Get Out of Home

Backgammon is nothing more than a race, but there are many important strategic concerns involved in winning that race. How you move your checkers along the board and not just how fast you move them can have a very strong impact on your chances of victory. Just racing ahead and getting pieces into your home can lead you with strays floating around the board, easily knocked out by your opponent's advancing pieces.

Because of this, it is imperative that before you really concentrate on getting your pieces into your home, you get them out of your opponent's. Your opponent's home is the most dangerous place for your checkers to be sitting. Sure, they can possibly disrupt his movement from there, but when you play a rear guard action like that, all you're really doing is taking longer to lose. Your pieces can also disrupt your opponent's movement in your home and out on the field, so there's no reason to dilly dally.

Because of this, you should also not worry too much about moving pieces into your own home until all your pieces are relatively safe and in strong positions. It doesn't matter if you can get some of your pieces into home when you have other pieces languishing at the back of the board.

Get your pieces out of your opponent's home before you start worrying about getting them into your own.