Advanced Backgammon Strategy: Tips for Winning

Research suggests that the earliest incarnation of backgammon appeared more than 5,000 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia, and even the modern version can be traced back to the 1600s.

In other words: it's an old, old game, and so it should come as no surprise that some pretty advanced backgammon strategies have been developed over the years. After all, there's been more than enough time for serious players to come up with sophisticated ways to win!

In fact, it's the limitless complexity of backgammon that makes the board game so enduringly popular. While anyone can pick up the basics and begin playing relatively quickly, mastering the game can take years.

Exactly how long it takes to become a backgammon master is within your control, to some degree at least. This post, in which we outline some advanced backgammon strategies, moves, tactics, and tips, is designed to speed up your journey towards becoming a master player.

Mastering Advanced Backgammon Strategy

Most new players end their backgammon education once they understand the rules. Spending some time learning and mastering advanced backgammon strategy will improve your play, make you harder to beat, and also help develop your appreciation of this thousands-of-years-old game.

The following tips should help if you've got the basics of the game down and you're ready to take your play to the next level.

Play As Often As You Can

Experience is the best teacher. The more you play, the more you'll develop an intuitive understanding of the concepts and decisions that lead to good backgammon play.

At 247backgammon.org, you'll find backgammon games that can be played across all devices, completely free of charge. You can choose to play against the computer, against an online opponent, or use the 'Pass & Play' setting to play against a real-world player without requiring a physical backgammon board.

You'll learn more if there's a challenging component to your games. At 247backgammon.org, you can set the difficulty level before starting the game. This means that you can choose between easy, medium, hard, or expert, depending on your skill level or understanding of the game. Start at the level at which you feel more comfortable, then slowly work your way up until you're competing at an expert level.

Read Advanced Backgammon Books

You can learn a lot about backgammon by playing regularly and gaining experience, but you can't learn everything — or, at least, you can't do so quickly.

There are two ways to become a master backgammon player. You can play for decades and decades, or (/and) you can read the advanced backgammon books written by expert players, which can give you the advanced strategies you need to win without having to wait until you have decades of experience on your side.

The following books are particularly recommended:

• Backgammon — Paul Magriel
• Modern Backgammon — Bill Robertie
• Advanced Backgammon — Bill Robertie
• Backgammon Boot Camp — Walter Trice
• Classic Backgammon Revisited — Jeremy Bagai

Follow What Top Players Do

Another way to fast-track your journey towards becoming an expert-level backgammon player is to observe — and mimic — what the best players in the world do. Some events, such as the Backgammon World Championship, are televised/streamed online, giving amateur players the chance to get a rare glimpse at what elite backgammon play looks like.

With enough viewing, you'll get a sense of how top players approach anchors, build primes, and take calculated risks. Eventually, you'll learn how to incorporate those strategies into your own play, hopefully with just-as-successful results.

Key Moves in Advanced Backgammon

Reading books, playing frequently, and copying what the top backgammon players do will all help you to become a formidable player over time.

You can speed up your journey towards becoming a great backgammon player even more by understanding — and using! — some of the key moves that are considered essential parts of advanced backgammon play.

Move One of Your Back Checkers Forward

Beginner — and even some intermediate — players often make a rookie error with the two checkers that are furthest from their home board. They'll either leave both behind as a safety precaution or they'll get them both moving forward as quickly as possible.

Both those approaches can be damaging. Leading players know how to balance risk with reward, which means advancing one of the checkers while keeping the other back. Keeping just one held back will prevent your opponent from escaping without any difficulty and provide any of your hit checkers with a safe re-entry point.

Focus on the Five-Point

Solidifying your five-point is an essential strategy for any advanced player, greatly improving your chances of ending the game victorious. With a solid 5-point, you'll:

• Makes it easier for a hit checker to re-enter the board
• Makes it easier to trap your opponent
• Makes it easier to build a prime
• Allows for flexibility with your game plan (move towards bearing off, protect other at-risk checkers, etc.)

Developing your five-point is an advanced strategy without really feeling it, since it's not overly difficult to do. Simply move two or more checkers into the spot five spaces from your home board, and you've done it.

Build a Prime

A prime refers to 4 - 6 consecutive spaces on the board that you control (that is, there are at least two of your checkers on each).

A checker can't land on a space occupied by two or more of an opponent's checkers. As such, building a prime is like building a wall that makes it much more difficult for your opponent to make progress.

If you build a 4-prime, they'd need to roll a 5 or 6 to make progress. If you build a six-prime, any of your opponent's checkers behind that point are essentially trapped. There'll be no way for them to move forward until you remove one of your checkers.

Disrupt Their Progress

A blot refers to a space occupied by a single checker. Those ones are vulnerable, because if the opponent lands on that space, then the checker gets sent to the bar and must re-enter in your home board (which is the opposite of where they want to be).

The takeaway? When in doubt, hit a blot. It's nearly always more valuable to send one of your opponent's checkers to the bar than it is to progress a couple of spaces and leave it out there. In doing so, you'll stall their progress and swing momentum back in your favor.

Winning Tactics for Backgammon Pros

The tips and strategies outlined above will take you a long way towards winning more backgammon games. They're relatively easy to enact and will almost instantly make you look like a much more experienced player.

Not content with those strategies, and want to improve your game even more? We've got you covered. Below are a few of the more advanced strategies that backgammon professionals call upon to make themselves even more difficult to beat.

Keep Some Checkers Back If Things Aren't Going Your Way

Keeping some checkers back in your opponent's home board is a risky strategy, but it's also one that can pay off handsomely — it can quickly turn a losing game into a winning one if executed correctly.

Playing the backgame is a deliberate, considered strategy that top players use when they recognize that they're falling behind. By keeping a few checkers back, you'll be creating an opportunity to pick off your opponent's checkers when they get closer to their home board.

All those checkers will be sent to the bar and back to square one, giving you an opportunity to catch up.

Weigh Up the Pros/Cons of Each Move

Some moves seem obvious, but that doesn't mean you should take them. Ultimately, your goal is to win the game, and there's more than one way to do that. If a move that most people would take (such as hitting a blot) doesn't align with your strategy, then don't take it.

Elevate Your Game: Advanced Tips

By now, you should have a fairly good grasp of some of the backgammon strategies you can deploy to get yourself ahead.

To round off the article, let's take a look at some of the broader considerations that aspiring backgammon players should keep in mind as they go through their learning journey.

Think Ahead

Advanced players have one eye on their next move, and the other eye on the several moves that'll come later. Thinking ahead allows you to strategize and plot your pathway to victory much more effectively than if you're just thinking one move at a time.

Balancing Risk with Reward

Backgammon often rewards risk-taking, such as leaving a blot vulnerable or advancing both of your back checkers — provided it's done with intention.

For instance, common backgammon wisdom says you leave at least one of your back checkers behind, but some elite players will advance both if they roll a double six during the opening go.

Study, Review, Adapt

The best backgammon players are the ones who study the game, review their performances, and make improvements. Play with intention, understand your strengths and weaknesses, and find ways to get better — there's always a way.

Ready to put what you've learned into practice? 247backgammon.org provides backgammon games across all devices, completely free of charge.

DISCLAIMER: The games on this website are using PLAY (fake) money. No payouts will be awarded, there are no "winnings", as all games represented by 247 Games LLC are free to play. Play strictly for fun.