What is the best approach – to be aggressive or defensive?
This debate, on whether a player should obtain a highly aggressive approach to the game, or a defensive one. Keep in mind the famous axiom; 'slow but steady wins the race'. If one keeps a watch upon the refinements in backgammon he can simply find out that the game has turn into more and more aggressive with the ages which being the key motivation for attracting the stalwarts from other famous board games.
Let’s try to consider some analysis from the experts.
If we want to dig in history, the first fundamental change in the game strategies was by Oswald Jacoby and John Crawford in their most well-known book, 'The Backgammon Book'. The book demonstrates the first steps towards aggressive backgammon.
The book became so famous because it was the first book that brought the idea of encountering a prime of the opponent by a counter prime. They have obviously shown that the advantage goes to the player who builds the advanced prime. When the prime has to be busted with the progress of the game, Jacoby has evidently shown that the winning chance goes to the player who had been able to outline the most advanced prime.
One more backgammon world champion, Bill Robertie, has been constantly noticeable as the aggressive player and his technique has been well-known as 'Dynamic Backgammon'. We all learn from personal practice and perhaps this holds truer for Bill Robertie. It is known that Roberitie’s emphasis on doubling had been evolved from his personal practice, where Robertie had to throw a double on his last roll to be the victor. He has explained the doubling and the circumstances for doubling in most of his books express his aggressiveness. He prefers his method to be called 'dynamic backgammon'. He recommends noticeably that one can’t wait for the opponent to come to him; relatively the player himself should try to get to the opponent.
When we try to analyze other world champion success, Walter Cookie, we can see that his personal view of playing backgammon is play it for fun and his guts of taking risks irrespective of the advancement of the game which have given him sufficient enjoyable in his life. His risk-taking competence has also earned Titles for him. If we talk of the abstract notions then we should never bring Walter Cookie into debate. Lot of experts had to spend sleepless nights just to give reason for his winning, a lot of which were in theory wrong. The fact of life remains that his wild method had outplayed some most renowned player like Philip Martyn, who could only just cope up. Chris Bray, the famous backgammon writer, described the above-mentioned game as 'An incredible game; but what about Cookie’s initial double?'
A different world champion, Tim Holland has constantly been known for his aggressive and pioneering gaming strategies in backgammon. In his book “Backgammon for People Who Hate to Lose”, he has handed the psychological assistance of playing the game for winning. The benefit has been the described illustrations citation from his own life beginning his giant bank of won titles.
As a result, we will never ask you to play an aggressive game similar to Walter Cookie simultaneously suggesting you to preserve a good pace so that the game does not turn into too cool and begins to lose color into irrelevance.