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Cash game. White owns the cube. White on move.
White to play 2-2.
This problem is an example of a somewhat rare breed, a true prime against prime game. Although we talk about priming games a lot, real priming battle don’t arise all that often. Much more common are positions where one side has a prime and the other just a loose connection of points, or games where one side has a prime but the other is conducting a strong attack.
Cash game. White owns the cube. White on move.
White to play 2-2.
First, let’s try to orient ourselves. White looked like he might get stuck in some sort of miserable ace-point game, but has just thrown a fantastic shot, 2-2, which is so good it actually lets him pursue a few different options. In backgammon, it’s good technique to try to list all the reasonable plays before you start analyzing the merits of any one play. With that goal in mind, let’s see what we can find for candidate plays.
Cash game. White owns the cube. White on roll.
Should White double? If White doubles, should Black take or drop?
In this position, White took an early cube based on his ownership of Black’s 2-point and the fact that Black still had a checker left to escape. After that, the game developed almost perfectly for him. His deuce-point game caused Black to bear in awkwardly, while White’s front position came together and prevented Black’s back checker from escaping. After Black’s last roll (an awkward 4-4), White finally has a clear advantage, although he still trails by 47 pips in the race. Is this the right time to double?
Cash game. Black owns the cube. White on move.
White to play 4-3.
Something a little different this time. Identify the worst of these three plays:
(a) 11/7 5/2
(b) 11/4
(c) 7/4 6/2.
Cash game. Black owns the cube. White on move.
White to play 3-3.
White’s off to a good start in this position. He’s already made a three-point board, whereas Black hasn’t yet made a new point, and White has hit a blot, leaving him 17 pips ahead in the race. Black, meanwhile, is still scrambling to make an anchor. Last turn White offered an aggressive double, and Black quite reasonably took.
Now White throws one of his best shots, 3-3, and has three game plans:
(a) The consolidation play with 14/8 13/10(2), leaving him firmly in control with a nice edge, or
(b) Consolidation plus a little attack with 24/21 14/8 6/3*, or
(c) All-out blitz with either 13/4*/1* or 13/4* 6/3*.
What’s the right idea?
Here’s the general approach for handling these sorts of positions. If your opponent has no structure, and the cube has already been turned (activating gammons), then the blitz dominates any safe game plan. If the blitz fails, White can just drop back into some sort of holding game where he holds a slight edge. If White makes one of the solid plays, he’ll reach those holding games anyway since almost all of Black’s rolls will anchor somewhere. White will be slightly better off if he goes for the holding game right away, because of his racing lead, but the difference is small. But if the blitz succeeds White wins a gammon, and with the cube already turned that’s a quick four points and a huge swing.
As Black acquires more structure, the blitz drops in value. If we alter Black’s position and give him his 5-point (as though he had rolled a 3-1 at some time), then the blitz plays are only slightly superior to the consolidating plays. If we give Black two extra points, say the 5-point and the 3-point, then the blitz plays become pretty big errors and the consolidating plays becomes correct. (There’s very little difference between Play (a) and Play (b) no matter what structure Black has.)
So we’re blitzing. Next question: what’s the right way to blitz?
What makes this problem especially interesting is that White has two distinct ways to blitz: the obvious 13/4*/1* and the obviously riskier 13/4* 6/3*. Problems with two plausible blitzing moves are rare, but we can choose between them by noticing that the double-hit with 13/4*/1* exposes only one blot in the board, and a hit may only allow Black to get an ace-point game later. If White hits on the 3-point and 4-point with two checkers and Black then throws a three or four, he may get a good anchor quickly. The two blitzing plays are close (and far superior to the non-blitzing plays) but the play that exposes only one inside blot is slightly better.
Both positions: Cash game. Center cube. White on move.
(a) White to play 5-4.
(b) White to play 6-2.
In Problem 140A, White has no way to safety the blot on his 16-point. In fact, he can’t avoid creating a second blot as well. He has a few reasonable plays: 13/4, 16/11 13/9, 16/11 6/2, 13/8 13/9, and 6/1* 13/9. None of these plays look terribly strong. How should he decide among them?
