Backgammon Is Roller DerbyAug 2001by Walter TriceBeginner's Boot Camp: Article OneBackgammon is not War, it's ... Roller Derby!Suddenly one summer in the 1970's everyone in the United States started playing
backgammon. Chouettes sprouted in sidewalk cafes, parks, and barrooms like
mushrooms after a spring rain. Night clubs set up long rows of fancy backgammon
tables around their dance floors; Disco was still King, but it had to share a little
space with the new craze. My first backgammon tournament was held in a chess
club in Boston, organized by a fellow named Bill Robertie, a chess master with a
fresh enthusiasm for the 'new' game. Soon they banned backgammon there, fearful
that it might take over the club!
Among the hordes of new players, some of the more successful were veterans of
other board and card games. One could spot a variety of imported styles. Chess
players, for instance, were always planning ahead, setting up subtle positional
structures, attacking and defending. Bridge players liked to enumerate combinations,
compute probabilities, and use "point counts." Poker players focused on psychology
and the gambling aspect. They looked for 'tells' in their opponent's behaviour, and
even tried to bluff now and then.
Despite their different mind-sets, games-savvy newcomers agreed on one thing:
backgammon was not really a race. Young American wizards scorned the so-called
'Persian style.' The backgammon old-timers, many of them members of Mediterranean
and middle-Eastern ethnic groups, tended to 'play safe' more often than we thought
appropriate. They would try to preserve their racing chances in situations where we
would play boldly (and riskily) in hopes of building overpowering positions.
Combat was the dominant strategic metaphor. Barclay Cooke's 'The Cruelest Game,'
our backgammon bible before Paul Magriel's text appeared, invited us to think of the
two sets of checkers as 'opposing armies,' and introducedeach chapter with a
quotation from Karl von Clausewitz's classic 'On War.' One needn't have read further
than thetitle of Bruce Becker's bestseller 'Backgammon For Blood' to know that he
shared Cooke's outlook.
The problem with the War metaphor is that in war running away is a big no-no. It can
get a guy court-martialed, shot even. Running away is cowardly: 'real men' stand their
ground and fight! In backgammon, on the other hand, disengaging your checkers and
moving them around and off the board is, lest we forget, the object of the game. How
to reconcile racing and conflict, that is the problem...
Raquel Welch showed me the light. Had she not starred in a film called Kansas City
Bomber I would never have given much thought to a peculiar (now defunct) sport
called Roller Derby, nor would I have realized that Roller Derby illustrates the essence
of backgammon strategy. Roller Derby was a race between two teams of skaters,
conducted on a banked oval track. What made it a grand and goofy spectacle was that
the skaters were allowed to assist members of their own team and block members of the
opposing team. There was a lot of bashing and crashing. The rules (whatever they were
-- no one really seemed to know) were often breached, fights broke out,
and grudges between individual players were carried along from match to match.
A Roller Derby match looked like a great chaotic whirling confusion, but one principle seemed
self-evident. A teamthat was ahead should try to avoid contact and race on to the finish.
The trailing team should try to block the leading team and create as much entanglement
and general mayhem as possible.
The same principle applies in backgammon. In most cases the leader prefers to race, the
trailer to block. Two positions may look similar on the surface, but may call for different
strategies depending on the status of the race.
The following position provides a simple illustration:
Green and White have positions that are almost mirror images. Green has rolled 5-4. If he plays 14/10, 14/9, moving both men past White's outfield point, then contact will have been broken. Hitting and blocking will no longer be possible. But this would be weak, because White is winning the race. Note that White has 1 fewer checker in the outfield than Green, and that his man on the 17 point is a pip closer to home than either of Green's two outfield blots. The 5-4 roll helps Green catch up a little, but note that if he played 10/1, closing his board, he would still be a pip behind in the outfield -- and it would be White's turn to roll and move.
Green should indeed play 10/1, preserving contact. In the next two or three rolls White may have some trouble clearing his outfield point and getting his two last checkers safely past Green's blocking point. He may be forced to leave a blot, and if Green hits the blot he will turn the tables completely and glide home to an easy victory.
But what if it were White's turn, with the same 5-4 roll to play? Then White, winning the race, would be happy to play 11/15, 11/16, breaking contact. He would be by no means certain to win, since Green could still outroll him and catch up, but he would be a big (about 4-to-1) favourite. He would eliminate the only way that Green could win other than rolling some large numbers on the dice.
The diagram above shows an endgame position. The same kind of decision can arise in the opening.
White opened with a 6-5 and ran one of his back men out to the midpoint. Green responded with a rather puny 2-1, which he played 24/23, 13/11, splitting his back men and bringing a man off his midpoint into his outfield. White rolled another 6-5 and ran out again. Now Green has a 3-2 to play.
Green could use his 3-2 to create an advanced anchor by playing 24/21, 23/21. Making an advanced anchor is often a very good thing to do: it forestalls various attacking and blocking threats, controls some territory in the opponent's outfield, and prepares to let the back men escape completely with large doubles.
Here, though, Green should NOT make the advanced anchor, and one of the reasons he should not is that he is behind in the race. If Green leaves his two back men where they are, then some of White's rolls will force him to leave a direct shot immediately, giving Green a chance to equalize the race by hitting a blot. But if he moves the two men forward, he leaves the
last 3 points in White's home board uncontrolled. As a result, White can play safely no matter what he rolls. Take a moment to visualize how White's 6-2, 6-3, 6-5, 5-4, 5-1, and 2-1 would play as the position stands, and then again how they would play after Green had moved his back men forward.
Instead of 24/21, 23/21, Green probably does best to keep his back men where they are and do something modestly constructive on his own side of the board, preparing to build a prison for the checker that he hopes to hit. I rather like 8/5, 13/11, but there are several perfectly reasonable alternatives. The main thing is not to make it easy for White by moving the back men forward.
The Roller Derby Principle – race if leading, block if trailing – is a useful concept and it often points to the right play for the right reason. But it should not be taken to be an ironclad rule. Backgammon is not that simple.
