It's not always obvious

[Simborg]

Black leads 2-1 Crawford in a match to 3 and has to play 6-4. What's your play?






The obvious play is to hit, and that is the blunder that most people make. The main reason it is wrong to hit here is the score. At this score, you want to win the game, but you also want to make sure you don't get gammoned. If you get gammoned you lose the match, but if you just lose the game, you get another chance. This is a game where you are probably going to lose...it would take a lot of great rolls and luck to win from here, so you need to think about saving gammons. Hitting gives you twice as many gammons as wins, because if you hit and don't roll a 6 pretty soon, you are in rough shape.

If the score was DMP (double match point) hitting would be right by a lot.