Backgammon strategies

Backgammon strategy is the players' general scheme that consists of immediate tactics and focuses on the long term. The most essential backgammon strategies that every backgammon beginner must be acquaintance with are the running (or racing) game, holding game, priming game, attacking game (or blitz) and the back game. Changing the backgammon strategy according to the changing circumstances (dice roll, the opponent's play, etc), is often required in the backgammon game.

Running Game
The running game (also known as the racing game) is the most basic, clear-cut backgammon strategy that emphasizes on preceding the opponent in the race to the bearoff phase of the game, by avoiding hits, blocks and running behind the defending checkers to the home board. Pip counting is a helpful tool when playing the running game.

Holding Game
Like in the running game, in the holding game backgammon strategy, the game is turned into a pure race, except the holding game focuses on holding the rival from arriving to the home board and starting bearing off. That is done, by holding checkers in the opponent's outer board, mainly between the bar point and the midpoint.

Priming Game
The priming game is a more complicated backgammon strategy, which sets its goal on trapping the opponent's checkers in front of a full prime (six successive points). To play the priming game, one must have sufficient timing.

Blitz
The object of the blitz strategy (also known as the attacking game) is to hold the opponent's on the bar and it is especially useful when a player is stuck in the opponent's home board with no anchor.

Back Game
The object of the back game is to hit, and close the hit checker in the player's home board, as opposed to the blitz strategy, the back game strategy is used once a player has at least one anchor in the opponent's home board. Timing is extremely crucial when playing the back game, thus playing the back game in the early game is often a mistake.

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