The score is part of the position

Why the match score can change your best backgammon move

At 0–0, a chance to win two or three points can be worth taking a small risk. At 6–6 in a match to seven, one point already wins the match. The same board can call for a different move.

CUBE BackgammonPublished 20 October 2026Updated 20 October 2026

You have one checker left and a 6–1 to play. You can run from 23 to 17, then to 16, or play the one first, hit on 22 and continue to 16 with the six.

Your last checker reaches the same point either way. Hitting sends a red checker back to the bar, which seems like a useful extra. It also brings that checker back into contact with yours.

What are you giving Red a chance to do?

Without the hit, all fifteen red checkers are past your last checker. Red is ready to bear off and neither side can hit the other again. Your race is very favourable, although a sufficiently unlucky run of rolls can still lose it.

After the hit, Red must bring the captured checker back into its home board before bearing off any of the others. That gives you a chance to win a gammon, worth twice the cube’s value, or even a backgammon, worth three times. Red also gets a checker travelling towards yours, with a chance to hit it and turn the game around.

Compare the two routes below, then change the score without moving a checker.

Keep the board; change the score

Play the one first to hit, then continue with the six.

At 0–0, GNU Backgammon prefers hitting here. The extra points from gammon and backgammon wins are valuable.

Ivory moves toward 1; Red toward 24. Numbers are from Ivory’s side.

Read the position

Ivory, point: number of checkers. 23: 1. Red: 19: 3, 20: 3, 21: 3, 22: 1, 24: 5. On the bar: Ivory 0, Red 0. Borne off: Ivory 14, Red 0.

At 0–0, the extra points matter

With the cube on 1, an ordinary win earns one point, a gammon two and a backgammon three. At the start of a seven-point match, those extra points can bring you substantially closer to the finish.

In our original example, GNU Backgammon prefers the hit at 0–0. It creates valuable gammon and backgammon chances, at the cost of a small additional risk of losing. The engine compares the continuations after each play, including return hits and gammon chances.

The cube adds further decisions about the value of those outcomes. Our article on the cube and the games you still have to play follows one of those choices through the remaining match.

At 6–6, a gammon buys you nothing extra

Now keep the position, dice and cube exactly as they are, but make the score 6–6. Either player needs one more point to win the seven-point match.

An ordinary win, a gammon and a backgammon all finish the match in your favour. The extra scoring possibilities from hitting no longer compensate for taking an additional risk. GNU Backgammon prefers to run without hitting in this position.

This score is called double match point. The doubling cube cannot improve the value of a win either, because one point is already enough.

You may need to change how much risk you take

A move that wins the most games is not always the move that gives you the best chance of winning the match. Extra points can reward an attack at one score and be useless at another. Equally, avoiding a gammon can matter more than preserving a small chance to win the current game.

That is another reason to reconsider your plan as a game develops. Alongside the race and the strength of the boards, ask how much an ordinary win, a gammon or a loss would change the match score.

If you noticed that the order of the dice creates the hit, you have also found the connection to our article about which die to play first. In this example both orders are legal, so you have a strategic choice to make.

Score-dependent checker play is an established part of backgammon. We consulted Kit Woolsey’s “Crawford and Beyond” for the role of gammons at different match scores and the USBGF rules for scoring. The position, comparison and wording were created for CUBE Backgammon. We used GNU Backgammon to check the two choices.

What the comparison shows

Both complete 6–1 turns are legal, and they are the only two legal turns in this position. Ivory has already borne off 14 checkers; Red has borne off none. Both choices leave Ivory on point 16. We analysed the two plays separately at 0–0 and 6–6 in a seven-point match, with the cube initially centred on 1, and checked the preference with seeded simulations played to the end. These are engine estimates for this constructed example, not exact winning probabilities or a rule that every available hit is correct at 0–0.

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