How to Play Backgammon: Ancient Strategy Meets Modern Competition

Somewhere between the clatter of dice and the satisfying click of checkers sliding across points lies a game that has captivated minds for over 5,000 years. Backgammon occupies a peculiar space in the gaming world—it's simultaneously one of humanity's oldest board games and one of the most mathematically complex. Walk into any Mediterranean café, and you'll likely spot weathered boards hosting heated matches between old friends. Yet venture online, and you'll discover neural networks battling it out with positional evaluations that would make a chess engine blush.

I've been playing backgammon for nearly two decades, and what strikes me most isn't just the game's elegant simplicity, but how it mirrors life itself. You make the best decisions you can with incomplete information, adapt when fortune turns against you, and learn that sometimes the "correct" play isn't always the winning one. There's something profoundly humbling about a game where a novice can defeat a master through sheer luck—at least in a single game.

Setting Up Your Battle Lines

The backgammon board resembles a racetrack split into four quadrants, each containing six elongated triangles called points. These 24 points alternate in color, creating a visually striking pattern that's remained essentially unchanged since ancient Mesopotamia. Each player begins with 15 checkers (also called stones or men, depending on where you learned the game).

The initial setup follows a specific pattern that might seem arbitrary until you understand the underlying logic. Place two checkers on your 24-point, five on your 13-point, three on your 8-point, and five on your 6-point. Your opponent mirrors this setup on their corresponding points. This arrangement creates immediate tension—some of your checkers start deep in enemy territory, while others huddle safely near home.

Between the board's halves sits the bar, a raised divider that serves as a temporary prison for captured checkers. The doubling cube, that peculiar die marked with powers of two (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64), rests nearby like a loaded weapon, waiting to escalate the stakes.

The Race Begins

Movement in backgammon follows the roll of two dice, but don't mistake this for a simple race game. Each die represents a separate move, though you can combine them for a single checker if the intermediate point is available. Rolling doubles grants you four moves instead of two—a gift from the dice gods that can dramatically shift the game's momentum.

Your checkers move in opposite directions from your opponent's, creating inevitable collisions. You can land on any point that's empty, occupied by your own checkers, or holds a single enemy checker (called a blot). Landing on a blot sends that checker to the bar, forcing your opponent to re-enter it before making any other moves. It's a delicious moment of schadenfreude that never gets old.

But here's where beginners often stumble: you cannot land on a point occupied by two or more enemy checkers. These "made points" form blockades, and six consecutive made points create a prime—an impenetrable wall that can trap enemy checkers for turns on end. I once watched a game where a player built a six-point prime and methodically destroyed their opponent's position while whistling Beethoven. It was beautiful and terrifying.

The Art of the Opening Roll

The opening roll in backgammon carries surprising weight. Unlike chess, where opening theory spans volumes, backgammon's opening moves fit on a single page—yet mastering their nuances takes years. Each of the 21 possible opening rolls has an accepted "best" play, though regional variations persist. In Greece, they play 6-1 differently than in Turkey, and both countries will argue passionately about who's right.

Consider the 3-1 opening: most players make their 5-point, creating an early anchor in their home board. It's solid, safe, and begins building the fortress you'll need later. But roll 6-5, and you're forced to run a back checker from your opponent's 1-point to your 12-point—a move that feels naked and vulnerable but actually provides excellent winning chances if you can consolidate your position.

The worst opening roll? That dubious honor belongs to 2-1. Every option feels compromised. You might split your back checkers and bring down a builder, but you're inviting an attack. Or you could play safe and slot your 5-point, risking a direct hit. I've seen grandmasters agonize over 2-1 like it's a philosophical dilemma.

Strategic Layers

Backgammon strategy operates on multiple levels simultaneously. At its most basic, you're racing to bear off all your checkers first. But pure racing rarely wins games. Instead, you must balance three fundamental game plans: the running game, the blocking game, and the back game.

The running game is backgammon at its purest—break contact early and sprint for home. It works when you've rolled high numbers early or when your opponent's position crumbles. But it requires precise timing. Break contact too early, and you'll leave shots that turn victory into defeat. I learned this lesson painfully during a tournament in Istanbul, where my premature run cost me a match I'd dominated for 20 minutes.

The blocking game involves building points in front of your opponent's checkers, ideally constructing that six-point prime I mentioned earlier. It's a grinding, positional style that appeals to chess players and control freaks. You're not trying to win quickly; you're trying to win inevitably.

The back game represents backgammon's most paradoxical strategy. You deliberately fall behind in the race, maintaining anchors in your opponent's home board while waiting for them to crack. It's like rope-a-dope in boxing—absorb punishment while setting up the knockout blow. When it works, you feel like a genius. When it fails, you look like you've forgotten how to play.

The Doubling Cube: Backgammon's Nuclear Option

No element transforms backgammon quite like the doubling cube. This six-sided die doesn't determine movement but instead controls the game's stakes. Either player may offer a double before rolling, essentially saying, "I think I'm winning—want to play for twice the stakes?" Your opponent must accept or forfeit the current stakes immediately.

Here's the twist: accepting a double gives you ownership of the cube. Only you can redouble to 4, forcing your opponent to face the same decision at higher stakes. This creates a fascinating dynamic where being behind can actually be advantageous—you control when to escalate.

