Bearing in
safely (1)
Michael Crane
As you can see in Diagram 1 the board is divided into four segments with points numbered
1 to 24, where 24 to 19 are in your opponent's inner board and points 6 to 1 are in your inner
board. The two remaining segments (points 18 to 7) are the outer boards; points 12 to 7 being your
outer board and 18 to 13 being your opponents outer board.
Like in draughts men are moved around the board in opposing directions, in backgammon one player
moves clockwise and the other anticlockwise (you - black). Before we get to the entire board and
the opening positions, let's deal with bringing men into your home board from the outer board.
Set up as in diagram 6.
Diagram
6
Using the usual rolls, 61, 32, 42,
62 bear in (bring men into your home board) safely. Straight away it is obvious that if you play
the 6 by playing 10/4 (10 to 4) and the 1, 7/6 it will leave two blots that white can hit - so
that's the wrong move! Remember, if a blot is hit it has to restart off the bar into the
opponent's home board, a loss of 24 pips in the race. A pip is the number of dice dots
on the face of a die.
The correct move is to play from the
11-point; but; you can't move the 6 to the 5-point because white occupies it, so how do you do
it? Easily; remember after diagram 2 I explained that you can move either die first? Well, in this
case (and in others no doubt) you move the 1, 11/10 and then the 6, 10/4. Of course you could have
moved 10/4 and 11/10 but I am trying to get you to think about your moves. So, we play 61 as
11/10,10/4.
Now for the 32. We can't play 3s
or 2s from the 8- or 7-points without leaving a blot, so we move two men from the 10-point, 10/7,
10/8 keeping it all nice and safe.
Now, 42; remember that we need to
keep (if possible) an even number of men on our top two points and in order to achieve this we need
to move one man from the 8-point and another from the 7-point thus: 7/3, 8/6. Now, when you roll
the 62 it is evident that you cannot move a 6 as white is blocking you by holding your 2- &
1-points so all you can move is a 2. As you don't want to leave a blot at all, the only 2 you
can move safely is 6/4 leaving you in this position:
Diagram
6A
Exercise 5: Although this might
be a little contrived, this sort of position does occur. From this position roll your own dice and
bear in and off as safely as you can. When you have finished set up the position in Diagram
6 as often as necessary and practice bearing in and off until you are confident with bearing in
and off against opposition.
Try to keep any blots you have to leave down to a minimum. Look to the next roll each time
and try to predict, using your knowledge of the 36 dice combinations, which is the safer
play.
