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Joined: Sun Oct 24, 2010 8:32 pm
Years playing backgammon: 20+ Learned to play on fibs.com playing bots and review with gnubg analysis FIBS rating 1750-1850
Location: USA

Blunder of the day #3

Here are a couple of posistions that happened within a few rolls. I got both wrong and it cost me the match.
1.jpg
(Click the image for full size )

I was about to get gammoned AGAIN with the cube at 2 when I got lucky and hit a blot to stay alive. When this 6-3 roll came up I did know I had to hit the blot of course but what to do with the 3.. It never occured to me to slot the 4 pt. I moved one of the back checkers up. The move got rated a "bad"

A few rolls later we have...
2.jpg
Got another chance to slot the 4 pt but missed again. This time the error was magnified to "very bad" ie BLUNDER. As if to press the point, my failure to cover the 4 pt was resulted in the blot escaping through that door and that was that.

So how would we know to make the correct play? The main point to understand about this position is that we HAVE to close out the lone back checker. There is NO OTHER WAY. We cant wait for the perfect roll to fill in the spaces. We have to aggressively hit and slot to cover and close out. Also another benefit to slotting is that if we do get hit we have more ammo waiting for the runner on the other side. This kind of daring play is scary since we usually try to minimize blots. But sometimes NOT leaving a blot turns out to be a huge mistake :D Backgammon is a cray game aint it...
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