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Looking at the rollout, you can pick out a couple of things.
Both plays lose a lot of gammons, around 25%, so having extra blots exposed in the outfield when you play $ is not as great a risk as it seems at first glance. After playing $, Blue will be hit with any 1, plus 63 and 66. 61 hits twice, but was already counted among the 1s. As noted above, any hit is gammon prone, so the double hit does not add as much additional risk as it would normally. Play A exposes Blue to a hit only when White rolls a 1. Playing $ adds only the 3 additional fly shots. White’s 66, of course, is deadly after Blue plays $. After slotting, the checker on the 8pt is already within direct range to cover. Moving it inside actually reduces the number of covering rolls from 27 to 26. Playing down from the midpoint, on the other hand, raises the number of covers to 29. Those numbers ignore the bar point. In practice, Blue will prefer making the bar point to covering the 2pt. In that regard, $ is also superior to A. $ gives Blue 8 ways to make his 7pt: 63, 61, 33, 31 and 11. A gives only 2: 66 and 33. Over the board, either play is probably fine. Honing your backgammon skills to the fine edge where you can sense a 0.01 difference between two complex plays like these is a very high achievement. Being able to sense the difference in the small amount of time civility requires even in unclocked circumstances is even more remarkable. I mean, who wants to leave all those blots? Mike | ||||||||||||
