Backgammon Board

The backgammon board is split into four sections called tables, each with six narrow wedges, known as points, of two alternating colors. Each player has an outer table and an inner table, with the latter called home. The division between the inner and outer tables is called the bar. Both players have 15 pieces each that are known as men, or checkers, usually one set white and the other set black or red. Each player also has a pair of dice and a cup in which the dice are shaken before thrown.

Backgammon, a lively blend of skill and luck, is an ancient dice game played on a board by two people. It closely resembles another game called Parcheesi. No one knows exactly when the game was first played, but archaeologists have discovered a 5,000-year-old backgammon board at the site of the ancient Sumerian town of Ur in present-day Iraq. The Egyptian pharaohs played a form of backgammon, and boards from about 1500 BC have been found in the tomb of King Tutankhamen. The ancient Greeks, Romans, Chinese, and people of the Indian subcontinent played other versions of the game.

Backgammon in a form called Tabula was played in medieval Europe. It was called Tables in England, where the Anglos and Saxons enjoyed the game. The French and Germans called it Tric-Trac. Backgammon spread to the United States in the 17th century.

The game is a race to move all of the 15 men around the board and then off the board. The players throw the dice to determine who starts first, and they then take turns throwing their dice. They move their men from point to point by the number shown on the dice. One man may be moved by the number of points on one of the dice, and a second man by the number on the other, or one man may be moved by the total on both dice. If a player throws doubles, the number of points that the men may be moved is doubled, or four men may be moved on a doubles throw if the player wishes to do so.

Four main factors make backgammon more than a game of pure chance. These are blocks, blots, reentry from the bar, and bearing off. A blocked point is a point occupied by two or more of the other player's men. A man cannot stop on a blocked point, but it may move past that point to a vacant point if the number on one of the dice carries it that far.

A blot is a point occupied by one opposing man. When an opponent lands on a blot, either settling there or moving on by the number shown on the second die, the blot has been hit. The man that is hit on the blot must be placed on the bar, from where it reenters the game at the player's inner table and begins moving around the board once again. Until the hit man reenters from the bar, the player can make no other moves.

A man reenters from the bar by a throw of the dice that allows it to land on an open point or on a blot in the opponent's inner table. A man is reentered as though being played onto the board.

Each player begins the game with five men in his or her inner table. A player's first objective is to get the remainder of the men there. After that has been accomplished, the men may be moved off the board, which is the process of bearing off. For every number shown on each of the dice, a man is removed from the corresponding point of the inner table, or from the highest occupied point lower than the number that is shown on each die. The first player to bear off all the men wins the game.

Variations of backgammon are played in the Far East, Africa, and elsewhere. They include Russian and Persian backgammon; the Turkish games of moultezin and gioul; the Greek games of plakoto and eurika; and acey-deucey, a game played in the United States Navy. International backgammon tournaments began in 1964.


If one player bears off all the men before the other bears off any, the victory is called a gammon, and it counts as two wins. If the loser has no men off the board and has a man stranded on the bar or in the winner's inner table, the game ends with a backgammon, which counts as three wins.