Position 426

 How should White play 54 here:

After the roll you will be ahead in the race by 72 pips. I always encourage players to learn how to Pip count, as so many decisions are helped by knowing the pip count. Here just noticing that Black has 5 checkers back while you have zero checkers back should tell you that you are way ahead in the race.

Because you are so far ahead in the race it is tempting just to play safe with 13/4:

But you need to think about what will happen here. Black will enter and slowly improve their board. You want to clear your 13 point, and the best time to do that is before Black builds a board. That entitles us to make our risky play to achieve an advantage here.

Also, the fact that Black is on the bar, means that you should be making a big play.

The move made over the board, was the unstacking 13/8 13/9:

Unfortunately, this creates a mini stack of 4 checkers on your 8 point. Even 13/4 is better than this move. It is good to unstack your 13 point, but this overdoes it.

Consider 13/9 6/1*:

Your real problem here is Black’s checker on your 1 point. It is acting like a rearguard or sniper, so you cannot play safe by putting checkers on your 3 or 2 points. You would like to force Black’s checker on your 1 point forward, so hitting 6/1* is a good move. You may be worried about being hit, but even if you are hit, you will still be ahead in the race by a significant number of pips. If Black hits you here with their largest hitting number of 51, you will still be ahead by 42 pips.

Black only has a one point board, and only 6 checkers in the zone.

When a player has 2 checkers on the bar, and their opponent has a 2 point board, then they enter both checkers less than 50% of the time.

The trick here is to identify what your highest priority is. If you think of this in terms of gameplan, you cannot prime your opponent or blitz them because they have their 20 point anchor. Therefore, your gameplan is racing, and just getting all your checkers home, and Black’s checker on your 1 point is your highest priority.