Blocking in Backgammon

With the advancement of the game and its flourishing popularity the game of skill and luck, Backgammon is becoming more and more strategic; this means an admirable improvisation of your strategy, your intuition, and your power of reading the progress of the game. There are a huge amount of books and articles relating to various situations and how to combat.

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Still every game creates new situations and initiates new solutions. Once the game is over then the particular situation is analyzed for the best authentic solution and only then does it get added to the forum or books. However, the instantaneous consequence may be defeated if your mind is not alert enough.

The basic objective of the game is to bring all the checkers to your home board and bear off before your opponent does, whilst on the way round trying to hit and block the opponent’s checker, to create a hindrance for the opponent. The basic winning strategy depends upon three factors:

1) Running Game

2) Blocking Game and

3) Back Game. You need to use various combinations of these three techniques in order to succeed.

Millard Hopper has revealed his championship secrets for moving, blocking and back games in his popular book ‘Win at Backgammon’.

The strategy includes blocking the opponent from hitting your checkers and blocking the escape route of the opponent. To block the opponent’s escape route, you are to block the 24th row, one of the most strategically important rows of your home board. You must try to block your opponent’s checkers on your home board only. Experienced players advise to block the rows in combinations such as 6+1, 3+1, 4+2, 5+3, 6+5.

According to the glossary of mindzine, ‘Points formed in front of an opponent’s men to hinder their progress around the board’ is called a block. This is a very simple strategy: If you can place two checkers of your own, then the opponent cannot hit you. If you can form contiguous blocks of such points, it is called the blockade. The blockade is made on your home board to actually close the escape route of your opponent’s checkers.

Remember, if you can form a prime consisting of six such blocks, then the opponent can never cross the successive points from behind, thus literally forbidding the opponent from escaping. Experts advise you to start a prime either from your 5th point or from your bar point. However, the caution message for you is that the attempt for formation of a prime may even lead to leave the blots, risking your checkers being hit. Therefore, always keep balance and keep watching the progress of the game.

To conclude, we can provide you with some generic guidelines, however in reality you need your presence of mind and application of your strategies depending upon the situation of the game and in this respect we want to echo Ethel Barrymore, ‘You must learn day by day, year by year, to broaden your horizon’

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