The Basics of Backgammon Strategies – Part 2

Thursday, 6. July 2023

As we have dicussed in the last article, Backgammon is a game of skill and luck. The goal is to shift your chips safely around the game board to your home board and at the same time your opponent moves their chips toward their inside board in the opposing direction. With opposing player pieces moving in opposing directions there is going to be conflict and the need for specific tactics at particular times. Here are the 2 final Backgammon tactics to round out your game.

The Priming Game Plan

If the aim of the blocking strategy is to slow down the opponent to shift their checkers, the Priming Game strategy is to absolutely stop any activity of the opposing player by creating a prime – ideally 6 points in a row. The competitor’s chips will either get bumped, or result a bad position if he/she at all attempts to leave the wall. The trap of the prime can be established anyplace between point 2 and point 11 in your game board. Once you’ve successfully assembled the prime to block the activity of the competitor, the opponent doesn’t even get a chance to toss the dice, and you move your pieces and toss the dice again. You’ll be a winner for sure.

The Back Game Technique

The aims of the Back Game plan and the Blocking Game tactic are similar – to hinder your competitor’s positions in hope to improve your chances of succeeding, but the Back Game strategy relies on different techniques to achieve that. The Back Game plan is often used when you’re far behind your opponent. To participate in Backgammon with this tactic, you have to hold 2 or more points in table, and to hit a blot (a single checker) late in the game. This technique is more difficult than others to employ in Backgammon because it needs careful movement of your chips and how the checkers are moved is partially the result of the dice toss.

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