Excel in Backgammon

Backgammon is a two player game, in which a roll of a dice decides the movement of the playing piece, and a player wins by removing all his playing pieces from the board. It is one of those games where luck and proper strategy helps one win the game. The players also have the option of raising their stakes during the game. It has been a highly popular board game among people from all age groups and is also known to be one of the oldest board games in history.

The backgammon board is setup in such a way that the opposing sides have twelve long triangles each, called points. Now these points are considered to be connected across the board from one edge to the other, virtually creating a horseshoe shape, and these points are numbered from 1 to 24. Players begin with two checkers on their 24-point, three checkers on their 8-point, and five checkers each on their 13-point and their 6-point. The two players move their checkers in opposing directions, from the 24-point towards the 1-point. Each players rolls twice creating a pair of values, and thus gets to move his two different pieces on the board according to the values. However if he rolls an identical number, he gets to move four different pieces according to the value of the roll. Since this game allows a player to trap or block his opponent, it makes the game highly competitive and fun.

There are lots of different types of backgammon like Acey-Deucey, hypergammon, nackgammon, and Russian backgammon each having slightly different rules for playing. Logically, the most obvious strategy in backgammon is to avoid getting blocked, trapped, or held in a stand-off. The first one can apply is a ‘running game’ where a player tries to move across the board to the other side as quickly as possible, which is very much possible if a player is already ahead in the board. Now at times, if this ploy fails, the player also has the option of of playing a ‘holding game’ where he can maintain control of a point in the opponent’s side of the board, and that point is called an anchor. Then with some good rolls, he can move the game onto a running game and then win.

So there you go folks, now you know the rules of the game. So play on.