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A routine play of double 1s

Posted By: Timothy Chow
Date: Sunday, 3 July 2016, at 5:26 p.m.

In Response To: A routine play of double 1s (Kevin Finch)

White has to hit a shot to win, and she doesn't care about losing a gammon. Typically, putting a checker on the bar increases contact and therefore your losing chances. As you say, you have to weigh that against the risk of blotting because of the gap in your board, but you have plenty of spares on your high points. Every individual number plays safely, and you'll probably have a lot of checkers off before you're forced to leave a shot.

As a general rule, the distance between your highest occupied point and the opponent's anchor is the "critical number." You want to clear your highest point, but you can't play your critical number directly from your highest point. Here, your critical number is 4. If you play 5/4*(2) then you have four checkers on your 6pt, so there's a reasonable chance that you'll roll two 4's before clearing your 6pt, and you might be forced to blot then.

Stick's point about timing is that if you play 1/off(2) then your spares mean that by the time you blot, your opponent will probably have no board or will be forced to run out of your board. This is a factor but I think it's secondary to the aforementioned factors.

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