ANCHORING

We all know that Backgammon is a game of skill and luck. While luck lies in the throw of the dice, skill is directly linked with your power of anticipating your opponent’s move and application of your intuitive knowledge.

The main objective of backgammon is to bring all of your checkers to your home board and bear them off. In Backgammon, the player who bears off first wins the game.

One such method is 'anchoring', however the crucial strategy is to get the how, where and when situation accurate. By definition, a point occupied by two or more checkers of the same colour is called an anchor. The rule says if two or more checkers of one colour, which means checkers of the same player are placed at one particular point then these checkers cannot be hit, which in turn forbids the opponent’s checkers to occupy that very point. Thus anchoring is to create a hindrance to the opponent’s checkers from escaping to the safety of their home board.

Remember: Anchoring is an established form of defense which you can hardly afford to lose.

The experts say that the best place to create an anchor is at your away board, which essentially means at the home board of the opponent. It serves you two fold. Firstly, it provides you enough space for landing in when you are hit. It also gives you the wider occupancy and control of the board. The second advantage being that your opponent faces difficulties in bringing back his checkers to the safe haven of his home board, which otherwise means that you restrain your opponent from using his home as per his choice.

Now, if you come to the most valuable points, you must consider the bar adjacent points first. These are the 20th and 21st points, where the anchoring is mandatory at the beginning of the game. Remember, if a checker is hit, the same is placed on the bar as per the rule of the game. So the occupancy of bar adjacent points at the early stage in the game earns a distinct advantage for you. However, if the progress of the game goes against you then you need to take the philosophy of saving your home first and forgetting the entire episode of anchoring. At this point of time lower points becomes more crucial for you for building your home board as per your choice. Experts advise you to concentrate at the 22nd, 23rd and the 24th points. You may create one or multiple anchors at these points to yield the requisite outputs. If you are lagging behind, you must wait for a shot and occasionally you may even prefer to leave shots or being ‘hit’, to keep your strategic advantage alive.

We suggest that if you keep several anchors; bring them together to strengthen your defense significantly.