Position Isn't Everything
Everyone always talks about position, and how important it is to be in position. I'm not going to dispute that position is important, but constantly thinking about position can cause so many unnecessary mistakes that wouldn't be made if people weren't thinking about it at all.
The basis of position is sound; you will average 10 points as a pone, and 16 points as the dealer, so you will average 26 points every two deals. Therefore, if you want to be the first one to 121 points, you should also be the first one to 95 points, and the first one to 70 points, and so on.
However, there's one word that people downplay in that sentence way too much, average. Yes, that means that 50% of the time, you will score 26 points or more in two deals. The corollary to that statement is that 50% of the time, you will score less than 26 points in two deals.
I'm sure all of you have heard the horror stories, such as, "I was only 12 points out with deal, and I didn't make it" or "I only needed 5 points, and I was dealt 2-4-6-8-T-K." We all look at that as unlucky, (and it is) but it's not unexpected, and just because you've gotten to the penultimate positional hole first does not mean you're out of the woods, not by a long shot. Once you have position on your opponent, don't just start coasting and playing safe to preserve, keep fighting to increase the margin, and give yourself some buffer for when that 2-4-6-8-T-K comes down on 4th street. Your scorecard will thank you.
Comments
Excellent advice
Thanks Chris, wise words indeed, and I hope you don't mind that I've quoted them as a cautionary addition to my page on board strategy:
http://cribbagecorner.com/positional-play
Good, but statistics not accurate
This is a good explanation, but your statistics are not valid.
Following Delynn Colvert's 26 theory, you will not achieve 26 per round 1 out of every 2 occurrences for 50%. You should achieve 50% "over the long haul" of thousands of games.
A simpler example, is cutting for deal. You would expect that 50% of the time you would win the deal. During the 2008-2009 Season, I tracked every ACC tournament game and ACC Grass Roots game I played; nearly 2000 games. I was the starting dealer only 44% of the time. 6% below the 50% that one would expect and with this large number you would expect it to be real close to 50%. This 6% shortfall really had an impact as I win 68% of the games that I am the starting dealer; 55% as the starting non-dealer.
I think we're trying to say the same thing in different ways
We're both hitting on the law of averages - I was generalizing towards the ignorance of the concept in general, and you're referring to the misinterpretation of the law itself, as the law of average states that a random variable will "tend" towards the mean, it may not (and fairly often will not) ever reach the mean. In either situation, I completely agree with you.
With that being said, for n=2000, to have won only 880 deals... you're nearly 5 standard deviations from the mean if the math in my head is right. At that point, you're going to be counting the 9s on how unlucky that is. That's a horrible, horrible anomaly to have.
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