Black to play three-one.  A short three point match has just begun, current score 0:0 with the game in the bearoff phase for Black.  Three white checkers dancing on the bar.  White owns the cube.  Thus Black can win the match with a gammon by avoiding a hit.

The more experienced the backgammon player, the more non-visual ideas factor into checker play decisions.  With experience a good player can imagine a sequence in time, or assess the strength and command of an important structure such as a prime.  Simply looking at the final configuration of candidate plays, so prevalent during the novice stage, seems to recede into the background.  Is that perspective wise?   

Not necessarily.  Sometimes you need to look before you leap.  A clear practiced eye often slices through complexity to reveal the world as it really is. 

Backgammon etiquette discourages a careful looksee.  But sometimes a looksee is needed.  Your games against a bot cannot stretch the patience of a silicon expert.  No complaints.  Have a looksee.  Use that privilege to recoup your watchful eye.  In your games against a person on a website, it is acceptable to compare quickly the shape of the checkers for a couple of positions.  All modern websites enforce legal backgammon plays.  Even in person at a pub or private home, human versus human play on a board can benefit from a looksee.  Maybe announce your visual comparison beforehand.  In a quiet voice: “I need to look at a few possibilities here.  Please be patient.  Roll is three-one.  If we play the three here and the one there — let’s hover the tentative checkers above the target points to avoid confusion — we can compare the look and shape of these few plays.  OK, this play looks like it has the ring of truth.”  There is nothing wrong with an honest look at a few sensible choices for awhile, if done clearly and quickly.

In the problem position of Black three-one, a sensible play is make the final shape even on both the 5pt with two spares and the 4pt with no spares, ready to break rear home points safely, three checkers off.  That is a standard dogma.  Here, however, the gapped deuce point can render Black threes awkward.

But examine the shape of the checkers shown below.  Doesn’t this stacking monstrosity just look right?  After four checkers each on the 5pt and 3pt, thus making tossed doubles very easy to play, now the pair of highest point are also even, yet detached.  A black checker is already in the bathtub.  The embarrassing gap-blot of low dice, threes in particular, is now miraculously side-stepped for the next roll.  The trio of candlesticks within Black’s home board are remarkably immune to most further blotting.  Winning a gammon safely is the only consideration in this position.  To bear off means you must clear points, and safely, neither make new points nor hoard old points.  White requires more than twenty crossovers to save the gammon.  Hence Black need not hurry to ensure gammon. 

Don’t interfere but safely clear.

Play  4/3 4/1