Early Game Strategy + Snowie's Opening Rolls
by Michael Strato
13 May 2000
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If you are beginning to play Backgammon, it is very important to know which moves are considered to be the best for your first roll of a game. Below you will find the moves that are suggested by Snowie, each accompanied by the resulting board position and a brief rollout analysis.To arrive at an opening roll, each player must toss one die and the player with the higher number goes first, using both numbers for his first move. If the players toss the same number, they have to roll again until one wins the first move. For this reason, doubles are not in the list of opening rolls.
However, one of our members has reminded us that while playing "socially" some people use slightly different rules that allow the possibility for a double to be used as the first move of the game. Therefore, we have published the moves for opening rolls with doubles in a separate article which you can view by clicking here.
Please bear in mind that these rolls are considered best when you are in a regular match of some length and not in a one-pointer or when you need only one more point to win your match, in which case, you would want to initially try for a running game or a race for home.
When we first start playing this game, many of us believe that it is a pure race, to be first to get the checkers home and off, and that the game largely depends on the luck of the dice. As a beginner, I remember playing a seven roll by bringing a checker down from the five in the upper corner (or 13 point) safely into my home. These ideas are wrong. Backgammon is a game of strategy and positions, and through proper study and lots of practice, our skills and understanding of the game improve. A seven roll can be played in many strategic ways.
Your initial goals in the game are to secure vital positions and to be flexible so that you have as many options to your advantage as possible. You want to block your opponent from getting out of your home so that his/her moves are limited to other checkers. At the same time, you want to escape with your furthest stones or at least advance your position in your opponent's home board to where you will have a better chance of getting out.
With good rolls, you can build a prime, which is a wall of checkers that will hamper or block your opponent's escape. Although a prime can be made on any part of the board it is more effective when built inside or just outside your home.
The Golden Point, which is the 5-point in your home for your opponent or the 20-point in your opponent's home for you, is the best point of escape for you or your opponent. It is also advantageous as a landing point for any of your checkers that get hit, as they will be in an advanced position to escape, or be in range to hit open checkers your opponent might leave in his/her outer home board.
The Golden Point can also be beneficial to avoiding a gammon when all else fails. You often have enough time to get home from there with a couple of checkers as opposed to being stuck or buried on the 24-point.
Therefore, one of your main priorities is to block your 5-point with a roll of 3-1. The other two most important points to block on your side of the board are your 7-point (also called barpoint) with a 6-1 and your 4-point, which can be accomplished with a 4-2.
Owning these points will prevent your opponent from advancing his back men with a roll of 4-4 to your 5-point, a 6-6 to your 7-point and a 3-3 to your 4 point. If you roll 5-3, playing 8/3 6/3 allows you to make your 3-point, which strengthens your home board while blocking your opponent from advancing with a 2-2.
If you do not get the lucky dice rolls that easily accomplish these objectives, you have to consider other strategies. Other rolls (except for the natural 6-5 played 24/13) should be used to make what are known as splitting plays or building plays. Your back and midpoint checkers are involved in these moves and a number of things can happen.
In the case of a split with one of your back checkers, several subsequent rolls can enable you to cover the split checker and gain an advanced anchor (or secure point) in your opponent's home. A number of other rolls will allow you to join your back men just outside your opponent's home on the 18-point. There are also other rolls that will permit the advanced checker to escape safely to the 13 point or beyond.
On the other hand, the building play involves using an awkward opening roll to bring one or two of your checkers down from your midpoint (13-point) to your 11, 10 and 9 points, where they become active builders, aimed at making those priority points (your 4, 5 and 7 points) mentioned above.
If one of your next rolls doesn't allow you to make one of those priority points with these builders, it is highly likely that you will be able to cover the builder to make an outer home board point. While not as valuable, these outer home board points will give you a lot of flexibility and options for futures moves.
Although open builders on your 11, 10 and 9 points are exposed to being hit, an opponent will have to use both numbers on his/her dice roll to hit them. This is not as bad as leaving a risky direct shot which is when a checker can be hit with a number from 1 to 6, a single number on either die.
Please note that with some of the opening rolls listed in this tutorial (for splitting and building plays), the first and second choices are considered very close and you may want to try them both to see what works best for you. A good example of this is the 4-3. I personally like to play the third choice 13/9 13/10 for this opening roll.
Some players prefer to use an awkward opening roll to slot a crucial point they hope to cover on the next roll. An example of a slotting play is using the 4-1 to play 13/9 and 6/5. The checker moved 6/5 is in danger of a direct shot but if you can get away with it, there are only a few rolls that will not cover your crucial 5-point on your next turn. However, you will see that Snowie doesn't highly recommend the slotting plays in its suggestions below.
I would like to kindly thank Oasya for allowing us to print the Snowie analysis below, which was done by using what is called "a truncated rollout, depth 7, 108 games played 2-ply (tiny), random seed, with race database." For some rolls, a 3-ply 100% rollout was used. The entire analysis or rollout is not included for each opening roll so as not to confuse beginners.
The analysis you see below each board shows how Snowie ranks each move for that dice roll along with the Equity gained or lost per move. On the second line, you will see six percentages which GammonVillage member Bob Stringer explains:
"For those who aren't familiar with what the sets of 6 percentages referred to, they are, in order and for each move, Red's chance of a backgammon, Red's chance of a backgammon or a gammon, Red's chance of any win at all, White's chance of any win at all, White's chance of a gammon or backgammon, and White's chance of a backgammon."
If you want to read more information about opening rolls, please visit the links at the end of this tutorial.
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| 1. 24/23 13/11 Eq.: 0.002 0.5% 12.8% 49.9% 50.1% 12.3% 0.4% 2. 13/11 6/5 Eq.: -0.008 (-0.010) 0.5% 12.9% 49.7% 50.3% 13.0% 0.5% 3. 24/21 Eq.: -0.021 (-0.024) 0.4% 11.4% 49.2% 50.8% 12.0% 0.4% 4. 13/10 Eq.: -0.032 (-0.034) 0.5% 13.0% 48.3% 51.7% 12.8% 0.5% |
