Backgammon
A race where the shortest route is rarely the safest. Two dice, fifteen checkers each, and the constant question of whether you can afford to leave a man on his own.
The rules
- The board has twenty-four points and each player has fifteen checkers. The two players move in opposite directions, each towards their own home board.
- Roll two dice. Move one checker the number on one die and another checker the number on the other, or move the same checker twice.
- A double is played four times, not twice: a pair of threes is four moves of three.
- You must use both dice if there is any legal way to do it. If only one of them can be played, you must play the larger.
- You may move onto a point that is empty, one holding your own checkers, or one holding exactly a single enemy checker. A point held by two or more enemy checkers is closed to you.
- Moving onto a lone enemy checker, called a blot, sends it to the bar.
- A player with a checker on the bar must bring it back into their opponent's home board before moving anything else. If no entry point is open, the turn is lost.
Bearing off
- Once all fifteen of your checkers are inside your home board, you may begin bearing them off.
- A die matching a point exactly bears a checker off that point.
- A die higher than any occupied point bears a checker off the highest point you still occupy, and only when nothing sits higher than it.
- If a checker is hit while you are bearing off, it goes to the bar and you must bring it all the way round and home again before bearing off any more.
How a game ends
- The first player to bear off all fifteen checkers wins.
- Winning before your opponent has borne off a single checker is a gammon.
- Winning while they still have a checker on the bar or in your home board is a backgammon.
- A resignation or a missed deadline ends the game against that player.
- Backgammon cannot be drawn. Somebody always gets home first.
There is no doubling cube here. A gammon and a backgammon are both recorded, because they are the most satisfying thing that happens in a game of backgammon, but a win counts as a win for your rating rather than as double or triple. The dice come from the game's seed, published at the end, so every roll can be verified once the game is over.
Backgammon terms
- A point
- One of the twenty-four triangles. Held by two or more of a player's checkers, it is closed to the other player.
- A blot
- A point with exactly one checker on it, which can be hit and sent to the bar.
- The bar
- The ridge down the middle. A hit checker sits here and must re-enter before its owner may move anything else.
- Home board
- The last six points of your run. Every checker must be here before you can start bearing off.
- Pip count
- The total number of points you still have to travel. Lower is ahead.