2024 - Position of the Week 3 Solution

There are four candidate plays: (a) 24/23, 13/8; (b)7/2*/1*; (c) 24/18 and (d) 13/7.

We can quickly dismiss (a) because it gives White too many options so,while Red would like to start and make his 8-pt, this play is just too loose.

How about (b) which is a blitzing play? It is great when it works but even if White fans with both checkers Red will only have a marginal double and White an easy take. Red has only eight checkers in the attack zone and the stack of five checkers on his mid-point is very inflexible. He just does not have enough ammunition for a blitz.

This leaves us with (c) and (d). (c) gets the back checkers moving and duplicates sixes so that is definitely a viable option. On the downside, White has ten checkers in his attack zone so there is a significant risk of a blitz by White.

(d) is the do nothing play, except it brings another checker into the zone. It is hard to make passive moves in backgammon but here 13/7 is a genuine candidate.

This problem is difficult because 13/7 doesn’t seem to do much but holding everything for one roll is just as good as 24/18 thus showing that two very different game plans can have virtually identical equities.