The best Backgammon opening rolls and opening moves

To consider opening rolls we will look at the possible rolls of the two dice. Imagine one dice is blue and the other is red. There are 36 possible rolls of the two dice as shown in the table below:

Each of the six doubles occurs once and each of the non-doubles occurs twice. Therefore there are only 15 possible opening rolls.

Five of these are always played the same way:

31 is played by making the 5-pt  (8/5, 6/5) 42 is played by making the  4-pt (8/4, 6/4) 53 is played by making the  3-pt (8/3, 6/3) 61 is played by making the bar-pt  (13/7, 8/7) 65 is played by running one back checker to the mid-point  24/13.

The other opening rolls provide all provide choices. There are three types of choices:

• Run a back checker or play for contact
• Slot the 5-pt or split the two back checkers
• Bring down builders from the mid-point or split the back checkers

In the first category we see the remaining rolls containing a six:   62, 63, 64.

All of these rolls can be played by running one back checker with   24/16, 24/15, 24/14 respectively. These are rather old-fashioned plays and the more normal plays are:

62 24/18, 13/11 63 24/18, 13/10 64 24/18, 13/9

The idea with these moves is to provoke a favourable exchange of hits on the opponent`s bar-point or make it on the next roll. It should be noted that 64 can also be played   8/2, 6/2 which is the right move at certain match scores.

In the second category we see the rolls:   21, 41, 51.

The slot plays are:

21 13/11, 6/5 41 13/9, 6/5 51 13/8, 6/5

and the corresponding split plays are:

21 13/11, 24/23 41 13/9, 24/23 51 13/8, 24/23

The slotting plays lead to complicated games whilst the split plays tend to lead to simpler positions.

In the final category we have:   32, 43, 52 and 54. The choices are to build with:

32 13/10, 13/11 43 13/9, 13/10 54 13/8, 13/9 52 13/8, 13/11

and the corresponding splitting plays are:

32 13/10, 24/21 43 13/9, 24/21 or 13/10, 24/20 54 13/8, 24/20 52 13/8, 24/22

Once again the building plays tend to lead to more complex positions and the splitting plays to simpler ones. The choice is yours but note that the match score in a tournament can influence your choice (play for complexity when losing) and you should also take note of your opponent`s skill levels (steer for complexity against an inferior opponent, for simplicity against a better player).

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