Is the answer obvious? [fighting rikachu]

We all know -- or at least should know -- that, in most situations in which you can't afford to lose anyANY more dice, (and all your dice are safe before the reroll, there's no shadow dice involved, etc,) you're best off rerolling the largest one -- i.e. the probability it will roll high enough to be safe is best.

But what if you can afford to lose ONE die and still win. This just came up for me today in the game below. If I lose any one die, I win, but if I lose any two dice, I lose.

option 1: roll the 10-sided die first. its chance of survival is best, and if it does get captured,
the smaller die (the 8-sided die, no doubt) will at least be rerolling in a safer environment with fewer 1-sided dice to capture it.

option 2: roll the 8-sided die first. it's more likely to get captured, but at least then, the 10-sided die will be left for the last roll or two, with relatively the best chance of survivial.

option 3: it doesn't matter, the chance of success is the same either way. [of course, assuming you aren't so foolish as to reroll the 6 sided die]

it's actually not too hard to do the math on this -- but it's worthwhile to try to intuit the answer first, and THEN do the math (if you think it's necessary) .

Tournament #13739: revenge on the stats tournament for lephantman13 Current Round: Round 1. (organized by glassonion)

Lephantman13's ten worst buttons using which he has played at least 4 games. If you are lephantman13, join this tournament immediately and choose your button as you like. Other players: please hold off on joining until Monday night (U.S. Eastern) so the named player has a chance to join. When you do join, you *must* choose your button randomly.

Skills in this game: Option, Y Swing
Player: ElihuRoot *Dead Dude* *Fanatic*
Your Button Man: Farrell (10 12 6/20 6/20 8/12) Score: 32 (8 sides) Rounds Won/Lost/Tied: 0 / 0 / 0 (Out of 3 wins)
Your Captured Dice: Y Swing 20-sided die

10-sided die	Option 6/20 (with 6 sides)	Option 8/12 (with 8 sides)		Option 6/20 (with 6 sides)
8	6	7		3 Captured last turn
1-sided die	1-sided die	1-sided die	1-sided die
1	1	1	1

Opponent: irilyth *Poisonous Turtle* *Silver Medal in Men's 100 Meter Dash*
Button Man: Rikachu (1 1 1 1 Y) Score: 20 (-8 sides) Rounds Won/Lost/Tied: 0 / 0 / 0
Captured Dice: 12-sided die, Option 6/20 6-sided die

Select an attack: Power Attack Skill Attack

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