Proactive Plays

Dan Rovira

Here’s an interesting position below from a recent match. I would have obviously preferred a 44 or 54, but, hey, what can you do?

And this is the question I ask you, what can you do with this lousy 62? To make it easier for you, the 6 is forced (13/7) and you only have the 2 to worry about. Good luck!

As mentioned before when uncertain what to do, take your time and go through the candidate plays. First off, the back checker ain’t going anywhere so we can forget about that for a moment. That leaves us with moving the 2 from the mid-point or from within our home board. Let’s go through the options:

A)  13/7 13/11 – this play allows green to hit us in the outfield with direct 6s and 2s. Notice that these numbers are duplicated with green also hitting us in her home board, so this looks a reasonable option, although we are vulnerable to being attacked.

B)  13/5 – this play leaves one fewer blot which would reduce the amount of times we’re gammoned (by 8%). This is significant at the score where losing a gammon on a 2 cube would mean losing the whole match, although we allow green to hit us with direct 6s, 4s, 3s and 2s so this looks worse than the first option.

C)   13/7 6/4 (or 5/3) – this option looks the worst of the three. Now green can hit us with direct 6s, 4s, 3s and 2s, and we leave more blots. We also like to have spare checkers on the higher points as this improves our flexibility when playing larger dice rolls.

All of the three candidate plays above look dangerous with little upside. Hoping to be lucky is not the way to win! Let’s look at a fourth play: 13/7 3/1*, which would result in the following position.

This is what I like to call a "proactive play". Now we have put pressure on green to roll well. You may think that this move is bananas and you would be right to think so, as this move goes by the name of the banana split. We deliberately break a point in our home board to try to turn the game in our favour. Desperate times call for desperate measures!

Let’s consider why this play trumps the previous three plays aforementioned. First, notice that green dances with 16/36 rolls. This would be a huge swing for white with the spare checkers on the higher points to cover, and the second blot in the outfield to pick up. Secondly, and let me emphasise this, we’re leaving shots regardless of what we do. This means we have to play BIG. Backgammon is not a game for the fainthearted but more than that, this banana split play wins 4% more games and 8% more gammons. A gammon is very attractive for us at the score getting us to an efficient 2-away match score.

Notice also that this position would be a Double-Pass if the cube was centred. However, with the cube turned, we have to play the game to the end. In this position, green also cannot re-double us back at the score. This is incentive to play big – and there’s further incentive, the dice rolls. Let’s go through them in order from the highest to the lowest number. This is how I recommend you do it yourself:

- After making the correct play of 13/7 3/1*, we get hit back with 20/36 rolls:

36, 35, 34, 33, 32, 31, 16, 15, 14, 12, 11

- After the second-best play of 13/11 13/7, we get hit back with 32/36  rolls:

66, 65, 64, 63, 62, 61, 53, 52, 51, 43, 42, 41*, 33, 32, 31, 22, 21, 11 (*41 hits only with return banana split)

How strange! Despite the banana split looking more dangerous than other plays, it is actually safer – and by a large margin.

So there you are – play to win! Over the board I made the bold play, my opponent danced, and the rest was history.

Dan Rovira has the UK’s leading YouTube backgammon learning channel at @BackgammonIsBeautiful