Backgammon

Two dice, fifteen checkers, one race home — and a lone checker of theirs is yours to send back.

Logic

Play

How to play

  1. You play the pale checkers. They travel from the top right, leftwards along the top row, round the left end and rightwards along the bottom row into your home at the bottom right. Your opponent’s travel the other way.
  2. One die each decides who starts — whoever rolls higher goes first, playing both dice as the first move; a tie is rolled again.
  3. Roll, then make one move for each die: a four and a two is one checker moved four and another moved two, or one checker moved four and then two. Doubles are played four times.
  4. Tap a ringed checker to lift it — if only one can move, it is already lifted for you. A marker appears on each point it can reach, showing the die it uses. Tap a marker to move there. To bear off, tap the checker, then the tray on the right.
  5. You may land on any point that is empty, yours, or holds exactly one enemy checker. Two or more of theirs shut you out.
  6. Landing on a single enemy checker sends it to the bar, and it has to come back in through your home board, at the bottom right, before they may move anything else.
  7. Once all fifteen of your checkers are in your home board — the bottom right quarter — you start bearing them off. First to bear all fifteen off wins.
  8. The “Pips to go” count is how far each side still has to travel, in points — a checker on the bar counts as twenty-five.

What it trains

  • Trains judging risk in real numbers — every blot you leave can be hit by a countable share of the thirty-six rolls, and one chance in six is a very different gamble from one in three
  • A complete game in one sitting, and the dice give a beginner a real chance in any single game
  • One of the oldest board games still played

Full rules

The board and the direction of travel

Twenty-four narrow triangles, called points, in four quarters of six. Your checkers move towards your home board, which is the quarter at the bottom right, and your opponent’s move the opposite way towards theirs. The two sides pass through each other, which is why a game that looks like a simple race keeps turning into a fight over the points in the middle.

The dice say how far, you say which

The two dice are two separate moves, not one move of their total. A five and a three is a checker moved five points and a checker moved three — either the same one twice or two different ones. That matters when one checker takes both: it may pass over points it cannot land on, but the point where the first die leaves it must be open. Roll the same number on both dice and you play it four times — twice the moves of an ordinary roll. You must play as much of the roll as any order of moves allows; if only one of two dice can be used, it must be the higher one whenever that one can move.

Points, blots and the bar

Two checkers on a point make it yours: your opponent cannot land there at all while two of yours stay there. One checker on its own is a blot, and an opponent who lands on it sends it to the bar in the middle of the board. From the bar it has to come back in through its opponent’s home board, and its owner may move nothing else until it has. If neither die shows an open point there, the whole roll is lost. This is the engine of the game — a checker hit near the end of its journey has to make the whole trip again.

Making a prime

Six consecutive points held by one side form a prime, and nothing can jump it, because no die is bigger than six. Any opposing checker caught behind it stays there until the wall comes down. Most good positions are an attempt at some part of this: even four points in a row is uncomfortable to be stuck behind, and the five point — in your home board, the second one in from the bar — is the single most valuable point on the board for exactly this reason.

Bearing off

When all fifteen of your checkers are home, you may bear them off the board. Your home points count one to six outwards from the tray, so the six point sits next to the bar. A six bears off a checker from the six point, a five from the five point, and so on. If the die’s own point is empty, it has to be played by moving a checker from a higher point; only when there is none does it bear off a checker from the highest point with a checker of yours on it. And if you are hit during the bear-off, that checker has to come in from the bar and all the way home again before you can bear any more off.

Gammons and backgammons

Winning while your opponent has not borne a single checker off is a gammon, and doing it while they still have a checker on the bar or in your home board is a backgammon; in scored play they count double and triple. Here each game stands alone, so when you win one the result card names it instead. There is no doubling cube.

Choosing an opponent

Three settings. They all see exactly the board you do and roll fair dice, just as you do — none of them cheats. The easy-going one moves without much of a plan and leaves plenty of blots for you to hit; the steady one weighs the points it is making against the checkers it is exposing; the sharp one also counts how many of the thirty-six rolls would hit each checker it leaves behind, which is what a strong human player is doing when they pause.

Play Backgammon free online against a computer opponent at three strengths, in full screen, with no download and no sign-up. Fifteen checkers each on a board of twenty-four points, and two dice that say how far you may move but never which checkers to move — that choice is the whole game. Land two on a point and it is shut to your opponent; leave one alone and it can be hit and sent to the bar to make the whole journey again. Get all fifteen into your home board and you can begin bearing them off, and the first side to bear all fifteen off wins. The easy-going opponent leaves lone checkers for you to hit; the sharp one counts the shots it is leaving you.

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