Backgammon Rules

The objective of the ancient, and now one of the most popular games of all time - backgammon, is very simple.

You need to bring all your checkers from the away board to your home board and start ‘bearing off. How you do this involves a variety of techniques and strategies plus a fair bit of luck.

The rule of victory simple; whoever bears off first, wins the game. Normally backgammon is a game of two players, though there are some variations that allow for multi-players.

Choosing your choice of color is done either mutually or by the throw of a dice. Whoever scores highest gets the chance to decide on the colour. This also applies to who moves first.

Dice as you will see. play a most important role in the game and they too carry with them certain rules regarding throwing of the dice.

Which are shake the dice vigorously inside the dice cup before ‘tossing them out’ and they must be thrown from a reasonable height for a proper bounce allowing them to rest properly to take the reading.

Let the dice roll freely, unhindered by any object. They should also not be allowed to roll outside the board. Moving the checkers: Remember, the checkers on the board are the ’soldiers of your battle’ against your opponent.’ You move your checkers according to the numbers shown on the dice.

You may move one checker as per the sum total of the numbers shown by each dice or two checkers independently according to each number shown by the dice.

Where to place the checkers on the board? Move your checkers to open points only. Open Points mean a point which remains unoccupied.

However, you may move to a point where the opponent has placed a single checker. This is called Hitting. Remember if you hit a checker of the opponent, then this has to be placed on the bar and the opponent has to reinitialize the checker.

However you are free from any restrictions of prioritizing your checkers for moves, which means you may move any checker of your choice. Needless to say you can move in singles or even in pairs.

When to bear off? You can start bearing off, when you have all your checkers on your home board. You MUST move a checker off the table if and only If the number shown by the dice is high enough and the position of the checker is such that it can leave.

How to speed the game up: Use double and redouble. The doubling cube placed on the Bar rotates to express the status of double and redouble.

Remember double and redouble not only changes the pace of the game but also earns much higher points for you as well as your opponent.

The doubling cube is also the element of the game where gambling is at its highest.

Read the backgammon glossary.