Backgammon strategy: plans, pip counts and the cube

The five game plans

Every backgammon position is one of five plans. Knowing which one you are in tells you whether to play safe or loose, hit or run, and when to double — and most mistakes are plan mistakes rather than move mistakes.

1. Racing — you are ahead in the pip count. Run, avoid contact, do not hit unnecessarily.
2. Priming — build a wall of consecutive points in front of the enemy back checkers.
3. Blitzing — hit repeatedly and close your home board before they can re-enter.
4. Holding — keep an anchor deep in their territory and wait for a shot.
5. Back game — two or more anchors in their home board, deliberately behind, waiting to hit late. Difficult and usually a last resort.

Level 1 — Basic: what to do with your first thousand rolls

1. Make points, especially the good ones

The 5-point (yours and theirs — the "golden points") and the bar point (7) are the most valuable real estate on the board. A roll that makes one is nearly always the best roll.

2. Do not leave blots you do not have to

Before choosing between two plays, ask how many of the 36 dice combinations hit you. A play that leaves a direct shot (six or fewer pips away) is much more dangerous than one leaving an indirect shot.

3. Hit when you are behind, run when you are ahead

Hitting gains around twenty-five pips and wins races, but every hit means contact. If you are already ahead, contact is your enemy — running home unhit wins the game.

4. Keep an anchor

Never break your back anchor without a plan. A two-checker anchor in your opponent's home board cannot be attacked, gives you somewhere safe to re-enter, and keeps your chances alive when the race goes wrong.

5. Learn the opening rolls

Level 2 — Intermediate: pip counting, timing and the cube

Count pips — properly, and often

Add up the distance every checker still has to travel. The difference tells you which plan you are in. The practical thresholds for money play, from the leader's point of view:

Timing: the resource nobody sees

Timing is how long you can hold your structure before you are forced to break it. A player with an anchor and lots of spare pips can wait for a shot; a player who must move every roll will crush their own board while waiting. If you are planning to hold or play a back game, you need spare checkers to burn.

Cube decisions are worth more than checker decisions

Three practical rules:

• Double when you have a real advantage but the game is still volatile. If you wait until you are clearly winning, your opponent simply passes and you have gained one point instead of two.
• Take at around 25% winning chances, adjusted up if you might get gammoned and down if your losses are usually gammons.
• Think about market losers. If a good roll next turn would make your opponent pass, double now — you are about to "lose your market".

Play the position, not the pieces

Strong intermediates stop asking "is this checker safe?" and start asking "does this play improve my structure?" A blot on the 5-point that makes a key point next roll is better than a safe play that achieves nothing.

Level 3 — Advanced: equity, volatility and the endgame

Think in equity, not in wins

Your equity is the average number of points you expect from the position, counting gammons and backgammons. It is the only number that makes cube and checker decisions comparable, and it explains decisions that look wrong: a play that wins slightly less often but gammons much more is frequently correct.

Volatility drives the cube

A position is volatile when the next exchange could change everything — a hit, a big escape, a closing board. Double in volatile positions before the swing. In calm positions you can afford to wait, because your market will still be there next turn.

Back games: know when, and know the timing

The best back game anchors are the 1-2, 1-3 and 2-3 combinations; anything higher and you block your own escape. The plan only works if you keep a structure worth hitting into, so a back game with no timing is simply a lost game played slowly.

Bear-off technique

• Even out the stacks as you bear in — gaps cost rolls.
• When the opponent has an anchor, bear in safely rather than quickly; one shot lost is the whole game.
• Never leave a shot to save a pip. The arithmetic almost never justifies it.
• In a pure race, the wastage from checkers piled on low points is real — spread them.

Match equity, not money equity

In match play the score changes everything. At 2-away 2-away, gammons are worth nothing to the leader and the cube turns almost every game. When you are far behind, double aggressively — a 2% winning position and a 20% winning position are both losses if you never get the cube up. Learning a basic match-equity table is the biggest single jump available to an advanced player.

Study by rollout

Analyse your games with a bot, but read the equity difference, not the verdict. Errors under about 0.020 are noise; errors above 0.100 are the habits costing you matches. Sort by size and fix the top five.

The most expensive habits

1. Never doubling. Winning a game you could have doubled costs you the point you did not take.
2. Passing takeable doubles out of caution. At 25% you should take.
3. Breaking the anchor too early and leaving yourself nowhere to land.
4. Hitting for the sake of hitting while ahead in the race.
5. Playing safe every roll and never making a point.
6. Back games without timing — the most common way strong-looking plans collapse.
7. Blaming the dice. The dice are the same for both players over a session; the decisions are not.

Common questions