Backgammon Prime Playing Strategy

admin · Site Admin Joined: 15 May 2007 Posts: 862

The backgammon prime is easiest understood as a blockade made of checkers and built by one player in order to trap behind it their opponent’s checkers. Since the object of backgammon is to be the first player able to remove (bear off) all their checkers from the backgammon board, any method of preventing them freely moving their checkers becomes a valuable tactic to employ.

The rules of backgammon permit players to hit their opponents’ single checkers (blots) by landing on the points they occupy, and so forcing their removal to the bar. However, two or more checkers piled on a single point cannot be hit, and therefore the backgammon prime is constructed of several checkers placed on a number of points. Ideally, a player aims to create a full prime with checkers piled up on six consecutive points. The full prime is a complete blockade. If a full prime is not possible, a partial backgammon prime is still considered an asset. Primes can be built anywhere between the second and eleventh points, and it can be moved, or shuffled, into the inner area when the backgammon games goes into the bearing-off phase.

Backgammon experts recommend aiming to make a prime at an early stage of the game. A popular backgammon prime tactic is to try and use this prime to block the two checkers the opposing player has positioned in your home area. Positioning checkers on the second and third points is a favored way of building such a prime. The blocked player can free their two checkers from the blockade with the aid of a throw of double sixes. Otherwise, they have to try and move checkers singly leaving a lone checker open to a hit.