The Essential Basics of Backgammon Tactics – Part Two

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As we have dicussed in the last article, Backgammon is a game of skill and luck. The aim is to shift your chips safely around the board to your home board and at the same time your opposing player shifts their chips toward their inner board in the opposite direction. With opposing player pieces shifting in opposing directions there is bound to be conflict and the need for particular strategies at specific instances. Here are the last two Backgammon techniques to round out your game.

The Priming Game Tactic

If the goal of the blocking tactic is to hamper the opponents ability to shift his chips, the Priming Game tactic is to completely block any movement of the opposing player by building a prime – ideally 6 points in a row. The competitor’s checkers will either get bumped, or result a damaged position if he/she ever tries to escape the wall. The trap of the prime can be established anyplace between point 2 and point eleven in your board. As soon as you’ve successfully constructed the prime to prevent the activity of your opponent, the opponent doesn’t even get a chance to roll the dice, that means you move your pieces and roll the dice again. You will win the game for sure.

The Back Game Plan

The aims of the Back Game strategy and the Blocking Game tactic are similar – to hurt your competitor’s positions with hope to boost your chances of winning, however the Back Game technique uses different techniques to achieve that. The Back Game technique is generally employed when you are far behind your competitor. To play Backgammon with this technique, you have to control 2 or more points in table, and to hit a blot (a single checker) late in the game. This plan is more challenging than others to employ in Backgammon seeing as it requires careful movement of your pieces and how the chips are relocated is partially the outcome of the dice toss.