I play on GameColony.com and run into a player every now and then who will hit his 5-point at all costs usually getting several men sent to the bar and establishing a backgame against me and continue working his blocks down to the 4-point on down. This seems to be quite a success strategy against me many times.

If you are playing a 3-point or 5-point match against someone like that and realize that is his main strategy regardless of what I play do you change your play by not ever putting a blot on your opponent's 5-point until you have already established your own blocks? I know backgames have a low percentage of wins but the 5-point hit and establishing a backgame strategy can be very effective it seems.

I think you just have to accept that he is a lot better than you at the moment. He plays the same strategy I play all the time. Though I have never played against myself, I think about two strategies. One of them I am willing to tell you. Improve your skill, and use the same agressive strategy against him, so that it will be difficult for him to develop a three-point-backgame.

Do you mind if I ask your rating? I hover around the 1700 level.

Never have bothered about it. Most of the problems you see in my thread I would solve on the board. Ratings will give some indication, but imo that's all that can be said about it. Besides, backgammon is too multi-faceted to put it into a grid.

In a word, no.

Backgammon is all about using whatever dice you have to best advantage. If you have a roll that is best played by splitting to the 20pt, then that is what you should do. Don't fight your dice.

If your opponent is playing a lot of backgames, the best thing you could do is bone up on backgame defense. It's a very tricky area of play. A well-timed backgame actually wins more games than it loses. Getting the timing right, however, especially against someone who knows the best ways to stymie you, is not always easy. And even when you do manage to get the timing right, many of your losses will be gammons or worse.

I have never played at GameColony. Can you download your match files at the end of a match? If so, try running them through a backgammon program like eXtreme Gammon or GNU Backgammon to see how it rates your play compared to that of your nemesis.

if you do this, be aware that backgames are one of the areas where bots occasionally fail. In most backgame positions, XG or GnuBg will select the right play. In a small minority of positions, however, they will have trouble. You need to develop an intuition for this, and use stronger settings and rollouts to check the positions where you suspect your bot is having difficulty.

Mike

Good idea. I didn't even know I could do that. I will start e-mailing myself the games and see where I am going wrong.

at GAmecolony.com you can email yourself the game or match. YOu then have to paste it into a text file and save it with the .mat extension.

Gamecolony has one really nice feature in that when you set up the game or match you can tick a box so that neither player can see the pipcount.

I used to play once in a while at GameColony several years ago. I played 5-point matches and quickly built my rating up to almost 2300. I haven't encountered at least one remotely competent opponent there back then. And I wasn't that much good myself at the time I played there.

How do you save it with a .mat extension?

I'm assuming that when prompted to save the file in notepad or whatever program you have used, just save it with .mat at the end of it.

OP, I never fear my opponent getting a backgame formation early in the game. I figure I have enough time to build a prime and force him to crunch his board or give up one of his anchors.

You could probably improve your backgame defense technique. Here's a couple plays you might find instructive:


Most players, I think, would find the right play of 13/9 10/9. What might be surprising though is that 18/17* 17/13 (or even worse, 18/17* 10/6) is a *huge* blunder. Sending another checker back and reducing risk is immaterial compared to building the powerful prime.

Here's a tougher play:


Most would play 13/7, but that's an error. It's worth the risk to play 13/8 5/4 or even 20/15 5/4, which really keeps the checkers alive. Getting hit, at least with a 2, is not a big deal and getting away with the play means the prime can easily be extended.

Slotting an inner board point like this is actually not such a rare play when defending against backgames. Similar plays can occur when your opponent is up on the bar, as well. It may look surprising, but it's often correct because the risk of getting hit is much diminished and the value of building a prime is much increased.

Fighting for the 5 points is often a key theme in the opening. Getting hit a few times in the process normally isn't so bad. Let's say I am slotting my 5 point or hitting loose. If my opponent hits me there, even 3 or 4 times, he is usually too busy with that to also build his home board. So my checkers sent back aren't really in much trouble.

OK, once in a while someone will roll 11 or 44 and gain a leg up in this battle. But not often.

Yeah! And it always happens to me after I put two opposing checkers on the bar, and begin to entertain fantasies of turning the cube!

Gotta love this game.

Mike

Bill Robertie says in his book '501 Essential Backgammon Problems' to "stop your opponent from making the third point (in backgames) at all cost." I guess the greatest danger in continuing to send your opponent's checkers back is giving him the opportunity to establish that third point. Preventing the third point and putting primes in front of his anchors are I guess the main strategy.

As a one off you need to be able to see the file extension. To do this in Windows explorer click 'Organise'. Then click 'Folder and Search Options'. Then click the 'View' tab. Untick the 'Hide Extensions for known file types'. This is the one off part of what you need to do.
When you recieve your email of the match, copy the match and create a new text document. Paste the match in it and after you have saved it, right click the file can clik 'Rename'. Now you will be able to rename the file extension from 'txt' to 'mat'. You will get a warning but just click 'yes'.

Hope that helps.