How to play backgammon

Backgammon is a race with a fight inside it. Fifteen checkers each, two dice, and twenty-four points to walk. Your checkers and the other side walk in opposite directions and pass straight through each other, so a checker left standing alone can be hit and sent all the way back. Bring all fifteen home and off the board first.

Set a table up

Players: 2
What you need: A board, thirty checkers and two dice
How long: Ten to twenty minutes a game

What backgammon is

Two players, fifteen checkers each, and two dice. Your checkers walk one way round the board and the other player’s walk the other way, so the two of you pass straight through each other. The first to bring all fifteen home and take them off the board wins.

It is a race with a fight inside it. The dice decide how far you go and you decide which checkers go, and those are two very different questions: a checker left standing alone can be sent all the way back to the start, so the right move is often the one that leaves nothing behind.

The board is five thousand years old and the modern rules are about a century old, which is how a game of pure luck for children and a game people study for years can be the same game.

The board

The board has twenty-four points, twelve along each side, split in the middle by a raised strip called the bar. Six of them in one corner are your home board, and that is where every one of your checkers is trying to get to.

Checkers stand on points in piles. A point with two or more of your checkers on it is yours, and the other player may neither land on it nor stop there. A point with exactly one checker on it is a blot, and a blot can be hit.

You always move toward your own home board and never back. The other player is doing the same thing in the opposite direction, which is why your home board sits where their checkers start.

A point is a triangle. Two or more checkers hold it, and one alone is a blot.

A turn

Throw both dice.
Spend both numbers, moving one checker twice or two checkers once each.

Each number is a separate move. A five and a three is not a move of eight: it is a move of five and a move of three, and the point in between has to be open for one checker to play both.

You may only move a checker to a point that is open, which means empty, yours already, or holding exactly one of the other side.

Throw the same number on both dice and you play it four times instead of two. That is why a double is worth waiting for and why the game can turn over in one throw.

Double four: four moves of four, not two.

Five and three: one checker moves five and another three, or one checker moves both.

Using both numbers

You must use both numbers if there is any order at all that uses both. This is the rule people break first, and it bites hardest when playing the obvious number first leaves the other one unplayable.

If neither order works and only one number can be used, the larger one has to be the one you use. A six and a one where only one of them can be played is a six, even when the one is the move you wanted.

And if neither can be used, the turn is simply lost. On a board where the other side holds five or six points in a row that happens often, which is exactly what makes those points worth holding.

If only one of the two can be played at all, it has to be the larger.

Hitting, and the bar

Land on a point with exactly one enemy checker and that checker is hit: it comes off the board and goes on the bar.

A checker on the bar has to come back in before its owner may move anything else at all. It comes in on the other side’s home board, on the point matching a die: a three brings it in on their three point, if that point is open.

A hit checker has lost everything it had walked. Hitting one that was nearly home is the single biggest thing that happens in this game, and it is why a blot deep in your own board is so much more dangerous than a blot near the start.

If the other side holds every point of their home board you cannot come in at all, and you sit there losing turn after turn. That is called being shut out, and it is how most bad games are lost.

A blot in reach is a blot that goes back to the start.

Making points

Two checkers on one point make it yours. Nothing of the other side may land there, and nothing may stop there on its way past.

Points in a row are worth far more than the same points scattered. Four in a row stop every number up to four, and six in a row is a prime that no single die can jump at all, so anything behind it is stuck until you break it.

The two points everybody fights over are the five point in your own home board and the bar point just outside it. Both are seven or eight pips from where your back checkers start, which is why the opening throws are all about reaching them.

Points in a row are a wall. Six of them cannot be jumped by any number.

Bearing off

Once all fifteen of your checkers are inside your own home board you may start taking them off. Not one moment before, and a checker hit at that stage sends you all the way back to the beginning of the rule.

A die takes off the checker on the matching point: a four takes one off your four point. You may always move inside your home board instead, and often that is the better play.

