One of the main strategies on how to play backgammon well is thus to close all the points in your inner board and hit an opponent’s blot in order to keep him off the game. The end of the game Once all your checkers are inside your inner board, the last part of the game is starting. ★ Top Developer (awarded 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2015) ★ Backgammon Free is the best free Backgammon game on Android! Backgammon is a game of skill and strategy; one of the world's classic parlour board games, played for recreation and gambling. Like Mahjong, Backgammon is played in social groups in coffee houses and bars. Historically, variants of this game are believed to have originated in.

• Backgammon is a board game for two players, played with two dice each, thirty checkers/markers, and on a board made up of twenty-four narrow triangles called 'points'. The points alternate in colour and are grouped into six triangular points on each quarter of the board.
• Each player places 2 pieces on the 24 point, 5 pieces on the 13 point, 3 on the 8 point and 5 on the six point. Always arranged in a vertical line. The Objective of Backgammon / How to Win. The objective of the game is to bear off each of your own pieces before the opponent.

In Brief:

The motor of backgammon is the dice, but the luck of the roll has little to do with winning games. In this tutorial, our expert instructor offers ten easy strategic lessons on how to scrub your friends on the board.

Credits:

• Ross Gordon

  Backgammon Expert and Instructor

• Jason Schwartzman

  True Editor

Need a board to play on? Check out True’s exclusive, limited-edition board here.True Members get $100 off.

Learn how to set up the board (2-5-3-5) quickly and confidently. The difference in play direction is simply which side of the table you’re sitting on. So the faster you can arrange the pieces, the more experienced you will appear to your opponent. It’s a subtle way to gain credibility, to command respect. Similar to twirling poker chips, handle the checkers as if you know them — as if they belong to you. They do.

Now, the dice are usually made with plastic or resin. They used to be made with ivory and wood. The game goes back 5,000 years, which a long way. Between moves, ask your opponent if he’s familiar with the expression, “Roll them bones?” It’s true. Originally dice were made from bone. Sheep ankle. Oxen ankle. Now that you’re appearing confident and smart, it’s time to get started.

As far as rules go, backgammon is a simple game. There’s about ten rules, but the strategy of the game is amazingly complicated. Really, it’s all math. The beginning is the most straightforward part of the game and everyone starts with the same strategy: trap the two pieces in your home. So that should be your first goal: create six columns of at least two checkers in a row—that’s what you call a Prime. A Prime is what you want, and if you can make a Prime you are in good shape.

When you roll doubles you have four moves, but there’s a tendency to use them two at a time. My advice: move each piece one at a time. Make one move, and reevaluate the board. See how it looks. Maybe you’ll see something differently? Or maybe you want to keep going? But spreading out your doubles by moving the checkers one at a time creates an additional option. If you just move two, you won’t see it. So always move your doubles one at a time.

A scenario: you’ve passed each other and it’s just a race to the end, which means all the interactions you could have are over. A straight race. But just before that’s about to happen, there is a final interaction, and you have a final checker on the midpoint and everything else is in your home.

Now let’s say you roll a 1 — 6. You don’t want to hit his checker because you don’t want your opponent back in your home. He could strike coming back into the game, and you could wind up forfeiting it all away the game Let’s say he has a closed out board, meaning he has a prime in his home, meaning if he hits you with his newly exiled piece, you can’t come back in and the game is essentially a forfeit because your opponent may have a Prime in place.

A useful mnemonic is C.A.R.B.‘s, which stands for Cube, Attack, Race, Block. It’s useful to think about the game across these dimensions. A move is never simply a move. Ultimately, your dice rolls are somewhat irrelevant. Lucky dice are great but you can’t count on them to win. Lucky dice is how inexperienced players can win a game against a world champ — once. But one certainty: luck runs out.

Doubling, or using the doubling cube, is a whole life study. The cube completely changes the game. Basically each game is worth a point, and the doubling cube allows you to challenge your opponent if you think you have a good position by doubling the stakes and handing him or her the cube.

With the cube, timing is the most important thing. When you give it or when you take it (or accept the offer). If you have any doubt, don’t give it — you’ll wind up getting hammered. If it’s too early the opponent will turn the game around and give it back to you. The stakes go up pretty quickly, so use it carefully. (Another note: Many people use the cube hoping you will take it. They think they’re ahead and they want more points. A different strategy is only trying to double when you don’t want your opponent to accept. Start with that.)

To trick your opponent into thinking you are a master, dust off some old-school backgammon jargon: tell your opponent you’ll meet him, “on the 24-point field of honor.” Or mutter obscure mantras to yourself to show you know your way around the board. “Two on the bar is better by far.”

