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BGonline.org Forums
What gives?
Posted By: Timothy Chow In Response To: What gives? (RealNick)
Date: Tuesday, 26 October 2010, at 3:36 a.m.
Probably the first thing you need to learn (or unlearn?) here is not to overestimate the importance of your bar point. One frequent error made by intermediates is that they will almost never even consider breaking the bar point to make an inner board point if doing so leaves a direct shot. I'm not saying that it's always right or that I don't have trouble with such decisions myself, but it's right more often than most intermediates think, and you need to train yourself to see it as an option.
The bar point is useful as a priming point, but as a general rule it's difficult to prime a single checker. In this position specifically, it's much too optimistic to think you can contain the back checker simply by extending your existing prime. You have two checkers tied up on the 2 point, and three checkers back. Your position is stacked and stripped. If you play with the hope that you'll roll the perfect numbers to build your prime, a likely outcome is that White will hop out while you're cursing all your bad rolls and playing them awkwardly.
A better plan is to build your board and try to attack White's blots. Once you make the 3 point you'll have the stronger board and you'll have an anchor while White will have two vulnerable blots and no anchor. Also you're slightly behind in the race. By Magriel's safe/bold criteria you should be playing boldly. So a bar-point blot is no biggie. If you're hit, you'll probably enter easily and will have return shots; if you hit back, White may quickly be in trouble against your stronger board. Even if you don't hit back immediately, White will probably have trouble bringing everything around safely, while your own position will be quite smooth and flexible.
The other thing to consider is, what's plan B? Breaking the midpoint releases the pressure on White's outfield blot and disconnects your army. Other moves do not lock down a permanent asset (except for 8/4 7/4, which has the advantage of making a better point but leaving a much worse distribution on your 6 point and 8 point, not to mention leaving another blot).
If your opponent had a stronger board or you had a solid race lead or your opponent had more checkers behind your prime or your checkers on the 2 point were more flexibly positioned, then you might want to think twice about such a bold play. Here, though, all the positional factors suggest that the bold point-making play is strong.
For a variant, move White's outfield blot to your 9 point and change the roll to 21. I haven't checked a bot but I am pretty confident that making the 5-point with 7/5 6/5 would be right by a pretty large margin. But there are many intermediates who would not even see 7/5 6/5 as an option and who would feel that 24/21 is "forced."
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