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Backgammon Books

A practical way to become a winner at backgammon is to glean instruction from the best players. Some of the backgammon world’s highest awards have written books to assist players both novice and advanced.

A good book by a backgammon expert can provide game-changing information at a reasonable price which players (and would-be players) can absorb at their own pace. The Gammon Press store stocks essential reads by Bill Robertie and Kit Woolsey, along with the works of Bob Wachtel, Peter Bell and others. If you want to improve your backgammon game, this is the place to start.

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Slotting in the Middle Game

May 1, 2021 |

Slotting is an easy idea to understand in the opening. When we slot the 5-point with an opening 2-1, we threaten to make a very strong point while unstacking a big stack. Since our opponent has no board, getting hit is just a minor inconvenience. Although it’s not a hugely correct play (splitting our back men is almost as good), it’s not a hard play to make because the downside seems pretty small.

Slotting in the middle game or the endgame is very different. Now your opponent almost certainly has a reasonable home board, so the cost from being hit is much greater. It’s also unlikely that you still have a stacked position at this point, so unstacking probably isn’t a big goal.

With a hit being more expensive and unstacking not so important, we’ve knocked out two of the three pillars supporting an early slot, and we’re reduced to just one: the value of the point itself. When we slot in the middle game, the point needs to be really important, and the chance of making it cleanly without slotting not so good. There is, however, a new factor affecting a middle game slot: the cube. A slot followed by a miss from your opponent may give you a good double, which in some cases is enough to tip the play in favor of slotting.

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Root Numbers

Apr 15, 2021 |

Cash game, White owns the cube.

White to play 5-1.

Root Numbers

In backgammon, a root number is just a dice throw that damages or destroys your position. We mostly encounter these by accident, when we throw an awkward shot that can’t be played except by wrecking our inner board or leaving a bunch of blots somewhere.

Root numbers don’t always happen by accident, however. Sometimes the only way of saving a hopeless position is to notice that by making a certain play, you can create a few root numbers for your opponent which wouldn’t exist otherwise.

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The Squat Zone

Apr 1, 2021 |

In the 1970s, the New Yorkers invented a term for the new style of backgammon they were playing, a style based upon aggressive hitting and slotting. They called it pure play. The essence of pure play was the willingness to take risks in the race to build a crushing prime quickly. If the plays worked, you had a winning prime. If your opponent got lucky and hit you a few times, you just had to outplay him in the resulting back game/holding game. (Since the top players played these complex positions very well, this was usually no problem.)

Cash game, center cube.

Black to play 3-2.

While they were naming their own style, the New Yorkers also coined a name for the opposite style – the beginner style of playing safe and stacking up your checkers. They called it playing squat.

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Bearing Off Against Contact

Mar 15, 2021 |

Cash game, Black owns a 2-cube.

White to play 4-1.

Back at World Cup VI, in 1998, Kent Goulding and I introduced a ‘Quizgammon’ contest, consisting of a set of 30 problems taken from all phases of the game. Everyone who was interested paid an entry fee of $20 and sat down for an hour with their problems and answer sheet. After everyone handed in their solutions, Kent and I went over the answers and announced the winners.

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Priming Games – Escape or Attack

Mar 1, 2021 |

Money game, White owns the cube.

White to play 4-1.

This position is not difficult but it illustrates a key idea in priming games, whether prime against prime or prime against blitz: Do the hardest thing first, and force your opponent to do a hard thing in reply.

By “hard thing” I mean anything that you are a 70-30 underdog (or worse) to do. Usually this implies anything that must be done and which requires a single number on the dice. When we begin thinking in terms of “doing hard things” and “making our opponent do hard things”, complicated positions can start to look pretty simple.

Here, for instance, it’s clear that Black’s prime will not break. Black has to come in from the bar, which might take a while, after which he has the checkers on the 18-point to move, as well as the checker which just entered and the checker on the midpoint. So to win, White will have to escape his rear checker, and that will require an ace (a “hard thing”) plus a six (another “hard thing”). Since he just threw an ace, he wants to play 24/23 if at all possible. Since he can use the four to make both a 5-point board and a 5-prime, that’s his play. He should move 24/23 and 6/2.

What would it take for White to pass up 24/23 with the ace? In most variations of this position, 24/23 will remain correct, but here’s an example where it’s a mistake:

Position A: White to play 4-1.

Without a 5-point board to give Black something “hard” to do, White doesn’t have the security of moving to the 23-point. Here he has to play 2/1, to keep Black on the bar for some time. After that, either 8/4 or 13/9 are about equal.

 

Priming Games: Action versus Timing

Feb 15, 2021 | ,

 

The next position is an interesting problem with a few non-standard elements. On the one hand, it’s a prime versus prime problem; both sides have 5-point primes, and both sides have some escaping to do. On the other hand, it’s an action play problem. White is on the bar shooting at a couple of blots, and a lot hinges on whether he hits or not next turn.

Money game, center cube, White on roll.

Should White double? What should Black do if White doubles?

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