Author: Orad Reshef

We’ve almost reached the end of our course. At this point, you have learned the basics of checker play, cube action, how to adjust to the score, and so on. You’re probably a fairly strong player! There’s still so much to learn… but most of it is fairly challenging to parse. You need to explore…

While we’re on the topic of canonical backgammon positions that every good player should know, let’s discuss a few more. The first is the Dream Position: When closing out your opponent, you want your spare checkers to land on the 6-, 5-, and 4-pts. This will allow you to keep your board closed out for…

So we closed out one of Gary’s checkers and have started bearing off. We think we have a pretty good shot at a gammon, but we aren’t sure how hard we need to work to earn it. Should we be greedy and take off 2 checkers at all costs, at the risk of a bit…

Throughout this course, we have learned many rules of thumb to help guide our play. We’ve also repeatedly cautioned against blindly applying them, carefully pointing out that there are exceptions to every rule. Magriel’s theorem is different. In his “bible of Backgammon,” Paul Magriel, the godfather of modern backgammon, states that: [In non-contact positions,] it may…

Having learned how to identify the optimal bearoff positions for 2 and 3 checkers, you might be interested in learning what to do with 4 checkers! Well, I don’t know that, but I do know the optimal position for 15 checkers! It was actually formally calculated in the early 90s using early computer software. The…

Following our lesson on the optimal placement for the last 2 checkers during bearoff, you might be wondering what a good strategy is for 3 checkers. There’s a great trick, developed by Stuart Thomson, that works in most situations: the High-Mid-Low trick. We start with the checkers on the 6-, 5-, and 4-pts. Let’s call…