Backgammon Game

Backgammon strategy

The object of backgammon is to race home first with all your pieces--an easy goal to understand. What's harder to appreciate is that players cannot expect to win the race unless they work toward intermediate goals along the way, such as making key points.
There are basically three ways in which a game of backgammon can be played, or sometimes a mixture of two or all three ways; the running game, the blocking game, or the back game. Which game you play is determined by the rolls of the dice, and how you want to play depending on your opponents moves.
The running game:
This involves getting your counters round the board and bearing them off, faster than your opponent. As long as you can avoid leaving blots and hopefully throw higher than your opponent, you will win the game.
The running game is easier to play, and easier to understand, but some points to remember are:
try to avoid leaving blots
bring your counters round gradually, try to avoid leaving counters "stranded" in your opponents home board
The blocking game:
This involves trying to block your opponents in your inner board, therefore giving you time to bring in your counters into your inner board and bear off, maybe even scoring a gammon or backgammon in the process!
With at least two points in your opponent's home board, especially deep points that are close together, you can play a "back game" in which you try not to hit the opponent, and in fact hope to have your own checkers hit to slow down your own progress. Your strategy is to let the opponent build a prime, force the opponent to run out of good moves, and then hit the opponent's checkers after the opponent is forced to break up the prime. If your opponent adopts this strategy, your best counter is to avoid hitting any blots. In a back game, you want the opponent to run out of good moves before you do, so that the opponent's prime is also broken up by the time you need to break up yours.
This can be acheived by trying to build a "prime" (pictured right) which consists of making six points in sequence ideally from your 8 point to your 3 point inclusive, this then makes it impossible for your opponent to get out of your home board until your prime is broken.
When building a prime, do so progessively, starting with either your 5 point or your bar point and gradually making the other points as you go, bear in mind though that this might involve leaving possible blots in your inner or outer board in the early stages of the game.
The back game:
If a player finds through a succession of poor throws, that he is at a marked disadvantage early on in the game, it may be to his advantage to reverse his tactics and play a back game.In order to do this he keeps his counters back as much as he can and spreads them out in a series of blots. The idea of this is that the opponent will hit the blots, and so a number of the player's counters will re-enter into the opponents inner table. There they can impede the progress of the opponents counters and are poised to hit any counters that occur in the opponents inner or outer table. This is a difficult game to play, but if played well can put the game back in the player's favour. As you will find out, this seemingly logical approach is not the best strategy.

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