾pts

5-6-7-8: 6pts - 6¼pts (Schell; 6.39) = -¼pt

Potential:

7-8-9-9: Improves with 666, 777, 888, 99, 10101010 = 15 cuts = 15/46 = 32.6% up to 16/17/20pts with 666, 777, 888, 99 = 11 cuts.

6-7-8-9: Improves with AAAA, 2222, 555, 666, 777, 888, 99, 10101010 = 26 cuts = 26/46 = 56.5% up to 16pt with 666, 777, 888, 999 = 12 cuts.

5-6-7-8: Improves with AAAA, 2222, 3333, 4444, 555, 666, 777, 888, 99 + 16xXs = 46 cuts = 46/46 = 100.0% up to 9/10/12/14pts with 2222, 4444, 555, 666, 777, 888, 99 = 22 cuts.

Position:

We need 11pts to reach 4th street positional hole but opponent is nearly there at 93pts. So I'll play Offense.

Pegging:

I think 5-6-7-8 will peg best playing Offense.

Summary:

7-8-9-9 has the best starting value by ¾pt over 6-7-8-9 and 2¾pt over 5-6-7-8. 5-6-7-8 is guaranteed improvement and has 22 cuts for 9-14pts. Will this catch up the 2¾pts? I think with the better pegging it will so I'll throw the pair of 9s.

   

Friday 2:35 PM

At 85-93* playing an Defense strategy for the pegging the dynamic expected averages and Win/Loss %s are:

________________Dlr's
Defense__Hand___Pegs____Crib___Total___W2 %____W3 %
7-8-9-9___12.17+(-2.96)+(-7.17)=2.04____17.0____33.4
6-7-8-9D__10.41+(-2.61)+(-6.09)=1.71____12.5____33.2
5-6-7-8____9.61+(-2.96)+(-5.67)=0.98_____9.0____30.9

Defense______L2 %____L3 %
7-8-9-9_______43.5____58.3
6-7-8-9D______38.6____59.3
5-6-7-8_______39.6____62.4

7-8-9-9 is best for expected averages by 0.33pt and is very much best for Win %s. It is worst for Loss %s by a significant margin but even thou we're playing Defense for the pegging I'll select 5-6 to discard.

After the J cut I'll lead the 8 and play Defense:

Lead___________Dealer's Pegging Pts.
8____________________(-2.38)
7____________________(-2.42)
9____________________(-2.53)

   

Friday 2:52 PM

The big Hitters split on the 3 hands today

   

Friday 4:13 PM

Playing my position first, will choose def., def., def. need 10 points to reach 4th street CPZ (95-99). It's goodbye 5-6! The Jack cut is not a good omen giving dealer two points before a card is played. Not likely that dealer will have mid cards with my holding five of them. Play a defense pegging strategy, will break the three card sequence with the lead of the 8 and try to wiggle away from pegs. The 5-6 to opponent averages 6.865 on the 126 times have tossed and recorded on that side of the board. That's not a lot of samples although about .3 less than average shown by HalscribCLX. The average of all 91 discards to crib is 4.8. So the 5-6 average is two points over that and dealer is 2 holes short of 4th Street CPZ. So n/d has reasonable chance to pull this out. With the Jack cut, dealer has about 60/40 edge to win. Given that will likely be playing defense for the remainder of the game.