Tapa (game) - Basic Strategies

Basic Strategies

Basically, there are 2 different strategies.

Defensive strategy

This includes building anchors near the starting points and carefully progressing toward your home board, not allowing to be pinned. At the same time, you should wait for a good opportunity to pin opponent's checkers as close to your home board as possible.

Offensive strategy

At the very start, you move checkers as far as possible, even leaving single checkers in the area of 10-point to 15-point. With this you open up a possibility to pin opponent's checkers in your home board or very near it, before the opponent gets a chance to build anchors. This strategy involves a certain amount of risk, since the opponent gets higher chances to pin your checkers and make a faster progress in building anchors closer to his home board.

Some players prefer one strategy over the other, but this is a mistake. What strategy you use should be determined by the first few rolls. If you roll smaller numbers at the start, then you should use defensive strategy. But if you roll high numbers, you should try placing a checker around the middle-points. In the next few rolls you should try to either pin an opponent's checker or make an anchor with a second checker. If you fail and get pinned, switch to defensive strategy.