You’ve just begun playing a money session and roll an opening 2-1.  Basically, you have 2 reasonable choices – split with 24/23  13/11, or slot with 13/11  6/5.  You are far enough along in your backgammon training to realize that 24/21 or 13/10 don’t do anything particularly well on either side of the board.  So which one will it be?  For money, GNU 2-ply ranks the split .002 higher than the  slot.  Even for those who consistently play at a world class level, this difference is virtually negligble and thus it comes down to a matter of one’s own style.  If you tend to play on the conservative side, you will likely favor the split, while those who play aggressively will make the slot.  But what about those factors that the bots cannot take into consideration, such as who is sitting across the board from you?  Personally, if I feel I am a better player than my opponent I will slot, since it generally leads to more complicated games where strategy plays a greater factor.  If I feel I am the inferior player, I will split, hoping for a pure racing game with minimal contact.  For money (or any long match that is basically at a money-type score, such as 15-away, 15-away, it’s a close call.

Now let’s consider match play where one player has a big lead.  Trailing 17-away, 3-away, I’m now making a .028 error by splitting rather than slotting.  Maximizing gammon chances takes on much more importance, making slotting the only viable option.  Splitting in this scenario basically is saying I hope outroll my opponent.  Personally, I want as few of these type situations as possible.  Sometimes, through no fault of your own, you find yourself needing to roll better dice than your opponent as the only means to winning the game.  That’s fine, can’t be helped, and after all that’s why we play backgammon, because of the fascinating mixture of luck and skill that it requires.  But if you can, as much as possible, put yourself in the position of not having to necessarily roll “golden” dice, then you are making life a lot easier for yourself.  In fact, sometimes I think the entire essence of backgammon boils down to this one thing – placing the checkers in such a way that regardless of the roll, you can accomplish something constructive, whether it be blocking, running, slotting, splitting, etc.  At less lopsided scores than 17-away, 3-away, obviously the equity difference will be smaller, but still hardly inconsequential.   

In Bill Robertie’s “Modern Backgammon”, he opens the book by saying that the evolution of backgammon philosophy has followed three dominant modes of thinking; pre-1970′s the game was essentially played as a race, and most beginners still play it this way.  Playing things ultra-safe, this leads to checkers working in an inefficient manner, big stacks, and ultimate disaster.The next major style of play was the “pure” mode; this tended to leave one open to more risk than was necessary.  While it did produce complicated positions, eventually backgammon play improved to such a degree that it negated the complexity, while leaving the risk intact.  The point being, bold or safe “styles” are outdated concepts.  One should not always split an opening 2-1 simply because “that’s my style.”  The best path is what Robertie refers to as the “imperative of efficiency.”  That is, “it requires you to take exactly as much risk as is consistent with the logic of the position.”  

The moral here is to forget about styles of play.  While it is certainly important to play to your own strengths, as well as being able to measure the skill level of your opponent, not factoring in match score (or just the position in general if you’ve reached post-opening status) when considering checker play will cost you massive amounts of equity in the long run.  Ignore it at your own peril.