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Backgammon Rules: Hitting and Entering
One of the interesting elements of backgammon checker action is hitting and entering. This is the part where your pieces and those of your opponent's would interact on the backgammon board. You can say that hitting and entering is where most of the action is whenever you play a game of backgammon. Let's get on with the basics of this action-packed part of the game.
Going back to checker play and checker movement, we'll need to define what is a blot and what is the bar to really understand hitting and entering. Remember that when you move your checkers around on the backgammon board you can only occupy empty or open points. Points or pips that are occupied by your checkers are also places where your checkers can move to.
But points on the backgammon board that are occupied by two or more of your opponent's checkers are practically blocked off. Your checkers aren't allowed to land on those pips on the backgammon board. But, if your opponent only has one checker on a point then you can land one of your backgammon checkers on it.
That point occupied by a single backgammon checker is called a blot. When your opponent makes a blot on the backgammon board and you land one of your checkers on it then this is called a hit. After hitting your opponent's blots those checkers that were hit are sent home to the bar. In other words putting them out of play.
Your opponent is then obligated to bring those checkers into play from the bar. This part of a backgammon game is called entering. When entering checkers, your opponent has to roll the dice in his turn and land checkers that were hit onto your home board. Entering can only be done on your home board. The same works the other way around too when entering your checkers. Entering your checkers can only be done on your opponent's home board.
Hitting and entering are fundamental aspects of the game and actually makes the game really fun. There are strategies that are really based on hitting and forcing your opponent to enter checkers. If your opponent can't enter a checker because certain points are blocked then that opportunity is forfeited.
Certain strategies like the blitz, the back game, or the holding game incorporate these two fundamental backgammon principles.
Hitting and making your opponent enter checkers is the action-packed part of a backgammon game. Learning this part of backgammon is easy but to truly master the use of hitting and entering you should study the strategies mentioned earlier. Have fun at first and experiment with what you can do with these fundamental backgammon principles.