Flutter By, Butterfly

Is there a big-enough clue in the title of this problem, or indeed the title of the book it came from? The only correct answer here is 22/11 - running from the anchor. But why?

Michi’s excellent book provides the answer. Your anchor on the 22pt is known as the ‘butterfly anchor’ - neither a low anchor (which keeps you in the game till the end) or a high anchor (which protects against primes and is a semi-attacking structure) - and it’s called that because you’ll often want to flit away from it, and transition from one stage of your game to another.

Michi gives three guidelines for when it’s right to leave the butterfly anchor. The relevant one here is ‘leave the butterfly anchor when we have zero or one spare [checker] in the outfield’. That matches our problem position perfectly. When your structure is starting to look inflexible, it’s time to take advantage of a good roll and escape one back checker. 

We covered this same guideline in an earlier problem last year. Hopefully you learned from that position and aced it this time!