A couple of questions about bearing off

Helerike · Joined: 14 Jun 2007 Posts: 10

I am new to the game of backgammon and I have a couple of questions about bearing off. I’ve read a ton of explanations online but I am still having a little bit of trouble wrapping my head around the whole thing.

First question—I read a rule that states that when you are bearing off if you roll a point during the bear off that has no checkers on it and is also higher than any of the points that you do have checkers on then you must remove a checker from your highest numbered point. My question is, if I rolled a 6-5 and I had only two checkers on my board, one on the 1-point and one on the 3-point could I bear them both off or only the checker on the 3-point?

Secondly, isn’t there a better way to do the bearoff? It seems to me that the player who gets all of his checkers to his home board first will always be the winner because you are basically guaranteed to bear off checkers on each roll because even if there are no checkers on the point you roll you can still bear off from another point. Wouldn’t it be better if you had to roll the exact number in order to bear off checkers?

Rail · Joined: 14 Jun 2007 Posts: 24

To answer your first question, you would bear off both checkers.

To answer your second question, you aren’t necessarily guaranteed to bear off checkers for each roll during the bearoff. The challenge comes when you roll an empty space but still have checkers on higher spaces. You will have to move these checkers down, if they aren’t blocked, before you can bear them off. Bearing off is all about strategy and placement. For instance, if you have checkers on only the four and five point and you roll a 1-2 you won’t be able to bear off any checkers. Then, in the next turn your opponent could roll double sixes and bear off two checkers. You really never know what the outcome of the bearoff will be.

A few people do like to play with the rule you suggested about bearing off checkers only from exact rolls. However, a lot of backgammon players think that this rule evens the game up too much. With those bearing off rules it doesn’t really matter how well you played up until the bearoff. It’s just a matter of waiting for the rice roll.