Hitting, Entering, and Bearing Off
The fun part of backgammon basics are hitting, entering, and bearing off checkers. You should be able to grasp some of the concepts of this part of the game. We won't be discussing checker movement but if you feel you need to review that then you should do so before moving forward to hitting and entering.
Blots are points on the home board that are occupied by only one checker. You can leave blots on the backgammon board and your opponent sure can leave some too. The only precaution is that if you do leave blots on the board these are open targets of attacks.
Your opponent's checker can land on your blot and that works vice versa. Landing a checker on your opponent's blot will place that checker on the bar and work its way from the end of the line towards your opponent's home board. This is called a hit in backgammon. The Blitz is a particular backgammon strategy that uses hitting and aggressive play in order to secure an advantage.
Every checker that gets hit and sent to the bar will have to enter the backgammon board. Entering means to bring your checkers from the bar and land it on the enemy home board. The checker that has just entered will now have to work its way from that end to its respective home board. Getting your checkers hit slows you down. You'd have to get your checkers running all over again from the very beginning. Interesting enough there are backgammon strategies that use hitting and entering as effective tools.
Once you have all your checkers on your own home board you then commence to bear off. This means taking your checkers off the board. If you notice, your home board has slots on two of its sides at the edges. Your checkers fit them just right and you can safely put the checkers you bear off there.
The first player to bear off all checkers wins the game. The rules on moving checkers still work in the bear off. So for example you have a one on your dice you can bear off a checker on the one-point. A three on the dice means you can bear off a checker on the three-point. But if you roll a six and you have no checker on the six-point you can bear off checkers on the next highest point.
But take note that if your roll won't correspond to bearing off a checker you should move that checker closer to your Ace-point. Let's say you have a checker on the six-point, no checker on the five-point, one checker on the four-point, and you roll a five on the dice. You're not supposed to bear off a checker on four-point but will instead move your checker on the six-point to the Ace-point.
These are backgammon basics on hitting, entering, and bearing off. This will constitute a huge part of backgammon action.