The cube introduces psychological warfare to backgammon. I've seen players double with inferior positions, banking on their opponent's uncertainty. Conversely, I've watched sure winners refuse doubles out of misplaced caution. The cube doesn't care about your checkers' positions; it cares about your nerve.

Modern backgammon theory suggests you should double when you have roughly 70% winning chances—not because it maximizes your equity in that game, but because it maximizes your hourly win rate. Your opponent should accept doubles up to about 25% winning chances, creating a window where both players make theoretically correct decisions. It's a beautiful mathematical dance that plays out in milliseconds of intuition.

Bearing Off: The Final Sprint

Once all your checkers reach your home board, you begin bearing off—removing them from play according to your dice rolls. A roll of 5 allows you to remove a checker from your 5-point, and so on. If the rolled number corresponds to an empty point, you must move a checker from a higher point if possible.

This phase appears straightforward but conceals subtle traps. Should you bear off checkers evenly or clear points completely? The answer depends on your opponent's position. If they have checkers on the bar or in your home board, leaving blots becomes dangerous. But if they've broken contact, you can often play more aggressively.

The most heartbreaking scenario in backgammon occurs during the bearoff: you're ahead by several checkers when suddenly you leave a shot, get hit, and watch your opponent complete an impossible comeback. The Turks have a saying: "The dice have no memory." Past good rolls don't guarantee future ones.

Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them

New players consistently make certain errors that experienced players exploit mercilessly. The most common? Playing too safely. Beginners avoid leaving blots at all costs, not realizing that calculated risks often yield better results. In the opening, you frequently must leave shots to improve your position. The key is minimizing the number of rolls that hit you while maximizing your development.

Another classic mistake involves the doubling cube. Beginners either ignore it entirely or use it recklessly. They'll double when massively ahead (wasting cube leverage) or accept doubles when hopelessly behind (throwing good money after bad). Learning proper cube action improves your results more than any other single skill.

Perhaps the subtlest error is fighting the dice. When rolls don't cooperate, inexperienced players force inferior moves trying to execute their planned strategy. Backgammon demands flexibility. That beautiful prime you're building might need to dissolve if the dice demand it. As my first teacher told me, "Play the position, not the plan."

The Psychology of the Game

Backgammon tests your emotional control like few games can. The dice ensure that inferior players occasionally crush experts, creating a unique psychological dynamic. How do you maintain composure when dice mock your superior position? How do you stay focused when an opponent's lucky rolls undo twenty minutes of careful play?

I've found that the best players treat backgammon like meditation. They make each decision based on the current position, not past injustices or future fears. They understand that over hundreds of games, skill dominates luck, but in any single game, anything can happen. This philosophical approach isn't just about winning more—it's about enjoying the game regardless of results.

The social element adds another layer. Backgammon traditionally involves conversation, gentle trash talk, and shared commiseration over dice. In Middle Eastern cultures, the game serves as a social lubricant, an excuse for friends to gather and connect. The clattering checkers provide a soundtrack for everything from business deals to marriage proposals.

Taking Your Game Forward

Improving at backgammon requires a different approach than mastering purely strategic games. You can't simply memorize patterns or calculate variations twenty moves deep. Instead, you must develop intuition through experience, study probability to understand risk-reward ratios, and maintain emotional equilibrium when variance inevitably strikes.

Start by playing regularly, either online or at local clubs. Online platforms offer the advantage of instant analysis—modern backgammon AI plays at superhuman levels and can show you where your moves deviated from optimal play. But don't become enslaved to computer recommendations. Sometimes the theoretically correct play doesn't suit your style or your opponent's weaknesses.

Join a local backgammon club if possible. Nothing accelerates learning like playing experienced opponents who can explain their thinking. Plus, you'll absorb the game's culture—the terminology, the etiquette, the unwritten rules that make backgammon a living tradition rather than mere recreation.

Study the game's probability tables, but don't memorize them slavishly. Know that 17 rolls out of 36 hit a direct shot, that 11 rolls escape a single point, that doubles appear once every six rolls on average. These numbers should inform your intuition, not replace it.

Most importantly, embrace the game's fundamental tension between skill and chance. Backgammon isn't chess, where the better player almost always wins. Nor is it roulette, where skill plays no role. It occupies a sweet spot where expertise matters enormously over time but can't guarantee short-term success. This balance has kept the game fresh for five millennia and promises to entrance players for millennia more.

The ancient Persians called backgammon "takht-e-nard," meaning "battle on wood." They understood something profound: every game recreates the eternal struggle between planning and chaos, between human ambition and cosmic indifference. When you set up those checkers and roll those dice, you're participating in a tradition that predates written history. You're also, in a very real sense, practicing for life itself—making the best decisions you can with incomplete information, adapting to changing circumstances, and finding meaning in an uncertain universe.

So grab a board, find an opponent, and let the dice fall where they may. Welcome to backgammon—humanity's longest-running experiment in controlled chaos.

Authoritative Sources:

Jacoby, Oswald, and John R. Crawford. The Backgammon Book. New York: Viking Press, 1970.

Magriel, Paul. Backgammon. New York: Times Books, 1976.

Robertie, Bill. Advanced Backgammon: Technical Play. Arlington: The Gammon Press, 1991.

Trice, Walter. Backgammon Boot Camp. San Francisco: Fortuitous Press, 2004.

Woolsey, Kit. How to Play Tournament Backgammon. Las Vegas: Gammon Press, 2016.