Rolling Moves for the Game of Backgammon

Video Transcript

"Hi! I am Grady Johnson and I am a competition backgammon player and today I am representing expertvillage.com. You can see that the dice play a crucial part of this game. There is a little luck involved and the real skill of backgammon is knowing how to work with the luck. Now I would like to talk a little bit about some of the rolls you are going to encounter when you are playing this game. A couple of them we saw were pretty interesting, the six two was kind of a fun way to start because that is one of the toughest ways to start this game because you have to open something up for a block. When you are rolling, there are only really two things you need to look at when your numbers do come up. You do always have to use all the numbers that you are given and the key is to create as many blocks as possible to block off your opponent and to try and create as few blocks as possible that leaves you vulnerable to attack. Now we also saw that you can get some pretty amazing rolls and combination that and other games may not be too good. Now a six and a one is a great roll and it did work very, very effectively for us to create the blockade that you see here. Now I am going to show you something and also another roll that can come along that can really help you out and here we have rolled double fives, now double fives are going to work very, very well for us in this particular game because with doubles you can move your stones and blocks, you do not have to break them up to move them so you can actually move them safely without worrying about it. Also we have an opportunity to hit our opponent. Always take that opportunity when it is available. It is certainly to your advantage. Once you hit this opponent not only do you send him back to the bar but you have effectively covered up another one of his points that he has to utilize to come back into the game. So I am trying to decide what to do but I think I am going to go ahead and go this way and then that way we are going to have three spaces covered. So we have our six covered our three covered and our two. Now you can see you have a lot of different choices here, but the real advantage in here is that when he wants to reenter the game, he can only come in on a one, a four or a five, these others are blocked because you rolled double fives. That is the main thing you want to do whenever you are moving your dice around the board no matter what you roll, try and create little blocks and prevent a block."