Black – Pips 99 (-6)
Black to Play 5-2
Leave Your Anchor or Not?
Black – Pips 99 (-6)
Black to Play 5-2
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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Black – Pips 99 (-6)
Black to Play 5-2
Bearing in Against the Ace-Point
When bearing in against an ace-point or other low anchor game, you generally have two goals in mind. The first is safety; you want to create formations that are less likely to leave blots as you bear off. The second is winning a gammon; you’d like to maximize your gammon chances if you can.
It’s usually good practice to look at the gammon chances first. If your gammon chances are either very large or very small, then it’s not likely that any play you make will affect them enough to matter. In those situations, you just make the long-run safe play, whatever that might be. But if the gammon is up for grabs (which in practice means gammon chances in the 15% to 40% range) then you may need to look for riskier plays which win more gammons at the cost of some extra losing chances. Typically, these plays involve piling checkers on the 6-point and 5-point, hoping to hold the prime as long as possible, or bearing off checkers rather than clearing a point.
Handling 6-Primes
A full six-prime is the most powerful formation in backgammon. A checker trapped behind a six-point prime can’t escape. To win, the trapped player has to somehow force his opponent to break his prime.
Although building a full prime is the strategic goal in many positions, we don’t actually see too many six-primes over the board. Often, the mere threat of making a six-prime will force a double and a drop. Although six-primes aren’t common, they are governed by their own set of strategic principles. Let’s take a look at a few.
Playing Efficiently
Black – Pips 150 (+13)
Black to Play 4-1
Evaluating Candidate Plays
While many plays in backgammon are virtually forced, other situations may leave you with five or more reasonable alternatives. This is especially true of doubles, where the number of possibilities may be even higher.
In such situations, you need a systematic approach to finding the best play. Most players react haphazardly in these situations. They look for a good play, think about it for a few moments, and only look for a second or third play if the first play doesn’t look appealing. If the second play doesn’t look good after a moment or two, they may bounce back to their first play, or cast around for another. The result is a chaotic decision process that may well overlook the best play.
Fighting Stacked Positions
One common dilemma that players routinely face is that of hitting a tasty blot or making a strong blocking point. In very general terms, hitting the blot is most likely right. Hitting both gains ground in the race and prevents your opponent from improving his structure, which in normal positions will outweigh other choices.
As your opponent’s position becomes stacked and stripped, however, hitting blots recedes in importance while building blocking points grows. The reason has to do with timing. A stacked position can be repaired, but typically some time is required. A game with hitting and recirculating of checkers provides exactly that sort of time. A prime, however, tends to shorten the game, as a single bad roll can destroy the weaker player’s position in an instant. By building a prime, the aggressor can accelerate the crisis point to his advantage.
