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BGonline.org Forums
Playing against the last two checkers
Posted By: Daniel Murphy In Response To: Playing against the last two checkers (Casper van der Tak)
Date: Friday, 5 August 2011, at 8:26 p.m.
I make the ace point now with 17/12 16/11* 6/1*(2). General strategy is rather simple. Move your closest builders into optimal spots, use them to point or hit if you can, and bring another checker around when you can't. Usually, smack any checker that enters. But if you have zero builders in place, consider leaving the checker alone. When the second checker enters and escapes, you should have builders enough ready to attack both checkers.
There are 159 ways to play this 5-5 but most can be quickly eliminated.
(1) Eliminate all plays that don't include 16/11*. We're down to 73 plays.
(2) Eliminate all plays that move the rearmost checkers. All plays that include 23/18 or 21/16 are definitely out. Some plays that include 19/14 look decent, but eliminatating these also brings us down to 14 plays.
(3) Eliminate loose hits on the ace point. I do not like these plays. They seems like a waste of 3/4's of the 5-5. Look where all the builders are. These plays all leave 4 or 5 builders on the wrong side of the board with poor outfield coverage against the immediate 1-6 2-5 2-6. The best you can do builder-wise is 16/11*/6/1 13/8. I think we can do better. Eliminating these plays (and the remaining play containing 17/2) and we're down to 9 plays.
The remaining nine plays are of two types. Three plays make the ace point and six don't.
If I make the ace point, there is one 5 left to play. I eliminate 11/6 (slotting) and choose 17/12 over 13/8. I doubt if there's much difference between these two. The 6 point is the main target even though of course I will hit White if she enters on the deuce. So it looks slightly better to bring a checker to the midpoint bearing on the 6 point instead of bringing a direct 6 bearing on the 2 point. Since our 8, 7 and 6 points are open I am not worried at all about White successfully anchoring on our 2 point.
If I don't make the ace point, I think I'd play 16/11*/6 17/7 since it's one of only two plays that create 3 builders for both the ace and deuce points. Three or four other plays look just about as good.
Making the ace point now will backfire if White rolls 6-6 (before you remake the 6 point) followed by 6-6, 5-5 or 4-4. In exchange, White never gets an ace point game, and it's lot easier to force White off the deuce point (or six point) than off the ace point.
Have fun!
You should be able to close out 2 checkers at least 90% of the time. If you're not, reassess ;-
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