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Assuming that Blue picks up his blot on this turn, 4 and 6 will be his problem numbers when he goes to clear the 8pt. Those are the numbers that cannot be played from the 8pt, so he needs to have plenty of those to play while he is waiting. The logical play, and seemingly the obvious play, is N = Near (9/7 6/5), a play that gives Blue spares that be used to play both 4 and 6. On the other hand, whenever the 1pt is open during the bear in, holding the 7pt can be problematic for the player trying to bring his checkers home. That is true here. Assuming again that Blue picks up his blot on this turn, whenever he rolls a 6 after that, it must be played from the bar point. If he can find a way to clear the bar point, before clearing the 8pt, then he won’t have to play 6s at all. His bear in will be slowed down, and White’s shaky timing will become even more suspect. Take a look at White’s checkers now. He is already having problems with big numbers. He needs 1s, 2s and 3s to make his 5pt. Anything else pushes a checker deeper than he wants. Should Blue try to leverage this? What if he plays o = outer (9/8 7/5)? Only 65, 63, and 44 would force a blot next turn. With luck, he could clear the 7pt safely. It might just work. It might even be correct. But it is just too fancy for me. The other possibility is to leave a blot on the 9pt, but that seems foolhardy to me. I save those tactics for opponents who are not armed with broken five-point blocks. Over the board, I’m going with the obvious N. I have to point out, however, that those times when I write the most are the times I am least confident. It doesn’t take six paragraphs to concisely state the central issue in a position if you know what it is. Mike | ||||||||||||
