Recently David posted a containment position which he had been playing out. He recommended playing it out and if someone did posting some decisions from it.
As he said in his post, there are many factors that you may need to be considering at any given point. Prioritizing these can at times make a mess of things. What's more important, hitting or coverage? Hitting or priming? Priming or coverage? How many indirect shots are too many? When should I slot that last point I need to make? When should I be blocking a winning doublet opposed to going for overall coverage? When do I get to recube? Etc...the questions go on and on and on.
I like these types of positions. They're interesting and generally tough. Here are some general guidelines and things to keep in mind when playing out any containment position.
- How many checkers does the opponent have off? Depending on the number, 4 or less, we should always keep an eye on our upcoming redoubles. 5 or more assuming the opponent has a cleanly crunched board we will wait until we have him closed out and our spares in place. Of course along the way if we jar another checker loose and get a shot at another blot from the roof we may also have a redouble.
- The more checkers the opponent has off the harder we'll work to pick up a second checker. If the opponent has 6 men or less off we don't really care about picking up a second man. We win often enough without it. 7 or more though we start working a little harder towards that goal if it's possible.
- How strong is the opp's board? If he has a four point board or stronger we should be very wary of playing too loose or hitting in general. Blotted two point board or worse and we hit off the points we want to make blindly. A three point board is that grey area however hitting is definitely the tendency.
- If I have men at the back that are on the same point it is a high priority to diversify them. In David's example that would translate to rolling men off the 21pt as soon as possible.
- Don't overly worry about the opponent jumping into your outfield if your coverage is impeccable and there are few if any super jokers. Often I see people hit too soon when their army isn't advanced enough to follow it up/not enough men in the zone. Allowing the opponent to jump out is another way of slowly working your men around the board. Don't freak out!
- Blocking potential winning large doublets is not as important as most people think I think. Unless your coverage is already amazing you should concentrate on that first, not blocking a single number of your opponent's. If your coverage is stellar then and only then should you ask yourself which big doublets can you block immediately.
- If you can create a 4 prime or greater, broken or not, and your coverage behind said 4 prime is okay it is often correct to forgo hitting even off a high point to get this long term threat in place.
- Recognize early on and mentally update what the most important points for you to make are. We're so robotic thinking 'Make the 5, make the 4' sometimes we fail to realize that other points, outfield points, like the bar point or 8pt may in fact be a higher priority.
- Don't lose focus of the entire board. Often in containment positions your opponent will start with an N point board. Along the way he'll roll numbers that cause him to break or even blot this board down to a N-1 or N-2 etc...board. I sometimes see players who overlook that that aspect of the board has changed and it can make a large difference.
- You need to know the winning chances with X checkers off. This is especially true for match situations where doubling could be much more complicated. You should also know how spare distribution of a closed board affects your winning chances. On top of that how a non crunched board affects the opposition's winning chances.
I'm sure there is more to add to this list to help you get started. This points were on the tip of my tongue when I started this post. Here is a position that arose while playing out David's original.
                      |
| ||||
| XGID=---BaBB-B---AA-AAA--AA-ee-:1:1:1:64:0:0:3:0:10 | |||||
| Blue to play 64 | |||||
eXtreme Gammon Version: 2.19.206.pre-release
Stick