Saving the Gammon: Damage Control 101

Sometimes a game goes wrong no matter what you do. Your opponent has escaped, your back checkers are far from home, and a gammon loss is a real possibility, perhaps with the cube already on 2. Now the goal changes. You are no longer playing to win but to limit the damage, which in practice means one thing: bear off at least one checker before your opponent finishes. This is called saving the gammon.

General principles

When saving the gammon, stick to a few simple rules.

• Do not waste pips. Your target is your 6-point. A checker that reaches the 6-point is home; moving it deeper to the 5- or 4-point gains nothing and uses up pips you need elsewhere.
• Get checkers to the 6-point whenever you can. Every checker that arrives exactly on or just inside your home board is a checker that no longer needs a roll.
• Make as many crossovers as possible. A crossover is moving a checker from one quadrant of the board to the next. When bringing checkers home, it is often better to move several checkers across quadrant lines than to move one checker far within the same quadrant.
• Avoid stacking. Several checkers on the same outfield point reduce the number of rolls that bring them in efficiently. Spread them so that many different numbers are useful.

An example of the principles

Suppose Black is far behind, still has two back checkers on his 23-point (deep in White's board) and a third checker on his 16-point, and rolls 4-4. The obvious move is to run both back checkers together, 23/15(2). It is not a bad move, but look at it through the rules above:

• Each back checker made only one crossover, and both still have two quadrant lines to cross.
• Two checkers now stand on the same point, the 15-point, so their next rolls overlap.
• Neither checker has come much closer to the 6-point.

An alternative is 23/11 16/12: one back checker runs all the way to the 11-point, crossing two quadrant lines, and the checker on the 16-point moves to the 12-point, crossing one. That makes three crossovers instead of two, and the checkers now sit on different points just outside the home board. The cost is that one back checker stays behind alone. Whether that risk is worth it depends on the position, especially on whether your opponent can hit it without leaving himself open to a return shot. A hit from a player trying to win a gammon is not free for him either: if he hits loose and you hit back from the bar, his gammon may slip away.

The lesson is not that one move is always right, but that "run both together" is not automatically best. Count crossovers, look for stacks, and think about which checkers can reach the 6-point soonest.

Saving the backgammon

If things are really bad, you may need to save the backgammon rather than the gammon. A backgammon costs three times the stake and happens when your opponent finishes while you have borne off nothing and still have a checker on the bar or in his home board. Here the priorities change. Your first job is to get every checker out of your opponent's home board; only then do you worry about reaching your own 6-point.

For example, if you have a checker on the bar and roll a number that lets you either enter and continue out of his home board, or enter and bring a different checker into your own board, the first choice is usually right when a backgammon is a real threat. A single checker left in his home board can turn a two-point loss into a three-point loss if he rolls well.

Conclusion

With luck you will not need these skills often, but when you do, they save a lot of points. No fancy plays: get your checkers to the 6-point as efficiently as possible, use crossovers, avoid stacks, and bear off that first checker. For the other side of the coin, read playing for gammon; for counting how far you are behind, see pip count basics.