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Keep or break the midpoint?

Posted By: Timothy Chow
Date: Sunday, 9 April 2017, at 4:09 p.m.

In Response To: Keep or break the midpoint? (leobueno)

The first thing to do is to identify what type of position this is, and therefore what your game plan is.

I would call this a blitzing position, or perhaps a blitz-versus-prime position (although White's prime is only three points). White is on the bar against a strong board, you have a big pip count lead, and White's board is weak. At a normal score you should be eyeing a gammon win. Leading 5-away/7-away holding a 2-cube, you're not going to go for the gammon as aggressively as at a normal score, but still, this is a blitz.

In particular, it's not a priming game. Therefore your comment that making the bar point makes a nice prime indicates the wrong interpretation of the position. Although priming potential can factor into positions that are primarily blitzes, your open 5pt here should turn your thoughts away from priming.

In a blitz, my general rule of thumb is that the priorities are:

(1) making home-board points;
(2) hitting;
(3) bringing down extra builders for making points and hitting;
(4) escaping the back checkers.

There are many exceptions to this hierarchy but I think it's a pretty good starting point. Here, we can't make a home-board point or hit, so it's a question of (3) versus (4). Although I have listed building ahead of escaping, two factors in this position make me lean towards escaping:

(a) White has a prime;
(b) playing 13/7 doesn't diversify or increase your hitting and point-making numbers.

For that reason I would play 20/14.

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