A number bigger than any point you still occupy takes a checker off your highest point. A six with nothing above your four point takes one off the four, but only when nothing is sitting further out.

The first side to take all fifteen off wins. If the other side is still on the bar or still in your home board at that moment, it is worth a great deal more, which is the next section.

Every checker home, and then they start coming off.

What a game is worth

An ordinary win is worth one point. The other side had taken at least one checker off before it ended.

If they had taken none off at all it is a gammon, and it is worth two.

If they had taken none off and still had a checker on the bar or sitting in your home board, it is a backgammon, and it is worth three. That is why a player who is clearly losing still runs their back checkers out: it is the difference between losing two and losing three.

A match here is a set number of games and the winner is whoever has the most points at the end, not whoever won the most games. One gammon with the cube at four is worth eight ordinary wins.

The doubling cube

The cube is a six-sided block marked 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 and 64. It starts in the middle, and while it sits there the game is worth one and either player may turn it.

Before you throw, you may offer to double. The other player either takes it, and the game is now worth twice what it was, or drops it, and you win at once for what it was worth before you offered.

Whoever takes it owns the cube, and only they may turn it next. That is what makes a double a decision rather than a free shout: doubling hands your opponent the same weapon, pointed back at you.

The cube is off by default here, because it is the part of backgammon that is hardest to judge until you have played a while. Turn it on when the race alone has stopped being interesting.

Turned to two: take it and the game is worth double, or drop it and pay one.

Playing it better

Count pips. Add up how far all your checkers still have to travel and compare it with theirs. That one number tells you whether you are racing or fighting, and the two want opposite moves.
When you are ahead in the race, run. When you are behind, stay back and wait for a shot: a player who is losing a race cannot win it by racing harder.
Do not leave a blot where a single die reaches it. Six away is the most dangerous distance on the board and seven is one of the safest, because seven needs two dice and six does not.
Make points in front of the enemy checkers rather than behind them. A point behind them blocks nothing.
Keep an anchor deep in their home board for as long as you need one. Two checkers on a point cannot be hit, and they are the reason you can never be shut out.

Table settings

The board and the moves are the same everywhere. What a table settles beforehand is the stake.

The defaults are a plain friendly game: gammons count, no cube, three games to the match.

Setting	Standard	What it changes
Difficulty	Medium	An easy bot counts pips and hits what it can reach. A hard one also weighs what a move leaves standing in front of your dice, and knows when the fight is over and the race has started.
Games in the match	3	How many games the match runs for. Points carry across all of them.
Doubling cube	Put away	Puts the cube on the table, which adds the whole gambling half of the game: when to offer, and when to refuse.
Gammon and backgammon	Worth two and three	Off, and every game is worth one however badly it ended. A quicker, flatter match and a much less frightening one.
Jacoby rule	Off	A money-play rule: a gammon only counts double once somebody has turned the cube. It stops a runaway game being worth four before anybody has had to risk anything.

The words

Point: One of the twenty-four triangles. Also the unit a match is scored in, which is why a sentence can have both in it.
Pip: One step of travel. Your pip count is how far all fifteen of your checkers still have to go between them.
Blot: A point with exactly one checker on it. The only thing on the board that can be hit.
Bar: The strip down the middle of the board, and where a hit checker waits until it comes back in.
Anchor: Two of your checkers on a point deep in the other side’s home board. It cannot be hit, so you can never be shut out while you hold one.
Prime: Six points in a row. No single die can jump six, so anything caught behind a prime is stuck until it is broken.
Race: What is left once the two sides have passed each other and nothing can be hit. From there it is arithmetic.
Gammon: A win where the loser never got a single checker off. Worth two.
Backgammon: A gammon where the loser is also still on the bar or in the winner’s home board. Worth three, and rare.
Doubling cube: The block that says what the game is worth. Offered before a throw, and either taken or refused.
Beaver: Taking a double and immediately redoubling, keeping the cube. A money-play custom rather than a rule, and not played here.

Every rule on this page is the one the app plays by. Change any of them on the game's own page before you start.