How to play backgammon? Here are the rules and tricks to play this game

Backgammon is a game played on a board consisting of twenty-four narrow triangles called points. The triangles on the board are in alternate colour and are grouped into four quadrants of six triangles each. These quadrants are referred to as the player’s home board and outer board, and the opponent’s home board and outer board. There is a centre bar in between of the board to separate the home and outer boards from each other.

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How many players can play this game?

• Backgammon can be played by two players at a time.

Basic rules:

Each player in this game has fifteen checkers of his own colour. The starting arrangement of checkers is two on each player's twenty-four point, five on each player's thirteen points, three on each player's eight-point, and five on each player's six-point. Both players have their own pair of dice and a dice cup used for shaking. A doubling cube, with the figures 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, and 64 on its faces, is used to keep track of the current stake of the game.

The objective of playing this game:

The objective of this game is just to move all your checkers into your own home board and then bear them off. The player who first bears off all the checkers wins the game.

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Movement of the checkers

The roll of the dice shows how many points the player needs to move his checkers. The checkers are moved forward, to a lower-numbered point. The rules that apply while the movement of checkers are:

• A checker may be moved only to an open point, one that is not occupied by two or more opposing checkers.
• The numbers on the two dice constitute separate moves. For example, if a player rolls 5 and 3, he may move one checker five spaces to an open point and another checker three spaces to an open point, or he may move the one checker a total of eight spaces to an open point, but only if the intermediate point is also open.

Doubling and stakes

After the first turn, anytime, any player can offer to double the stakes prior to casting the dice. If such an ultimatum is given, the other player has to choose either to lose the game and the current stake or accept the offer.

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Bearing Off

As soon as all the pieces are in the inner table of the player, the player can start bearing off. A throw of 1 permits a player to bear off a piece from point 1 of his inner table, a throw of 2 permits a player to bear off a piece from point 2 of his inner table and so on. Pieces borne off are simply removed from the board. This is often done to pair up singlets in order to prevent them from capture.

Finishing

The first player to bear off all pieces wins the game.

• If the opponent has borne off at least one piece, a single game is won and the current stake is forfeited.
• If the opponent has not borne off any pieces, this is a "gammon" and worth double the current stake.
• If the opponent has a piece left on the bar or within the opponent's inner table, this is a "backgammon" and worth triple the current stake.

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