Hi all! Wishing everyone a Happy and Prosperous 2017!
Are there any backgammon enthusiasts among you? Over the holidays, I dusted off an old backgammon set and relearned the rules. I've got everything down (I think) but ran into a problem in the following position:
This was the situation (the exact home quadrant positions don't matter for our purposes). Both sides had gotten all their checkers into their home areas...all except two stranded dudes for both players. White rolled a 6 and a 3. The rules state that you
must use both rolls if possible.
What is the correct interpretation of the rule? White cannot make a six-space play here. However, he definitely
can move a checker 6 spaces
IF he moves one of his stranded checkers 3 spaces first. Obviously he does not want to do that here.
What should happen? Can White make a safe play of 3 spaces in his home quadrant and skip the six? Or must he break up his stranded checkers and hope that Black does not hit on the follow through?
In our game we decided to play it as though White could not make a six play. It evened out, as Black immediately rolled a six on his turn so both sides had a chance to "cheat"!