Came across this position yesterday. I was doing great, trapped three checkers of my opponent behind a six prime. Now how to finish him off?

My game plan was simple: keep the perfect 6 prime as long as I can, add remaining checkers to the prime, hit the checker on 1 until I have a 6-prime and he only has checkers on the two point, then bring the game home. My memory suggests that the winning chances of a game against only the deuce point are something like 90%. So I played 15/10.

I was astonished to see BGBlitz considering this move a 0.085 blunder. And as I continued with my plan, my errors piled up to a loss of 0.23 equity, and my PR plummeted. In this situation, BGBlitz would have played 8/6, 8/5, voluntarily opening up the prime and giving white the chance to escape. And maybe hit my back checkers!

If you think about the position longer, it becomes clear why in such a situation, letting go of the 6-prime makes sense. White has two checkers on the 2 point, and his own home board is crumbling. If he rolls a 6, I have good chances to hit either the blot that jumped past my prime or one of the blots on 2 and 1, and close my home board completely. In this situation my winning chances are even better than against a 2-point holding game. And should he hit one of my blots, the odds are still perfectly fine for me – he has to roll two 6, and a 6+1 to get his checkers out.

So my plan was fairly sure to win, but by luring one checker away from the 2 point I can improve my chances even more.

I was sure in such a position you can’t fail. Yes you can.