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BGonline.org Forums
Any tips for playing backgames?
Posted By: ah_clem In Response To: Any tips for playing backgames? (Trunky)
Date: Monday, 18 August 2014, at 1:23 a.m.
I used to be absolutely terrible at playing against backgames - with a bit of study I'm merely poor, but improving. Here's my advice:
The number one rule for playing back games is to make sure it's your opponent who is playing the back game and not you. But from your comment about playing against them I think you've gotten that far.
A lot of the "strength" of a backgame is that the anti-backgamer often has more difficult decisions to make. So your work is cut out for you. But if you can make the right decisions, you should start winning more of them.
The major weakness of backgames is that they tend to bust. As others have said, a good strategy is to prime the backgamer and watch as her board crunches. At that point, a hit checker can't be contained.
The three major themes are timing, mobility, and pure play.
For timing, the backgamer needs about as to be about as far behind in the race as the number of pips tied up in the backgame. So for a 1-2 backgame that's 23x2 + 24x2 == 94 pips.
Mobility means the ability to move your checkers around the board - if they are stuck behind a blockade, that's bad. If you can restrict your opponent's mobility by priming, that's good. Jump over blockades without worrying about being hit -hitting hurts her timing..
Pure play means "put your checkers where they belong". Slot valuable points and knock her off valuable points if she tries to slot them and again don't worry so much about being hit - hitting hurts her timing. Be reluctant to hit yourself unless it helps from a mobility or pure play perspective.
Trice has a nice chapter or two about backgames - worth the price of the book just for that.
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