Creating an anchor is an important game strategy that can help you gain an upper hand in a backgammon match. An anchor is joining two or more checkers into a single point on your opponent's home board. The logic behind the creation of the anchor has three parts: You are more likely to block your opponent from reaching his position, you hold an excellent position for an attack and, finally, the opponent cannot hit you.

What are the best moves to be made when you find yourself in a holding game?

Keeping Anchors Put – As tempting as it may be to advance your checkers, including anchors, it may be better in the long run to keep the anchors where they are in order to be in a better position to hit your opponent later on in the game. This strategy depends on a number of other factors on the board.

Saving the Anchor Move – If you want to advance your anchor, your best bet would be to wait until you roll a double on the dice and move them together. In this way, you are not leaving single checkers exposed to be hit by the opponent in the game.

Anchor versus Outfield – It sometimes happens in a game that the two players are pitted against each other with one holding an anchor point made up of two checkers or more on one side of the board, and the other holding a similar outfield point on the other side. In a holding game situation, it may be that players will try to hit each other’s anchor/outfield points in order to block one another on the bar. This is where pip counting proves to be helpful: If the outfield point and anchor point are six pips apart, this is a better situation for the player who has more pips to complete the game.