Backgammon Rules - How to Play the Game
This article introduces the basics of the backgammon game. Game objective, moveing checkers and how to use the doubling cube. Hitting checkers, moving of the bar and rolling double.
Game Objectives
In backgammon your aim is to transport your game pices around the board toward your inner board or home area. Once you've done this, you should remove your checkers off the board. If you move all your pices off the board before your oponent, you win the backgammon game.The game starts with a roll of two dice, one by each player. This roll determins who starts. When the dice result is a tied, the dices are cast again.
Affter the order of the game is determined, come the opening roll. The player who won the previous dice cast rolls two dice and the total shoes how the player may moves his checkers on the backgammon board. Non flat dice are rerolled. The board consists of four quarters divided into six points represented by black and white triangles. Each one of the points is a playing space and the game pices are moved across it acording to the dice result.
How To Move the Backgammon Checkers
The white checkers are moved in a counter-clockwise direction from the bottom left of the board to the top left. Black backgammon game pices are moved clockwise from the top left corner to the bottom left. The same game pice can be moved acording to the result of one dice or the sum of two.You can move your game pices to a place on board as long as that position has not more than once openent's game pice, , there is no one on that point and and that position is home to your own checkers.
Hitting Checkers
Openent's checker's can be "hit" by moving your pices into the same space as them. This only applies for one checker. Multiple checkers cannot be hit. When a single checker, or “blot”, is hit, it is removed from the board and placed on the raised centre part of the board - the bar. To retrieve the checker, your opponent must reintroduce it into your home area and start its journey around the board again. As the aim of the game is to remove all your game pices from the backgammon board before your oponent, it is recomended that you hit as many of your opponent's checkers as posible.Moving Checkers Off the Bar
Hitting your opponent's blots slows down his game plan because he must spend his move trying to restore his game pices back into his home base before he can move any other checker. To do so, he must roll the dice to obtain numbers corresponding to a free space in his home board. This position can be any position that has non of his other blots. If your opponent fails his atemp to restore his checker to his home board he looses his turn. Two or more checkers must be reintroduced into the game separately.Double Rolls
Rolling doubles means the resulting of the same number when rolling two dice. This allowes player rolling the double to move four times the amount of the number rolled. Obviously this can make or break a game as a player can move up to four separate checkers around the board during one turn.Bear Off
Bearing off is the final process in backgammon after you have moved all your checkers into your home board. When rolling dice you can remove one checker from the point of the number shown by the dice roll, or move several checkers a number of spaces aquivalent to the dice roll. If a checker is on a position that is a lower numberd than the dice roll, it can be removed it as long as no other checkers is on a higher point.Doubling Cube
Doubling cube brings new excitment to the backgammon game, in the form of a risk element. In formal situations the doubling cube can raise the stakes of the game. The cube has the numbers 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 and 64. When the game starts it is placed with the 64 facing up and is considered to be in a neutral or centred position.If a player wants to raise the stakes, he can pick up the game and offer it to the other player showing the 2 face up. This effectively doubles the current wager on the game. Of cource, his opponent can choose to accept or decline the doubling cube. If the doubling offer is accepted the wager is doubled and the cube is his now. If he declines the doubling offer he imidietly loses the game for the current value of the cube.
If the game continues, the player in possession of the cube can, t any time, double the stakes again. Once the wager has been accepted, control of the cube passes over to the opposite player. The player who is first to remove all his checkers from the board wins the game based upon the stakes displaying on the doubling cube. The wager can double itself up to 64 times the amount of the original one.