Backgammon Tricks

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As we dicussed in the previous article, Backgammon is a game of skill and pure luck. The aim is to move your pieces safely around the game board to your home board and at the same time your opposition moves their chips toward their home board in the opposing direction. With opposing player chips moving in opposite directions there is bound to be conflict and the need for particular tactics at particular times. Here are the two final Backgammon tactics to round out your game.

The Priming Game Tactic

If the aim of the blocking plan is to slow down the opponent to move her checkers, the Priming Game strategy is to absolutely barricade any activity of the opposing player by building a prime – ideally 6 points in a row. The competitor’s chips will either get hit, or result a bad position if he at all attempts to escape the wall. The trap of the prime can be built anyplace between point two and point 11 in your board. As soon as you’ve successfully assembled the prime to prevent the movement of the competitor, your opponent does not even get to roll the dice, and you move your pieces and roll the dice yet again. You will win the game for sure.

The Back Game Strategy

The goals of the Back Game strategy and the Blocking Game plan are similar – to hurt your competitor’s positions hoping to improve your odds of succeeding, but the Back Game plan uses seperate tactics to achieve that. The Back Game technique is commonly used when you are far behind your opponent. To compete in Backgammon with this strategy, you need to control 2 or more points in table, and to hit a blot (a single checker) late in the game. This tactic is more difficult than others to employ in Backgammon because it needs careful movement of your pieces and how the checkers are moved is partly the outcome of the dice toss.