Grant's Puzzles - Backgammon Position of the Week

 How should White play 41 here? You have two of Blacks checkers on the bar, so you will win a lot of games and a lot of Gammons. But do not be content, you want to choose the move that wins the most games and the most Gammons. Consider 13/9 10/9: Although this makes a point, this is the move that you would make if you were attempting to prime. But you are blitzing here not priming and this move fails to bring any more builders into the attack zone. As you are blitzing, you consider carrying on the attack and putting another Black checker on the bar with 8/7 6/2*: Unfortunately, if Black rolls a 2, they will hit your blot. Also, do you really care if they make your 2 point? If Black makes your 2 point, they end up playing a Backgame and Backgames can be very treacherous. You also lose a lot of Gammons when you play a Backgame and you lose, especially the deepest Backgame of all the 12 Backgame. Consider 24/23 13/9: The points you really want to make your 5 and 4 points. This move

 How should White play 32 here? I remember reading Marty Storer’s excellent two-volume book series “Backgammon Praxis” which analysed in depth three matches of Malcolm Davis’s. In those books Malcolm Davis made comments about the plays that he had chosen. I remember one play where he said “I was totally confused and had no idea what to do”. That gave me hope that a player who won more than 75 major tournaments could still find positions where he was not sure of the correct move and was also confused. You have a lot of different choices about what to do here, so let’s start by considering 23/21* 13/10: The advantage of this play, is you will be ahead in the race by 28 pips after the roll. You have also kept your 3 prime. But you will be hit with any entering 2, as well as any entering 6. You want to avoid giving your opponent good 6’s from the bar. You will also be hit with 51, 41, 31 and 11. 33 and 44 are also very good for Black here. This move just gives Black too many good rolls

 How should White play 53 here? There are no prizes for playing bar/20 with the 5. Consider the move that I expect most players would make, 8/5 with the 3: This move leaves no extra blots, and you might be tempted to make this move as Black does have a stronger board and will hit loose if they roll a 3 or 1. So why is this move wrong? Note that White is behind in the race by 28 pips after the roll. That is a lot of pips, and it means that you cannot win the game by winning the race unless you roll a lot of high doubles. The most likely way that you will win the game is to prime your opponent. In order to prime your opponent, you would really like to make your 7 point, and this does not create a new builder to create your 7 or 9 points, instead it strips your 8 point so that if you rolled 61, although you would make your 7 point, you would have to give up your 8 point to make it. Consider bar/20 13/10: A lot of players would reject this move, because they think that Black will t

 How should White play 43 here? You have two simple choices here, the safe play or the slotting play. If you are going to play safe you should play 15/8: This picks up one of your two most rear checkers and puts it on a point, lowering your blot count to two. A lot of players ask themselves “do I need to make my 5 point to win?” The answer is no, you do not need your 5 point to win and in fact you will win more often with this play than the slotting play. This move is the DMP play that you make when you just want to win. But consider the slotting play of 15/11 8/5: This play wins 3% less games but wins 13% more Gammons. In an unlimited game or at a normal match score, those extra Gammons make it well worth making this play. In an unlimited game you have to win at least twice the extra number of Gammons than the games that you are giving up. Here this means that if you are giving up 3% of games won, then you have to win at least 6% extra Gammons to make it a good trade. So, wh

 How should White play 42 here? You were really hoping for any 5, 41 or 32 to hit Black’s blot on their 5 point. If you had hit their blot, then you would probably pick up at least another blot and when lots of Gammons here. But you have to you let it go, it would have been nice but it didn’t happen. The danger here, is that you think about what could have been rather than focusing on the situation at hand. Not focusing on the current position would lead you to simply play bar/23 8/4: If you make this play, then you are playing a priming game where you are 35 pips ahead in the race. This would not always be bad if your opponent had more checkers behind your prime than you did behind there’s but here you both have only one checker back. If your opponent makes the 5 point, you are in a lot of trouble because your opponent has much more timing than you do. This situation is so bad that your number one priority here has to be to stop your opponent making their 5 point. And you have to st

 How should White play 21 here? In the chouette, I would expect the aggressive players to play 10/8 15/14: This will give you a direct 6 to attack Black’s blot on your 2 point. The problem with this play is that if you do hit loose on your 2 point only 66, 44   and 33 will cover to give you a 6 point board. Black will have a lot of chances to hit that blot before you can cover. You will be giving your opponent a direct target from the bar. But if Black does roll a 2, we will have to either cover the blot on 8 point or move it into our board. After the roll we will be ahead in the race by 13 pips, so we could just start to bring more builders into the zone by playing 15/13 10/9: Now we will have more indirect numbers closer to the action, if Black does not anchor. But this again focuses on attack, and we need to step back and look at the position as a whole. It would be nice to attack if the dice cooperated, but have biggest priority here is to get have back checkers moving and make t

 How should White play 65 here? Whatever you decide to do here, it is important to keep your 21 point anchor. It is your insurance against disaster – here that means not being blitzed and closed out. When this happened over the board, White was confused about what to do, so he figured that he might as well put his opponent on the bar and played 6/1* 13/7: This may put your opponent on the bar, but it gives them a direct shot from the bar at the blot on your 1 point as well as indirect shots. The other problem with this play is that it leaves 3 blots around the board. Even if you are missed, you may not be able to tidy them all up. This play is too big. It would be nice to make a useful point if you are missed, so you consider 13/8 13/7: This does duplicate Blacks 6’s to hit both checkers, but things can go very wrong for you here, just because you are still leaving 2 blots. The more blots you get sent back, the more checkers you will have back. The more checkers you have back,