White – Pips 138 (+59)

Black – Pips 79 (-59)
Black to Play 5-1This position shows White playing a well-timed holding game while Black is struggling to clear his points and get his men home. Black leads in the race by just over 60 pips, so it’s always been highly likely that he’s would have to leave a shot or two unless he rolled a useful set of doubles. Now Black has reached his first key decision point. Out of spares, he can still play safe, but he may not want to.

With the 5-1, Black has just three reasonable plays. Let’s take a look at them.

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(A) Black to play 5-1.

White – Pips 148 (-5)

Black – Pips 153 (+5)
Black to Play 5-1Problem A shows a routine position in an early holding game. Both sides have an anchor, and the race is very close. Black’s position is slightly preferable since more of his checkers are arrayed in front of White’s anchor, and he therefore has better chances of establishing a blockade.

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White – Pips 105 (+6)

Black – Pips 99 (-6)
Black to Play 5-2 read more…

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.

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Last article, we talked about some of the tricky play problems that arise in high anchor positions. This time, we’ll start to look at doubling strategy in these common situations. (Remember, a high anchor game is one where one player has escaped all his back checkers, while his opponent has managed to secure an anchor on the 4-point or 5-point.)

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Next to races, the most common type of position in backgammon is what we call the holding game. Holding games occur when one side escapes his back checkers to the safety of the midpoint or beyond, but the other side (the “defender”) does not. Instead, the defender manages to anchor his two back checkers somewhere in his opponent’s home board.

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