Dilemma on Making the Inner Board in Backgammon

There is much weight placed on making the inner board in backgammon because a player can't bear off until all their checkers or pieces are home. And most of the time, a dilemma on making the inner board does come up. So the feeling of relief because you've managed to bear in all your checkers goes down the drain as soon as bearing off checkers when they're positioned unfavorably puts you in a bind.

A recognizable dilemma on making the inner board in backgammon is thinking that the outer board is the same as the inner board so effective tactics on bearing-off can similarly be applied. With that misconception, players tend to stack pieces on their bar-point before they actually bear-in which is really not advisable when nearing the end game. What usually results, in this case, is burying in on lower points and creating gaps on the center of the inner board.

What's advisable is to permit flexible movements when bearing-in by knowing what points are best to land on as you're crossing pieces over the bar with a roll. Otherwise, you would be creating holes on our inner board that makes it problematic when it's time to actually bear off our pieces.

What one can do is to try using the low number on a roll to bear in pieces on higher points while using the high number to bear in checkers on lower points. In this way, we can concentrate on bearing in on the heart of our inner board. That is, we should be attentive in making the four-point and three-point as we bear in so as to be flexible in bearing off with every roll where it matters most. When we've successfully borne in all our pieces in this manner, we can sufficiently use low rolls to move pieces down to lower points and immediately bear off as well.

The dilemma on making the inner board in backgammon usually takes the shape of an over-stacked bar-point. This leaves fewer choices in checker plays because we'd have to use rolls to bury or bring down pieces rather than taking them off the board. That's why it is important to concentrate on bearing in on the four-point and three-point from the outer board by not piling too many pieces on the bar-point to begin with. That way, there are less gaps created and pips to cover in the important bear-off phase in backgammon.