Playing loose 1: safety

We conclude this module on checker play by addressing something that we’ve been teasing since the very beginning of the course — when to play loose in the homeboard. This will be a 3-part series, highlighting different categories of positions where it’s worth the risk to play loose. This concept has the highest potential to introduce disaster into your gameplay, which is why it was saved for last. However, by the end of the series, we will have graduated from intermediate and will have firmly started to learn advanced concepts.

Sometimes, it’s safer to play loose

On one end of the spectrum, we might choose to play loose because it actually turns out to be safer than the alternatives. In the position below, you have a checker on the bar, and you’ve rolled a 62. The 2 is forced since you must enter from the bar, but how to play the 6?

The natural play would be to play 13/7. In doing so, you’re slotting a point you’d like to make with the hopes of starting a prime ¹. However, a blot on the bar-pt is open to a double shot — 23 shots in total, posing way too high a risk. Instead, playing 8/2 is way safer, despite being loose in our homeboard, leaving only 11 shots.

The position below is similar in that no matter what we choose to play, we are exposing a blot to at least a direct shot:

Probably we want to clean up the blot on the 9-pt, which can only be done using the 2 (9/7). This, again, leaves us with what to do with the 6? We could play 13/7, which exposes the remaining checker on the midpoint to 13 shots (all 1s and 64). Alternatively, as in the previous position, we could play 8/2, which leaves only 11 shots (any ace). It turns out to be even better to hit on the ace-pt (7/1*). By doing so, we are still only exposing our checker to the same 11 shots from aces, but if Gary enters with any other roll, this checker will be free from harm — no need to scramble to cover it like a checker on the 2-pt. And if he enters with a 5, he will dramatically reduce his contact value, as we’ll have an easier time dumping our checkers behind him.

More importantly, the act of hitting itself acts as its own reward. First, there’s always the chance Gary will dance². More likely is that he won’t be able to do anything constructive with only half his roll remaining. For example, if he rolls a 43, he can’t make his 3-pt since he would need to come in off the bar. In part 2 of this series, we will feature more positions where the hit itself motivates the loose play.

1. In fact, if the Gary’s backcheckers were both still anchored on the ace-pt, 13/7 would be the right play despite leaving a few more shots! ↩︎
2. OK, I’ll admit, it’s not very likely to dance on a 1-point board. But, it happens! When it does, it’s called the “boxcar bonus.” I think that’s a cute name — double sixes are also called boxcars, and this dance would definitely feel like a bonus, since you weren’t reasonably expecting a free roll. ↩︎

Next lesson: Playing loose 2: choose violence