Credits
XG skin design by Rain
Analysis
You’re being blitzed, and although you’ve managed to come in off the bar with your 4, you can’t grab that much-needed anchor. What to do now? At least you own the cube, so you’re in this game till the end (otherwise White would be cubing you next move, and you’d have to drop).
Hopefully you reject 8/2 as not achieving much of anything at all. Your choices for the 6 are either 13/7 or 21/15. Coming out to the outfield allows you to threaten White’s escaping back checker, and to hit you White will have to give up the midpoint, which they won’t be so happy to do.
13/7 introduces another blot for White to hit, and gives them the chance of hitting you while escaping, which looks pretty scary. Nevertheless, it’s clearly the right move.
When you’re being blitzed, if you can’t grab an anchor, your best strategy is to try and block your opponent from escaping. They’re way ahead in the race (that’s usually the case with a blitz), so you need to slow them down. The general rule is “Fight a blitz with a prime” and that’s the case here. 13/7 starts the process of building that prime. And if the blot is hit then having 3 checkers back isn’t so bad - it may well make grabbing an anchor easier.
Bar/21 13/7 it is.