Saving the gammon - Damage control 101

Have a look at the picture below. Black is to play 4-4, what is the correct move? If you think it is to escape the two back men by playing 23/15 (2), well, it’s not. If you are wondering why, read on. This time it’s about optimized backgammon damage control.

Sometimes in online backgammon things turn sour no matter what you do. Often in those situations you might be facing a potential gammon loss and to make things worse a double might’ve already been taken. It’s time to minimize damage and to prevent a gammon loss, also called as saving the gammon. In short, your main objective is to bear off one checker before the end of the game.

General principles

When you are trying to save the gammon, there are a few general rules you should stick to:

1. Don’t waste pips
   While bearing in your checkers, the goal should be to bear them in on your 6-point. A checker on the 6-point is already in your home board - moving it in to the 5 or 4-point would be a waste of pips as no additional benefit is gained.
2. Whenever you have the possibility to move a checker to your 6-point, do so.
3. When moving your men through the outfield make as many crossovers as possible (i.e. moving from one quadrant to another).
4. Avoid stacking your checkers on one or two points.
   Stacking checkers limits the number of effective rolls.

With these rules in mind let’s return to our example above where Black is to play 4-4. Most players would immediately move the two back men to the 15-point as shown in the picture below. Although it is not a bad move as such it is not the optimal one either:

• Pips are not wasted, but the move hasn’t really helped bearing in your men to your 6-point.
• Two checkers made one crossover but all checkers still need to make two crossovers to get in the home board.
• There are two checkers on the 15-point, decreasing the number of effective rolls in order to bear in onto the 6-point.

The correct play

The correct play is to move one back checker to the 11-point with 23/11 and to move checker from the 16-point to the 12-point with 16/12. Let’s see the advantages of this move:

• Two checkers have a very good possibility of bearing in to the 6-point next turn.
• One checker made two crossovers and one checker one, a total of three crossovers.
• No stacks limiting the number of effective rolls.

The advantages of this move outweigh the risk of the last back checker being hit on White’s next turn. However, if White can’t cover his blot it’s wrong of him to hit as it would pose an unnecessary risk of getting hit by Black entering from the bar. That in turn would mean a real setback for his possible gammon victory. And since there is only a 11% chance of White hitting safely (1-1, 2-1, 1-2, 2-2), it really is not a big risk for Black to leave a blot.

Saving the backgammon

Should things go really wrong, you might need to save the backgammon instead of a gammon! I guess it’s a bit like the guy who got trapped by his arm under a boulder in a desert a couple of years ago. He was facing certain death, but he after two days saved his life by using his pocket nife to cut off his own arm at elbow height to free himself and to wander back to civilization for help. Fortunately for most of us backgammon is not a matter of life or death, but the example below illustrates the difference between being annihilated by a backgammon and keeping your head above the water with “only” a gammon loss.

In the picture below Black is to play 5-3. According to the rules above you would play Bar/20 9/6. That would take a checker to the 6-point but in this situation you would run a huge risk of a backgammon loss with one checker still in White’s home board. Should White roll any double on his next turn and it’s a backgammon loss for Black. Therefore the correct play is Bar/20/17, which narrowly secures a gammon loss.

Conclusion

Hopefully in your online backgammon matches you don’t need to struggle often to save the gammon, but should you end up in such a situation, make sure you know the rules of the game. No fancy moves, focus on getting your men to the 6-point in the most efficient way and bear off a checker to stay in the match.