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Originally Posted by pineapple888
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And it's very committal relative to 13/9(2). The 4 prime play gives you the option of playing a priming game, but if white fails to anchor, you're not necessarily afraid to attack the blots in your home board, and this is much easier to do with 11 checkers on that side of the board instead of just 9.
Wait a minute... you just dumped a checker onto the 2 point, giving you 10 left... and I kept all 11 in play, since the midpoint checker will join the battle in most cases. So I have to admit I'm not quite sure what you are getting at here.
Sorry. When I was considering your play, I had only B/21, 7/3*(2) in my head, so I only saw 9 checkers, not 10. This does change my opinion about your play (it makes it worse!). White now has a huge number of return shots (11/21/51 hit the lone checker on the midpoint, 41/42/44/54 hit the blot on the 9 point, which makes a total of 12 shots), and if he gets one of those your game falls apart completely. In addition to those shots, he also has 52/53/55 which make an anchor or better, meaning that half of the return rolls do something very positive for white. That's a lot to risk for a nebulous reward. Yeah, you make an inner point, but it's a little deep and not connected to your other point, plus you're putting a gap in a developing prime.
In my play, there are 11 checkers to pull off a blitz because the slotted checker provides an opportunity to make another point. So that checker is "in play" in the blitzing option.
If white anchors, he's then going to have to clear his points carefully because you've got double coverage in the outfield. He can easily find himself leaving you with 15-18 shots to send a third checker behind your prime.
If white doesn't anchor, his rolls are going to be somewhat awkward because he won't easily be able to leap your 4-prime with the back checker. This means that white may be forced to leave a shot for you to attack as you release your back anchors and bring them around to the support and extend the prime.
(I mislabeled this position as a "priming battle" since white isn't playing the priming game with you. What I meant to say was something about how white is going to have to be the first to break his anchors, which means that you don't have to worry about your prime crunching.)
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Plus Black will have 3 builders for the bar point, so it's not like you are giving up on it completely. A prime from 3-8 is still a real possibility, and extremely strong if completed, whereas the 9-point is notoriously transitory and of questionable value.
I doubt the 3-8 prime is really that likely. You don't want to be building primes from the outside in. That's just not an efficient way of doing it. It's better to have a small prime and add to it. Besides, by the time you get enough checkers around to fill in the prime completely, white will most likely be long gone. You've got four checkers tied up in your two back anchors, so you can't fill in that prime until you release one of those two anchors.
While the 9-point will not be a permanent structure in this game, it has the very powerful benefit of blocking 6s for the back checker. This is important because it puts white under more pressure.