Walter Trice – Strategy Articles

How Shall I Win This Game? - by Walter Trice - 4 July 2006 - Backgammon is a complex game. In the course of analyzing a position and deciding on a play it is easy to get lost in the details – the counting of pips and shots, the comparisons with reference positions and other factors. Those factors influence the stereotyped decisions about whether to hit, split, slot, point, break, jump, run, or anchor. One may lose track of the big picture, or even forget that it exists.

Desperate Measures by Walter Trice - 11 July 2006 - Countless games of backgammon are lost unnecessarily by players who simply do not try to win. As in everyday life, fortune favors those who expect it, plan for it, and welcome it when it arrives. The planning is the main thing, but it is impossible to plan for events that one has not already imagined. Problem 1 shows Red in a situation that might look hopeless at first glance. Five checkers are stuck on the ace point behind a five-prime.

Prime Development by Walter Trice - 18 July 2006 - Five Problems, One Solution - In each case below, the best play has a common solution. The rollouts for the five positions appear at the end of the article.  

On Sniping by Walter Trice - 25 July 2006 - Sometimes the decision is trivial: a player with a big lead in the race will almost always want to break contact if he can. Conversely the player losing the race may be able to hold an anchor at no cost, in which case he usually should.   Many of the interesting plays in this category leave a blot behind. The position of such a blot, alone, exposed, and cut off from friendly forces, has always led me to think of him as a “sniper.” The analogy is imperfect. Unlike his military counterpart...

Primes Versus Blots by Walter Trice - 1 August 2006 - Positions in which both sides are trying to contain a single blot with a prime, constitute the simplest prime versus prime pattern. They deserve study because they illuminate the general problem of prime versus prime strategy.

Contact and the Race by Walter Trice - 8 August 2006 - One of the most frequently cited principles of backgammon strategy is to try to play a racing game if you are ahead in the race, but to try to “mix it up” and hit a blot somehow if you are behind in the race. This is an extremely useful principle, and it is a factor in many checker-play decisions, even in complex situations where it seems unlikely that the game can turn into a pure race for many rolls. But like all generalizations about the game it needs to...

More Contact Problems by Walter Trice - 15 August 2006 - The single most common strategic decision in backgammon is whether to intensify the conflict between the opposing armies of checkers, or to try to reduce contact and emphasize the racing aspects of the game plan. I think of checker-play problems in which this factor is the most important feature as ‘contact problems.’ Last week’s column presented a rather tricky set of variations on a single such problem. This time we’ll look at a more varied set of middle-game contact problems.

Endgame Planning by Walter Trice - 22 August 2006 - Long-range planning doesn’t stop in the endgame. A player holding an anchor in a defensive position, with limited choices from roll to roll, still needs to be acutely aware of the different game plans that may become available to him. Often you’ll see opponents (not yourself, hopefully!) play almost at random with their spare checkers outside the zone of contact, or else make semi-automatic, thoughtless plays that could have been rejected out of hand if just a little thought had been given to the needs of the position. But just as...

What to Do When Nothing is Happening by Walter Trice - 29 August 2006 - As we saw in our previous article, it is quite possible for a game to be decided by a play that might easily be dismissed as insignificant. When you are waiting and hoping for a lucky break in a game that you are probably going to lose, it can be difficult to muster up the energy necessary for maximizing your chances. Often the problems involve subtle details of checker-distribution and flexibility. But these details, in the extreme cases, can make for very large differences in equity.

Two Blots by Walter Trice - 5 September 2006 - Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just move your checkers to where they would be most effective, without having to worry about getting a blot hit? Alas, most of the time backgammon cannot be played this way, and short-term safety ranks prominently among the tactical priorities. Sometimes, though, positions come up in which caution may be set aside for the moment. It is important to recognize these opportunities and take advantage of them. One type is very simple and easy to spot: when your opponent has two blots in his...