How should White play 42 here? After the roll you will be ahead in the race by 14 pips. You could just play safe and not hit with 9/7 9/5: If you are making this play, you are hoping to roll 65 or any double (except 44) so that you can clear your 12 point immediately. If you do not roll any of those numbers, you will either be destroying your board or leaving a shot. It is far better to be proactive and hit 12/10*. If you do this you could just minimise blots by then playing 10/6: This was the move played over the board. This leaves only two blots, and you have a direct 5 to cover as well as 62, 41, 32, 44 and 22. That is a total of 19 rolls. Note that there are rolls like 43 which break another inner board point to cover, but I will exclude them from the discussion as the next alternative also has rolls that do that. The problem with this play is that if Black hits you, with any one, because they have two checkers on their 18 point, they will have a lot of time to roll a 6 and