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| In his book, Classic Backgammon Revisited, Jeremy Bagai makes an observation that has stuck with me:
Slotting is more often the result of internal, rather than external, pressure. By this, he means the circumstance of your checkers — not your opponent’s — often induces you to slot.
In your position, consider what happens when Yellow plays passively, perhaps moving 13/10 12/7. All his timing will be gone, and on the next turn he will be an underdog to make his 5pt. If he cannot make the 5pt with his next roll, one or more of his builders will probably be moved beyond it. Otherwise, Yellow will have to run off his anchor. Either way, the game will shift decidedly against him. Slotting now is the alternative. When it works, the upside is big. Yellow won’t too far from a cube turn. Yet when it fails, the downside is limited. As David points out, Yellow will still have a lot of life, and 4 is a good roll for Black anyway. Coming back to my first point, look what happens when we take the internal pressure off Yellow. Let him move his checkers on the 2pt and 3pt back to the 8pt and 9pt, for instance, and there is no need for him to slot. He will have plenty of time to try to make the 5pt naturally. Mike | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
is Player 2
is Player 1