Starting Backgammon: Knowing How It's Played

Backgammon is a very old game what was played since the time of the Greeks and the Romans. The game we know today is a refinement of one old game in England where it was christened backgammon. It is an easy game and one can master the basics just after several tries. If you are new to the game, read on to get started.

The game involves two players - exactly two (no more, no less). The objective of this game is to beat the other player in moving one's checker in to the home board (another name for home board is inner board). The roll of two die determines the movement of such checkers.

To see who gets to start first, both players roll a die. Whoever gets the higher number starts first. The number of moves to be taken by the first player is dependent on the number revealed during the die throwing. After this initial movement, the next player uses two dice and they take turns in throwing and moving the checkers.

The board in marked by triangles called points. It is divided into four quadrants, two outer boards (one for each player) and two home board boards (again one for each player). Players move checkers from outer board to home board. The movement of the checkers depends on their colors. White checkers move counter-clockwise while the black checkers move clockwise.

You can move to the point you wish in any of the following circumstances: (1) not more than one checker of the opponent is occupying the point, (2) no checker is occupying the point, (3) or the point is occupied by your own checkers.

A checker alone on the point area is called a blot. When you replace the blot so it is moved to the bar is called hitting. To hit is replace an opponent blot of the point it is occupying. The center of a backgammon board is raised and such area is called the bar.

Hitting your opponent is advantageous because opponent has to expend extra effort to remove that checker from the bar. While the other player takes time to remove the checker from the bar, it affords you time to advance.

If you have checker on the bar, to remove it you must roll the dice to correspond to the number of a free space that blot can occupy. A free space refers to a point not inhabited by any of the other player's checkers and, of course, not occupied by yours. If on a turn opponent is not able to correctly roll the dice to correspond to the free space, that turn is forfeited. If after several attempts, the blots on the bar cannot be restored back to the board, two or more checkers are reintroduced into the game.

Starting off with throwing the dice, the rest of the game is a combination of moving and hitting the checkers, removing the blots on the bar and arriving on the home board. When you perhaps have moved all your checkers to the inner board first than the other player then you win the game.

Playing backgammon is that easy and fun!