Embrace the golden rule of backgammon: make sure you never take the dice personally. Everybody does, and everyone gets bad rolls. There’s a reason they call it the cruelest game, so maintain perspective. You’re playing your opponent, but also remember: you are playing yourself.

Take Your Pick:

If you don't know how to play Backgammon, then here is a beginner's introduction to the game explaining the basic rules.

Backgammon is a board game for two players, played with two dice each, thirty checkers/markers, and on a board made up of twenty-four narrow triangles called 'points'. The points alternate in colour and are grouped into six triangular points on each quarter of the board. Each quarter of the board is known as a player's home board, outer board, and their opponent's home board and outer board. The home and outer boards are divided by a line/ridge down the centre of the board called the 'bar'.

Player's points are conventionally referred to by their position number starting at one in the player's home board, which would also be their opponents outermost 24 point, going up incrementally as you move along and around.

Starting a Game

The initial positions of the players' checkers at the start of a game are two on each player's 24 point, five on each player's 13 point, three on each player's 8 point, and five on each player's 6 point. This can be seen in Fig 1 below.

To decide who goes first, each player rolls a single die with the highest going first and taking the two dice values rolled as the values by which they move their checkers in their first turn.

Moving Checkers

Players then take turns at rolling their dice and moving their checkers around the board. The object of a game is for players to move all their checkers to their home-board. One player moves their checkers in a clockwise direction around the board while the other moves in an anticlockwise direction. Players may move their checker from its current point to a subsequent point in sequence around the board by counting along the points by the value of numbers rolled with the dice. Players may move 1, 2, 3, or 4 checkers in a turn depending on the dice values thrown and the player's choice of available moves. For a move to be allowed the destination point must have no more than one of the opponent's checkers on it. Players may have any number of their checkers on a single point.

For example, if a player rolls a 2 and a 5 with their dice, they may move one checker 7 points or two checkers each moved 2 points and 5 points respectively around the board. However, should a player roll a double the moves are doubled so they may move one, two, three or four checkers a total of 4 times one of the die's values. For example, if a player rolls double-5 they may move 1 checker by 20 points (4 x 5), 2 checkers by 10 points each(2 x (2 x 5)), 3 checkers with two moved 5 points and one moved 10 points (2 x 5 + (2 x 5)), or they may move four checker 5 points each (4 x 5).

Hitting

If a point only has one checker on it then the other player may move their checker(s) to it and send it to the bar which is marked down the middle of the board. This is known as a 'hit'. A point with only one checker is known as a 'blot'. Once a checker has been placed on the bar, then the player must start moving it from the beginning of the board to bring it back into play and move it around to their home-board. A player may not make any further moves until all their checkers on the bar have been brought back into play.

How To Play Backgammon Game

To bring a checker back into play from the bar, the player must roll a value corresponding to a point in their opponent's home-board that has no more than one of their opponent's checkers on it.

Bearing Off

Once a player has moved all their checkers around the board and into their home-board, they start to 'bear-off'. Bearing-off is the removal of checkers from the board and out of play. The way players do this takes a little bit of thought to understand the rules, but once you understand it it makes perfect sense. Players may bear off a checker by rolling a dice value that corresponds to the point number it is on. So if a player rolls a 5 with one of their dice, they may remove (bear-off) a checker on the 5-point. If they had a checker on their 6-point they may instead chose to move this 5 points to their 1-point. If there are no checkers on the dice's corresponding point number they must move a checker from the highest point number that they have a checker on, or remove (bear-off) a checker from the highest occupied point. So if they roll a 6 with one of their dice and there is no checker on the 6-point they must remove any checker on their 5-point, and if there are none there they must remove a checker on their 4-point, and so on. And so, for example, if a player rolls a 3 with one of their dice but has no checkers on their corresponding 3-point, they must move a checker 3 points from any checkers situated on the highest numbered point. If there are no checkers on a higher point, then they must remove a checker from the highest occupied point. Players must move or remove checkers using both full dice values, or if that isn't possible they must move or remove their checkers using the maximum possible number of point moves, according to the above rules.

If a player's checker(s) are hit after they have started bearing-off, then they must move it back into play and around the board back into their home-board before any more of their checkers may be borne-off.

How To Play Backgammon Pdf

Once a player has removed (borne-off) all their checkers from their home-board, they have won the game.

Easy How To Backgammon

Learn How To Play Backgammon Online

Once you've learnt the basic rules you can move on to further rules relating to gambling, the doubling cube, and more.