RE: Interesting question/experiment about value of cube ownership

[Ian Shaw]

MK: This is why I am doing my various experiments. One of which that I had 
previously mentioned in this very thread involves a "mutant cube strategy" of 
doubling at GWC > 50% and taking at GWC > 0%. In that experiment of 20,000 
money games, the mutant won 40.80% of total points against GnuBG 2-ply. Since 
winning the opening roll gives the player GWC > 50%, I ran a variant of the 
above experiment making the mutant also double if it wins the opening roll. 
This time, after 20,000 money games the mutant won 45.77% of total points.

These sound similar enough that I'll combine them.  Overall, the mutant 
strategy if doubling as soon as you had an advantage lost 0.1343 points per 
game. Always doubling immediately lost 0.36 ppg. So, not doubling until you are 
winning appears to be a better strategy than always doubling. But, as you 
expected, the mutant strategy isn't as good as the current cube algorithm, 
which loses 0 ppg.

However, I don’t think 40000 trials is enough. Your strategy has huge variance. 
Have you calculated the statistical significance as suggested by one of the 
earlier responders? I recall that he suggested a similar experiment with lower 
variance to reduce the required number of trials, but you didn't want to try 
it.  I can't find that post at the moment, so I don’t know how many trials he 
calculated, but since your cube can get very high you would inevitably need 
more trials.