When up in the race, race

Even with all of this discussion about anchors, primes, and board strength, at its core, backgammon is a race. The competing priorities present in any given position can make it hard to see the forest through the trees. Oftentimes, decisions merely boil down to the race: if you’re ahead in the pip count, just run. Just as importantly, if you aren’t, don’t.

Consider the position below:

Gary has built a scary 4-prime with enough checkers to blitz your blot on the 23-pt. Thankfully, we’ve rolled a great running number which can not only take our lone backchecker away from enemy territory, but can bring it to safety on the 16-pt (23/16). Alternatively, we can use this roll to neatly clean up the blot on the 8-pt by making the bar-point (13/7, 8/7), which has the added benefit of blocking the checkers on the 1-pt. Which play should we make?

Looking at the pipcount, we lead by 6 pips before the roll, and 13 after it. As we are ahead in the race, we should lean into our advantage and just race by safetying our blot on the 23-pt. With a race lead, if we can manage to bring all of our checkers home while avoiding any contact, we are favorites to win.

Contrast with the following position, which is similar to the previous one, except we have moved two of our checkers from the 6-point to the mid-point:

This adjustment cost us 14 pips in the race, and now, instead of leading the race, we are trailing by 8 pips. We could still run, but that game plan doesn’t favor us anymore. Gary would love for each of us to quietly shuffle our checkers past each other this way. Instead, we want to hang back and prime him. Here, the right play is to make the blocking 7-pt.

Next lesson: Build your board