Answer to Puzzler # 15
Larry held his head because blue should not have gone out on the court. With blue and black dead on each other and black for wicket two, which was behind where the opponents were going, black going to position was a very good move. Blue going out on the court on the other side of the wicket for black is actually a huge liability for black, not a help. Why is this so? Why was black going out on the court such a good move and blue going out on the court such a bad one?
The situation when black went out to position at wicket two is that danger ball yellow was far from black and far from red. Thus black could not be taken out as the spent ball. Further, since red is for four and black for two, should yellow join red (which it did) and then red proceed to roquet yellow in order to go down and take black out, red will probably not be able to get a good rush on black to make wicket four on that turn. Thus red would end up dead on partner yellow as well as black. So, the net result of black’s move to position is either that it will be left alone to shoot its wicket and get clean, or it will be taken out but this will get red two ball dead. Either way black and blue will be better off than if black had not gone out on the court. Thus, this move overall presents a good chance for a side with serious deadness problems to improve its situation, one way or the other.
Now, what is the result of blue going out on the court now that black has already done so and red and yellow are joined? With two balls on the court, red can tap yellow, then take off to where it can roquet black out of position, then take off in turn from black and have a good chance to get a rush on blue to hoop four. Furthermore it is not just that red will have two opponent balls close to one another to work with, it will have the spent ball blue to work with. If red’s rush to four is a poor one, it has a great backup option: it simply sends blue to yellow near yellow’s hoop at three, and then uses its continuation shot to get to position at its hoop at four. Now it has taken black out of position, gotten spent ball to partner yellow so that yellow can make probably two hoops and possibly many more and is very likely to get clean itself. This is a bad result for blue and black, to say the least.
When your deadness forces you to put one ball on the court to try and get alive while opponents have little or no deadness, keep the other ball off the court, by all means, and far away off the court to boot. You want opponents to have to settle for roqueting the danger ball, and not letting them have the spent ball, if you can help it. In this situation blue simply passing on its turn would have been far better than going out on the court as it did. Better still, blue should have gone to a far corner, preferably the SE corner where it would not only be very difficult for red to pick it up after taking black out, it would have a good shot on red should red try to line up at four at the end of its turn. (This is actually an advanced play that is part of chase theory, which will be discussed at greater length in the advanced puzzler section.) |