Establish a Pace

"The Tortoise and the Hare" is especially relevent to thinking about backgammon. If you remember the old story, the slower Tortoise wins the race against the quick Hare because he establishes a steady pace instead of sprinting forward and stumbling later in the race. In backgammon, establishing a strong pace is a better course towards victory than just rushing forward.

You want to keep your checkers well protected when you're playing backgammon. The worst thing that can happen is having your checkers taken off the board and forced to re-enter at the end. All this does is set you back to almost square one. It doesn't matter how many checkers you're ready to score with when one of them is still languishing off the board.

This means you should move steadily across the board in groups. Don't rush a checker to your home, especially if you've been knocking out your opponent's pieces. They can just come back in and knock your piece off the board. At that point, you've just wasted a dice roll. By moving together and keeping your pieces protected, you don't run the risk of wasting those rolls, and you keep all your pieces moving towards victory.