Basic Backgammon Strategy: Five Habits for New Players
Backgammon looks like a simple race: move all fifteen checkers home and bear them off before your opponent does. The dice decide how far you move, but you decide which checkers move and where they land. That choice is where games are won. Most beginners play a cautious, hit-everything style: they never leave a single checker alone and they hit every time they can. It feels logical, yet it loses to players who think a few moves ahead.
The five habits below are not a full course. They are a starting set of rules of thumb that fix the most common beginner mistakes. If you still need the basic rules, start with how to play backgammon first.
1. Know the difference between a blot and a point
A single checker on a point is a blot. If an opposing checker lands on it, your checker is hit, goes to the bar and has to enter again from the very start of its journey. Two or more of your checkers on a point make it yours: your opponent cannot land there at all. Owned points do double duty. They keep your checkers safe, and they block the path of your opponent's checkers. Every move you make either creates points, breaks them or leaves blots, so start seeing the board in those terms.
2. Leave shots early when the payoff is worth it
Playing completely safe usually means stacking checkers on points you already own, which builds nothing. Early in the game, when your opponent's home board is still mostly empty, getting hit costs you little: you lose some pips but you will usually come back in at once. That is the right time to bring builders into play and try to make new points. As your opponent's home board fills up, being hit becomes more expensive, because entering from the bar gets harder. Adjust your risk to the board in front of you, and be bolder when you hold an anchor (a point of your own) in your opponent's home board.
3. Build a blockade in front of the enemy
Your opponent's two back checkers start on your 1-point and must travel all the way around. Points in a row directly in front of them make that trip hard. The most valuable points to make early are your 5-point, then your bar point (the 7-point) and your 4-point. Try to make them next to each other with no gaps. Six consecutive points form a prime: a checker trapped behind a full prime cannot get past it for as long as you hold the structure. You can read more about these key points on the points page.
4. Hit with a purpose
Hitting is strong, but it is not automatic. Good targets are checkers that have advanced far, because hitting them costs your opponent the most pips, and checkers your opponent wants to cover to make an important point. Think twice when hitting would leave you with several blots in range of return shots, or when another move would do more. A typical example: if two enemy checkers are already on the bar, making another point in your home board is often better than hitting a third checker, because it keeps them out for longer.
5. Keep your checkers flexible
Spread your checkers sensibly across the points you hold. Three checkers on each of two points are usually more useful than four on one and two on the other, because the spare checkers can be moved without breaking a point. Avoid piling five or six checkers on one point; a tall stack does no blocking work and leaves you with fewer good moves later. Flexible players seem to get "luckier" rolls, but in fact they simply have more good ways to play each number.
Where to go next
Once these habits feel natural, move on to game plans such as racing, holding and priming in our backgammon strategy guide, and look at the first move of the game on the opening moves page.