Hardwood Backgammon

A backgammon is a very difficult maneuver and is almost impossible to boost. A backgammon occurs when you move all of your checkers into the goal, clearing your board, while your opponent still has at least one checker up on the bar. I say almost impossible because your partner cannot purposely keep his checkers up there. If you have checkers on the board and roll a number that can be moved, it must be moved.

It is possible however to boost. There is a later achievement called “Bar Baron”. This achievement occurs when you get four or more of your opponent’s checkers up on the board at the same time. This can be boosted, because your opponent can purposely leave checkers singled, thus leaving them open to be put on the bar. As stated in “Backgammon Veteran”, a good strategy is to keep your home quadrant filled with at least two checkers in each spot which will take a minimum of twelve checkers, leaving three left over. Keep these as close to the opponent’s home quadrant as possible, giving you more of a chance to send more checkers to the bar. Hopefully, this will get you at least four or more checkers on the bar. Then move your checkers to your home quadrant and start clearing, making sure to never leave a checker alone. Then pray for doubles. As mentioned before, a double lets you have four moves. If you start by clearing out spaces, your opponent may get the chance to move one or two pieces out, but hopefully, if you put enough up there and cleared out your quadrant in a systematic way, within a few tries you will end the game with there still being a checker on the bar giving you the achievement.