As we dicussed in the last article, Backgammon is a game of ability and pure luck. The goal is to shift your chips carefully around the game board to your home board while at the same time your opposition shifts their chips toward their inside board in the opposing direction. With opposing player checkers heading in opposite directions there is going to be conflict and the need for specific strategies at specific times. Here are the two final Backgammon plans to round out your game.
The Priming Game Plan
If the purpose of the blocking plan is to slow down the opponent to shift his chips, the Priming Game strategy is to completely barricade any movement of the opponent by creating a prime – ideally 6 points in a row. The competitor’s checkers will either get hit, or end up in a battered position if he at all tries to escape the wall. The trap of the prime can be setup anywhere between point two and point 11 in your board. After you have successfully constructed the prime to stop the movement of the competitor, your competitor does not even get a chance to toss the dice, and you move your checkers and roll the dice yet again. You will win the game for sure.
The Back Game Technique
The goals of the Back Game strategy and the Blocking Game plan are very similar – to hinder your opponent’s positions hoping to better your odds of succeeding, but the Back Game technique utilizes alternate tactics to do that. The Back Game strategy is commonly utilized when you are far behind your competitor. To play Backgammon with this tactic, you have to hold 2 or more points in table, and to hit a blot late in the game. This tactic is more complex than others to play in Backgammon because it needs careful movement of your pieces and how the checkers are relocated is partly the result of the dice toss.