The Essential Basics of Backgammon Strategies – Part 2

Read more about the
Las Vegas 2024 Super
Bowl Streaker!

As we dicussed in the previous article, Backgammon is a casino game of skill and pure luck. The goal is to shift your chips carefully around the board to your home board and at the same time your opponent moves their checkers toward their inside board in the opposing direction. With opposing player chips shifting in opposite directions there is going to be conflict and the requirement for particular tactics at particular instances. Here are the last two Backgammon strategies to complete your game.

The Priming Game Strategy

If the aim of the blocking tactic is to slow down the opponent to shift his pieces, the Priming Game strategy is to completely barricade any activity of the opponent by building a prime – ideally 6 points in a row. The competitor’s pieces will either get hit, or end up in a bad position if he/she ever tries to leave the wall. The ambush of the prime can be established anyplace between point two and point 11 in your half of the board. As soon as you’ve successfully built the prime to block the movement of the competitor, your opponent doesn’t even get a chance to toss the dice, that means you move your pieces and roll the dice again. You’ll be a winner for sure.

The Back Game Tactic

The objectives of the Back Game tactic and the Blocking Game tactic are very similar – to harm your opponent’s positions in hope to improve your odds of winning, however the Back Game strategy uses different techniques to achieve that. The Back Game technique is generally used when you are far behind your opponent. To play Backgammon with this technique, you need to control 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 use in Backgammon seeing as it requires careful movement of your pieces and how the chips are relocated is partially the outcome of the dice roll.