A Short Overview of Backgammon Rules and Basic Play

Backgammon is an ancient game with a colorful history. Thought to be played for over 5000 years, the rules for playing backgammon are easy to learn yet the game is challenging to play. This article contains an overview of backgammon rules and a brief description of basic play via backgammon rules basics.

Backgammon is a board game played by two people. According to the rules of backgammon, the board is divided into 4 quadrants, each of which contains 6 long triangles or pips. The pips are numbered 1 through 24. One side of the board contains the numbered pips 1 through 12 pips and the other side contains the numbered pips 13 through 24 pips. The number 24 pip is located opposite the number 1 pip. The pips alternate in 2 colors. Each player has 2 quadrants on his side of the board: a home board and an outer board. The board is divided in half vertically. The divider is called the bar. A doubling cube containing the numbers 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 and 64 on each of its faces is used to keep track of the current stake of the game.

In official backgammon rules, each player starts with 15 stones of one color (either light or dark, usually black or white) that are placed along the 24 points of the board. The object of the game is for a player to move all his stones into his home board and then to remove, or bear off, the stones from the board. According to the backgammon rules of play, the first player to bear off all his stones is the winner.

To begin the game, each player rolls a single dice cube, or die. The player with the highest number on this roll goes first. Then play begins with a roll of two dies. This roll determines how many pips a player can move his stones. Players are required by the rules for backgammon to move their stones forward, i.e., from a higher to a lower numbered pip. The fundamental rules of backgammon require that stones cannot be moved to pips occupied by two or more of the opponents’ stones.

Once a player’s 15 stones are moved to his home board, he can begin moving stones off the board. This procedure is called bearing off. Bearing off via the essential backgammon rules occurs according to the roll of the dice, beginning with the highest occupied pip on a player’s home board.

Although a player can learn the rules governing backgammon in under an hour, it can take him years of play to master the this venerable, historic and challenging game.