More About Opening Rolls

These 5 opening rolls are the best you can have because they give you an immediate point. Four of these opening rolls create a new point whilst the fifth opening roll gets one of the back men safely to the mid-point (your 13-pt).

31

31 is the strongest opening roll of them all.Allowing you to make 5-pt by playing 8/5, 6/5 as you can see below:

The two most important points on the board at the start of the game that you should strive to make are your own 5-pt and your opponent’s 5-pt. One of the world’s finest players and certainly the best author/teacher for many years, Paul Magriel, coined the term ‘Golden Point’ long ago for the 5-pt to reflect its significance and the name has just stuck for that opening roll.

Why is this opening roll so important? It will get in the way of your opponent if he has a checker on the bar as well as having another point in your homeboard. Maybe the most important aspect of this opening roll is that it forms the third point in a potential prime – all you need now is to make your bar-point (your 7-pt) to create a four-point prime.
A 31 opening roll will lead to you winning the game about 59% of the time.

42

42 is the second strongest Backgammon Opening Roll, it is played 8/4, 6/4 to make your 4-pt as shown here:

Magriel named this opening roll the ‘Silver Point’. Even though it is not as strong as the 5-pt it is still a powerful point to make and that is why it is the second best opening roll.

The reason that this opening roll is not as strong as 31 is the “hole” between the 4-pt and the 6-pt. If you later on you make your 5-pt you will have a very powerful position but if your opponent makes it he will have a strong defense.
A 42 opening roll will lead to you winning the game about 58% of the time.

53

53 is also a roll that makes a home board point, it is played 8/3, 5/3 as shown:

Any new point helps you out in general and making the 3-pt is still a good opening roll to start off the game. It is not as good of an opening roll as the 5-pt or 4-pt because there is now a big hole between the new point and the 6-pt.
Back in the 1970’s, the 53 opening roll was played 13/8, 13/10 because it was felt that the 3-pt was too deep in your homeboard to make on the first roll of the game. However, Jason Lester, switched to making his 3-pt and saw that he was winning more games with this play than the old one. After that, all the budding New York professionals changed to making the 3-pt on the opening roll of 53.
Today, making the 3-pt is universal.

61

61 also makes a point, played 13/7, 8/7:

Secondly, the checkers that are difficult to work with from the opening position are the five men on your 6-pt because they don’t have too many options available to them. The opening rolls of 31, 42 and a 53 all make use of one of those men, 61 does not. 61 is definitely a good opening roll but the point that it leaves is not as beneficial to you as after one of the other three opening rolls. On the up side it creates a three-point prime that can be continued in either direction. 

65

This is a good opening roll because it gets one of the two back checkers on the opponent’s ace-point halfway home in complete safety. This opening roll is also known as the ‘Lover’s Leap’. Once you have rolled this opening roll you game strategy is pretty much laid out for you – take out the other checker as quickly as you can

This move went unappreciated for many years and it was not realized how powerful it is to escape one checker completely so early in the game. It is far easier to escape one checker than two and to have half of the job done on the opening roll is a great advantage.

These last three opening rolls, 53, 61 and 65 will all lead to you winning the game about 55% of the time.

Summary

Our objectives in the opening rolls are:
Make new points Back Checkers should be moved as much as possivble Heavy points should be unstacked

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