As discussed in the last lesson, you want to avoid leaving lone checkers (blots) in your home board within striking distance of your opponent’s checkers on the 1-pt. But the goal of the game requires you to bring your checkers into your home board! How can you do that safely? The answer is to make points to act as landing spots for your spare checkers. These inner board points turn out to be assets in many parts of your game, not just when bearing in.
As you play more backgammon, you will start to instinctively see what points can be made with any given roll. It’s admittedly a bit challenging when you’re starting out. Here are a few tricks to get you started in the early game.
Above is an image of the starting position. On the 6-pt and 8-pt you have 2 stacks of checkers that can be used to make inner board points. The 8-pt and 6-pt are 2 pips away, so any roll with a difference of 2 between the dice can make an inner board point. For example, rolling a 31 (3 – 1 = 2) makes the 5-pt (31: 8/5, 6/5), a 42 makes the 4-pt (42: 8/4, 6/4), etc. These moves can be used as early as the opening roll!
After making the 5-pt, as above, if you absolutely must bear in a checker safely and you’ve rolled a 62, you can easily do it: 13/7/5.
Another “free” point that can be made on the starting board is the 7-pt when you roll a 61. Here you play 13/7, 8/7:
The last free-point-making method is to make use of your double rolls1. For example, a roll of 22 is a point-making machine, making both the 4-pt and the 11-pt:
Here, we have the double benefit of unstacking the heavy 6- and 13-pts. Now, instead of just waiting for action in those large piles, those checkers are being put to good use blocking your opponent and acting as safe landing spots for your own checkers. When in doubt, using doubles to produce points from the heavy stacks is an efficient use of checkers.
Further reading:
- A Mochy video where he teaches all of the opening moves. You might as well learn the ones that haven’t been mentioned in this article!
- A reminder that doubles can’t be used as opening rolls, as the opening roll is determined by each player rolling a single die. ↩︎
Next lesson: Avoid direct shots
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