Playing safe

Now that we’re done with our survey of the backgammon rules and notation, we can finally start talking about strategy. In this next section, we will go over some general rules of thumb on how to play safely. This will act as our baseline — playing safe turns out to most often be the correct play. Of course, great players know best how to balance risks with rewards and are always assessing alternatives to find when it’s worth playing risky to gain a real advantage. Learning how to do that will take work, and will be covered in great detail in the sections following this one. Before we can get there, we need to learn what the safest plays are.

Next lesson: Don’t play loose in your inner board