As we dicussed in the last article, Backgammon is a game of skill and good luck. The aim is to shift your checkers safely around the game board to your inside board and at the same time your opposing player moves their chips toward their home board in the opposing direction. With opposing player chips shifting in opposite directions there is going to be conflict and the need for specific strategies at specific times. Here are the 2 final Backgammon techniques to round out your game.
The Priming Game Plan
If the aim of the blocking strategy is to hamper the opponents ability to move their checkers, the Priming Game strategy is to absolutely barricade any movement of the opponent by assembling a prime – ideally 6 points in a row. The opponent’s pieces will either get bumped, or result a battered position if he ever tries to escape the wall. The trap of the prime can be setup anyplace between point 2 and point 11 in your game board. As soon as you’ve successfully assembled the prime to block the activity of your competitor, the competitor does not even get a chance to toss the dice, and you move your checkers and toss the dice again. You will be a winner for sure.
The Back Game Plan
The aims of the Back Game tactic and the Blocking Game tactic are similar – to harm your competitor’s positions with hope to boost your odds of winning, but the Back Game technique uses different techniques to do that. The Back Game plan is commonly used when you’re far behind your opponent. To compete in Backgammon with this strategy, you have to hold 2 or more points in table, and to hit a blot (a single piece) late in the game. This tactic is more challenging than others to employ in Backgammon seeing as it needs careful movement of your pieces and how the chips are moved is partially the outcome of the dice toss.