The Score Really Matters

[Simborg]

One of the reasons I believe match play is so much more interesting than money play is the complexity of the game. The score makes a huge difference, not only in the use of the doubling cube, but in the checker play.

For example, take the position below. Black has just rolled a great roll--4-4. The strategy for the play, however, is very different depending on the score.

If gammons are important to black, the way to get the most gammons is to make two inner board points, hitting white in the process, and try to get what we call a "blitz." Try to make a lot of inner board points and keep white on the bar. For example, if Black was trailing 3-4 Crawford in a match to 5, Black can win the match if he wins a gammon. But if he just wins the game, the score becomes 4-4 and it's 50/50. So a gammon takes black from a 50% player to 100%. There is a 50% gain for winning a gammon, so black should be willing to take some pretty big risks to try to get that gammon.

But if the score was just the opposite, and black was winning 4-3 Crawford in a match to 5, a gammon for black is no better than a win. So black should not take any extra risks to win a gammon, and should only be concerned with two things: what is the best play to win the most games, and what is the best play in terms of PREVENTING gammons. Black knows that if things go wrong and he gets gammoned, he loses the match. So he has to consider those two things in every play. If he is smart, in this situation, he will find that his best play is to simply run the back two checkers all the way around the board. After the roll he is up 27 pips, and when you are way up in the race, your main goal is to try to keep racing and bring your checkers home safely. The safe play leaves NO BLOTS that white can hit. It makes a nice landing point, and it puts pressure on white's back checkers to try to anchor up so as not to get blitzed on future rolls. If white has to play safe, black has less risks if and when he has to leave a blot.