The Essential Basics of Backgammon Game Plans – Part 2

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As we dicussed in the last article, Backgammon is a game of talent and pure luck. The aim is to move your chips carefully around the game board to your home board and at the same time your opposition shifts their chips toward their inside board in the opposite direction. With opposing player checkers moving in opposite directions there is going to be conflict and the need for specific techniques at particular times. Here are the last 2 Backgammon plans to round out your game.

The Priming Game Strategy

If the goal of the blocking tactic is to slow down the opponent to shift their chips, the Priming Game strategy is to absolutely barricade any activity of the opposing player by creating a prime – ideally 6 points in a row. The competitor’s chips will either get hit, or end up in a bad position if he/she at all tries to leave the wall. The ambush of the prime can be built anywhere between point two and point 11 in your half of the board. Once you’ve successfully built the prime to block the activity of the competitor, the competitor doesn’t even get to roll the dice, that means you move your checkers and roll the dice again. You’ll be a winner for sure.

The Back Game Technique

The goals of the Back Game technique and the Blocking Game technique are very similar – to hurt your competitor’s positions hoping to better your chances of succeeding, but the Back Game strategy uses different techniques to do that. The Back Game technique is generally utilized when you’re far behind your opponent. To play Backgammon with this plan, you need to control two or more points in table, and to hit a blot late in the game. This tactic is more difficult than others to employ in Backgammon seeing as it requires careful movement of your pieces and how the chips are relocated is partly the result of the dice toss.