
About us	Contact us	Site map

How to Play 1-1

The position below came up in a recent backgammon tournament in Florida. I was fortunate enough to win my first three matches against some of the best backgammon players in the world and was in the semi-finals. If I win this match, I get to the finals and that means a lot of ABT points and some real money.

I was Black in the position analyzed below, and I was winning 2-0 in a match to 11, and I was holding a 2-cube and had to play 1-1. Unfortunately, I made the wrong play, and I ended up losing the game and the match. Of course, this play, this early in the match probably didn’t cost me the match, but it sure would have helped if I had played it better.

How do you play 1-1?

I took quite a while on this play, and I considered basically three plays:

making my bar point (7);
making my 4 point;
coming up from the 24 to the 22, make my 10 point, and play 6/5.

I guess when you “over-analyze” things, some times you forget about what the most critical factors are. I ruled out the third play because I generally know that making points is important, and I felt that blocking my opponent by making my 7 point would be an excellent backgammon strategy.

Because I wasn’t sure, I took a picture of the position and was sorry to find out later that the 3^rd play above was far superior to the other two. (See Snowie’s analysis below).

The key to this backgammon game is getting that back checker out, and 1-1 game me a perfect opportunity to come up to accomplish this. The result of my play was that I was never able to release the back checker, and a few rolls later I was a loser.