Featured Articles

Annotated Match: Kit Woolsey vs. Jeremy Bagai

All About Gnu Backgammon by Albert Silver

Backgammon Articles By Douglas Zare

In the Beginning by Nack Ballard & Paul Weaver

Sportsmanlike Conduct by Phil Simborg

Two Cultures by Bob Newell

Tips on Forming a Backgammon Club by Bill Davis

Cube Handling in Noncontact Positions by Tom Keith

The Effective Pip Count by Walter Trice

ABA Chouette Rules Atlanta Backgammon Association

Backgammon Blues by Drazen Majerski

Backgammon Hall of Fame

The Articles of GammOnLine

Backgammon

Backgammon is a game of luck and skill. It is played by two people with 15 checkers each on a board consisting of 24 spaces or points. The checkers are moved according to rolls of the dice. Each player tries to bring his own checkers home and bear them off before his opponent does, hitting and blocking the enemy checkers along the way.

Backgammon has been around a long time, with origins dating back possibly 5000 years. The ancient Greeks played. So did the Romans. The game we know today was refined in England in the seventeenth century, which is also when it acquired the name backgammon. One significant innovation of the twentieth century was the addition of the doubling cube in the 1920s.

Backgammon enjoyed a huge resurgence in the 1970s, then again in the 1990s with the popularity of the Internet. Today, you can play online any time of the day or night with people from all over the world.

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Rules of the Game

The rules of backgammon are simple and easy to learn. In fact, it is quite remarkable that a game as rich and interesting as backgammon has such a simple set of rules. Here are the complete rules, with diagrams showing how to set up the board and move the pieces.

Rules of Backgammon

A popular social variant of backgammon is the Chouette, which allows for play by three or more people.

How to Run a Chouette

Special rules are used in tournaments and on many Internet servers where play is organized into matches.

Rules for Match Play

Backgammon Software

There are many backgammon-playing computers programs around. Most programs are free or are shareware and can be downloaded directly from the Internet. Some of the more expensive programs are able to point out errors in your play and analyze positions for you.

Programs That Play Backgammon

Where to Play

A great way to sharpen your game and meet new people is to play backgammon on the Internet. There are many sites where backgammon enthusiasts from all over the world come together. You can play a fun game of backgammon, or just watch and learn from other players. Many servers have a rating system that provides a way to track your performance over time or see how well you are doing compared with others.

Places to Play Online

If you prefer face-to-face competition, check the following lists for a club near you:

Clubs in the United States

Clubs in Australia

Carol Joy Cole keeps a calendar of upcoming tournaments.

Mark Your Calendar: Alive!

Improving Your Game

The best way to become a better player is to play a lot. But there are ways to accelerate the learning process. One way is to read books. There are several good backgammon books in print, and many more available in used book stores. Here is a list of backgammon books that have been published and suggestions of good ones to read.

Backgammon books

Another good way to learn is to read matches that have been recorded and analyzed by top players.

Annotated Matches

There are also some articles on the Internet on such topics as: writing a computer program to play backgammon, and what is the best strategy to use in match play.

Backgammon Articles

Newgroup Archive

The newsgroup for backgammon is rec.games.backgammon. Here you can talk about all sorts of topics relating to backgammon. Particularly interesting is discussion of problems, which often includes responses from top players.

The newsgroup archive is a collection of many of the best articles that have been posted to the backgammon newsgroup. There are about four hundred articles here, arranged by topic.

Newsgroup Archive

Terminology

The world of backgammon has its own jargon and technical terms. If you come upon a term you don't know, type it in the box below and click the "Define" button.

Type a word:

Or, if you prefer to browse through the terms, here is the whole glossary.

Entire Glossary, about 230K List of Terms