Backgammon rules: how to play backgammon

The board and the starting position

Backgammon is a race. Each player has fifteen checkers that travel around a twenty-four point track in opposite directions, and the first to bring all fifteen home and bear them off wins. The dice decide how far you may move; you decide which checkers move — and that choice is where the entire game lives.

• The board has 24 points in four quadrants. Your home board is the quadrant you are racing into; the bar is the ridge down the middle.
• Each player has 15 checkers, set up identically but mirrored.
• Two dice per turn, and a doubling cube that multiplies the stakes.

The starting arrangement looks arbitrary and is not: it gives each side a long shot at the back (the two runners), a supply point in the middle, and a strong home board foundation. Every opening plan starts from one of those three groups.

Rolling, moving and making points

Roll two dice. Each die is a separate move: a 6 and a 3 means one checker moves six points and another moves three, or a single checker moves six and then three — provided the intermediate point is legal.

Where you may land

• An empty point — always.
• A point with your own checkers — always, however many.
• A point with exactly one enemy checker — this hits it (see below).
• A point with two or more enemy checkers — never. That point is made and blocked.

Doubles

Roll the same number on both dice and you play it four times. Double sixes is 24 pips of movement in a single turn, and it wins and loses more games than any other roll.

You must use both dice if you can

If only one number can be played, you must play the higher one if there is a choice. If neither can be played, you forfeit the turn. This rule matters more than it sounds: a blocked position can force your opponent into moves that wreck their own structure.

Hitting, the bar and re-entry

A lone checker is a blot. Land on it and it is hit: it goes onto the bar and must start its journey again from the beginning.

Re-entry comes first

While you have a checker on the bar you may do nothing else: it must re-enter in your opponent's home board, on the point matching a die. If both of those points are blocked, you are danced — the turn is lost entirely.

This is why a strong home board is worth so much. With all six points made, an opponent on the bar cannot come in at all, and may sit there for several turns while you play freely.

Bearing off and winning

When all fifteen of your checkers are in your home board, you may start bearing off — removing them from the board.

• A die of 4 bears a checker off the 4-point.
• If the matching point is empty, you may bear off from the highest occupied point below the number — but only if no checker sits on a higher point.
• You may always move within the home board instead of bearing off, and sometimes you should.
• If you are hit during the bear-off, that checker goes to the bar and must travel the whole way round again — and you may not bear off another checker until it is home.

Scoring: single, gammon, backgammon

Multiply by whatever the doubling cube says. A gammon at a cube value of 4 is eight points, which is why the decision to double is often worth more than any checker play.

The doubling cube

The cube is the single best idea in the history of gambling games, and it is what makes backgammon a skill game rather than a dice game.

Before your roll, you may double: offer to play for twice the current stake. Your opponent either:

• Takes — the game continues at the new value and they now own the cube, meaning only they may double next.
• Passes — the game ends immediately and they pay the current value.

The cube starts in the middle at 1, available to either player. After a double it sits on the taker's side at 2, then 4, 8, 16 and on up.

The takeable range

The basic rule: take if you will win more than about 25% of the time. Below that, passing and losing one point is cheaper than playing on. Above it, taking is correct even though you are the underdog — because you also own the cube afterwards.

Match play and the Crawford rule

Matches are played to a target score. When one player reaches one point from victory, the next game is the Crawford game and no doubling is allowed in it. After that the trailer may double at any time — often immediately, because they have nothing to lose.

House rules and variants worth knowing

Backgammon is also the ancestor of an entire family still played across the Mediterranean and the Middle East — Greek tavli, Turkish tavla, Persian nard — usually without the doubling cube and frequently as three consecutive games with different rules.

Common questions