Bill Robertie

Hit or Not?

Nov 2, 2016 | Backgammon Problems: Early Game

Many backgammon problems boil down to a simple question: hit, or don’t hit. In essence, backgammon is a pretty simple game. In general, you want to make points, and in general, you want to hit.

When you can hit a checker on the other side of the board, gaining both time and racing equity, you almost always want to do so. (The only exceptions occur when the alternative is to make a very strong priming or blocking point on your side.) But when the only possible hit is to hit a blot in your inner board, the choice is more difficult. Now you’re risking a significant loss of race equity if you get hit back, so the hit is rarely automatic. For a hit in your inner board to be correct, one of these two reasons usually applies:

Which point to make?

Oct 6, 2016 | Backgammon Problems: Early Game

Although the first roll of the game is pretty well understood, backgammon gets much more complicated as we get a little deeper into the game and positions get more complex. Both positions in this article occur at the third move, after Black wins the opening roll and White responds. Try your hand at these commonplace and apparently simple situations, and see how you do.

Position 1.

White – Pips 161

Black – Pips 162
Black to Play 4-3

Make a point or hit?

Aug 31, 2016 | Backgammon Problems: Early Game

White – Pips 150

Black – Pips 161
Black to Play 3-1(a) Black to play 3-1.

(b) Black to play 3-2.

Holding Game Doubles, Part 2

Jul 11, 2016 | Backgammon Problems: Holding Game

In some earlier posts we talked about doubling in high anchor games, and looked at some typical positions where White held an anchor on the 5-point and Black was trying to cash in on his racing advantage and bring his last checkers home to victory. All of those positions turned out to be takes.

From those examples, you might conclude that almost any 5-point game was a take, regardless of the race. But it’s not quite that simple. In this article we’ll look at some examples where small modifications to the position can produce big changes in the evaluation.

A Short History of Modern Backgammon

Mar 30, 2016 | Backgammon Generally

If you’re new to backgammon, you might wonder how the game took on the form it has, with many books and websites available and tournaments all over the world. In this post I’ll give you a short history of the growth and development of backgammon since 1920, when the game began to take on its modern form. Enjoy!