Vic Morawski: Hi, I am Vic and today we are introducing you to the game of Backgammon. We would like to look now at how you would bear in when you are trying to win a race not merely save the gammon. But I want to illustrate here is a situation where contact has broken off between these sides. Nobody can hit anybody here and basically, it is a crapshoot, it's a dice roll from here on in. There is a bit of a difference strategies involved in bearing your checkers in to win a race.

Here, what you want to do is to make sure you are filled in on the higher points. So you want to move numbers in to fill up these higher points especially the four, five and six points. So you want to avoid taking numbers too deep into your home board, when they can fill these points off and so you are not just aiming as you were in trying to save the gammon, you are not just aiming to pile everything up on your six point because you got to win a race, not just get one off and the best way to win a race is to have checkers relatively, evenly distributed especially on the higher points as you are beginning the bear off.

So you still want to maximize the crossovers, but unlike bearing in to save the gammon, you want to have or make sure that your checkers are more evenly distributed and try to have as few gaps, especially on the higher points as you possibly can. Next, we will talk about bearing off without an opponent giving you trouble in your home board.

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