counting exercise

Does devious have any chance of winning in this position? Or even coming out with a tie? What should he do?

what's the best move?

 I'm probably going to lose this round no matter what, but what is irilyth's best move to minimize my chances of survival?

You know, of course, that he has to take my poison to win, and so he can't afford to lose 18 sides. But should he capture my poison with his I(10), with a 40% chance of being captured -- and with the I(8) almost certain to be lost after that -- or is it better to capture with the X=20, with only a 25% chance of being captured (though if it is captured, he's lost for sure.)

It's the almost above that makes me pause. How likely would it be to escape if the I(10) rolled low enough to be captured? The die that rerolls when capturing the I(10) would have to roll a 1, which happens with probability 20% or 25%, AND the I(8) would have to roll higher than my only other remaining die, which would have value 2 or 4.  This doesn't sound like it's enough to trim that 40% chance of the I(10) being captured into a less than 25% chance of losing.

turbo-swing puzzle

Another unpublished one, from four years ago.
Why did I save it? It's unusual that it's taken from a game in which I wasn't playing. 

I'm not sure what I meant to ask about it. The position is interesting, though, given the closeness of the game and the turbo-swing poisons. S. almost certainly wants to avoid rerolling the (10), but there are two targets for the turbo psz and they both make some sense. And what size to make the turbo?

y

is this round over?

(this is an old, unpublished question. I don't know that it's deep, or particularly interesting -- there must have been a reason I  didn't publish it back when I saved it, though maybe it was because I wanted to wait until the game was over, then forgot about it. Anyway, maybe it's of some interest)

I've wrapped this up -- or have I? Does i. have any moves at all with any chance of winning at all?

go big go home puzzle

I've been distracted from this and haven't posted since last December; but it would be a shame not to post at all in 2021.

Anyway, this round was part of the "go big or go home" tournament, in which the goal is not to conventionally win, but to achieve the highest possible score in one round. In any case, nkmcalli has already won this round -- (and in a prevous round achieved 99 points!)  but what should she do to maximize her chances of exceeding 100 on this round?

quick computation

It's not deep, but this sort of computation comes up all the time and I wonder if there's a shortcut.

I have to capture the (8) -- and I want to maximize my chances of being able to capture the (20) on a subsequent turn -- but which die should I use?  ONE die choice  is obviously wrong, I didn't have to do the math to know that -- but the other two seemed pretty close.  I did do the math and discovered about a 4% difference between them, maybe that's too close to tell by general principles without crunching the numbers -- but one is a bit above 50% and the other a bit below.

not deep, but I was mildly surprised when I did the computation

I have four possible attacks. One of them is obviously suboptimal, but the others all give roughly similar chances of winning. Or do they? Which one is best?