GreedyGammon Backgammon forum support

Here is a position that came up today. Playing red I rolled 6-1 and without so much as a second thought I took one off and lifted the blot up on to the already stacked 5 pt. A review of the match indicated that was an error (-0.074). 99 % of players would make this mistake as it is so non intuitive to make the correct play unless you are a top level player. The biggest threat when bearing off against a man on the bar is to leave a blot and get hit. So naturally we try to avoid getting hit. But in this case, if our opponent does indeed roll a 6, getting hit is exactly what we want as that would be the ONLY chance is to send a piece back, wait for him and wack him again when he tries to come back around. Trying to get hit when opponent has a blot in their home board is a common strategy but in this case the blot is actually the piece that is on the bar.

So a couple of rolls later we got to this position and I redoubled to 4 (it was a 3 pt match score 0-0) . Not doubling would have been a .100 blunder. I actually have 70% winning chance from here. Correct cube double/take. He missed and I won the match woo hoo
sorry abuot the upside down examples. Its the way greedygammon saves it and ive become used to it.