Point on head

In backgammon, if given the option, it’s usually better to do two good things than only one good thing. The strongest example of this principle is if you can make an inner board point while also hitting one of your opponent’s checkers. This is known as “pointing on” or “pointing on head.”

Let’s adjust the final position from our most recent lesson on anchoring, to allow us to point on our opponent’s head:

This position is identical to the last one, but we moved Gary’s split checker from our 3-pt to our 4-pt. Now, making the 4-pt is a better play than making the golden anchor by far. Even though the 20-pt is preferable to the 4-pt, the combination of owning the 4-pt and putting one of Gary’s checkers on the roof is way too strong.

There are broad benefits to such an aggressive play, such as taking away half of Gary’s roll and thus preventing him from building his board, or the increased chance of him rolling a dancing number. I think it would be hard to build intuition for which combination of these unspecific benefits is stronger or weaker than building an anchor of our own. A crystal clear explanation emerges when we look at the next roll from Gary’s perspective. If we don’t hit him on the 4-pt, he just needs to roll a 3 to make an advanced anchor; if we do hit while making an inner board point, he can only make an advanced anchor if he rolls 54. His anchor-making numbers go from 14 to just 2! So, perhaps we’re down an anchor by foregoing it, but he’s down one as well, in addition to all the general benefits of hitting and having a stronger home board.

If given a chance to point on head, it is nearly always correct. Just like making the 5-pt or anchoring up, pointing on head should be an automatic play. The remaining challenge, then, is what to do when your dice offer you several of these options and you need to choose which one to play… but that would be a great problem to have!

Next lesson: Opening rolls