The Basics of Backgammon Strategies – Part 2
As we dicussed in the previous article, Backgammon is a game of ability and good luck. The goal is to shift your chips carefully around the game board to your inside board and at the same time your opposition shifts their checkers toward their inside board in the opposing direction. With competing player checkers heading in opposing directions there is bound to be conflict and the need for specific tactics at particular times. Here are the last two Backgammon techniques to round out your game.
The Priming Game Strategy
If the purpose of the blocking tactic is to slow down the opponent to move her checkers, the Priming Game tactic is to absolutely stop any movement of the opposing player by constructing a prime – ideally 6 points in a row. The competitor’s pieces will either get bumped, or end up in a bad position if he/she at all tries to escape the wall. The ambush of the prime can be established anyplace between point two and point eleven in your game board. Once you’ve successfully built the prime to block the activity of the opponent, your competitor does not even get to toss the dice, and you move your chips and toss the dice yet again. You’ll be a winner for sure.
The Back Game Technique
The goals of the Back Game technique and the Blocking Game plan are very similar – to hurt your competitor’s positions in hope to improve your odds of succeeding, but the Back Game plan uses different tactics to do that. The Back Game tactic is frequently used when you’re far behind your competitor. To compete in Backgammon with this technique, you need to hold two or more points in table, and to hit a blot (a single piece) late in the game. This plan is more challenging than others to employ in Backgammon because it requires careful movement of your pieces and how the checkers are moved is partly the outcome of the dice toss.