A point occupied by a single checker. If your opponent lands on it, your checker is sent to the bar and must re-enter from the start before you can make any other move.

What does bearing off mean?

Removing your checkers from the board once all fifteen are in your home quadrant. A checker comes off when you roll the exact number it needs, or a higher number if no checker needs more.

Do I have to use both dice?

Yes, if any legal sequence lets you. If the game appears to be refusing a move you think is legal, it is usually because a different sequence would let you play both numbers and the rules require it.

Is Backgammon mostly luck?

The dice decide what options you have; you decide which to take. Over a single game luck matters a great deal, but over a match the better player wins consistently — which is exactly why the doubling cube was invented.

Backgammon

Backgammon is around five thousand years old and still the best mix of luck and judgement ever put on a board. The dice decide what you may do; you decide what it is worth.

Roll, then click a checker and its destination. You must use both dice if a legal move exists.

Players	2
Deck	Board, 30 checkers, two dice
Play time	15–25 minutes
Difficulty	Easy to move, hard to play the odds well

How to play Backgammon

The board has twenty-four points in four quadrants. Each player has fifteen checkers and moves them in the opposite direction to their opponent, from their outer board towards their own home board in the far quadrant. In this version your checkers move anticlockwise from the top right; your opponent's move clockwise from the bottom right.

Moving

Each turn you roll two dice and move checkers by those numbers — you may move one checker twice or two checkers once each. Rolling a double gives you four moves of that number rather than two.

You may land on a point that is empty, occupied by your own checkers, or holds exactly one enemy checker. You may not land on a point held by two or more enemy checkers — that point is made and closed to you.

Hitting

A single enemy checker is a blot. Land on it and the checker is sent to the bar in the middle, and its owner must bring it all the way back into play from the start before they may make any other move. A well-timed hit can undo half a game's progress.

Bearing off

Once all fifteen of your checkers are in your home quadrant you may start bearing off — removing them from the board. A checker comes off when you roll exactly the number needed to move it past the edge. If your roll is higher than any checker requires, you may bear off the checker furthest from the edge.

One rule catches everyone: you must use both dice if any legal way to do so exists. If a move looks blocked, the game is usually forcing you to find a sequence that plays both numbers.

Winning

First to bear off all fifteen checkers wins. Two extra margins have names: a gammon is winning before your opponent has borne off any checker at all, and a backgammon is winning while they still have a checker on the bar or in your home quadrant.

Strategy

Backgammon is a game of probabilities, and almost every principle in it is a statement about what the dice are likely to do next.

Make points, especially in your home board

Two checkers on a point close it to your opponent and give you a safe landing square. A wall of consecutive made points is called a prime, and an opponent's checker trapped behind a long prime may be stuck for many turns. Building points is more valuable than sprinting.

Count the shots before you leave a blot

Sometimes you must leave a lone checker exposed. When you do, work out how many of the thirty-six possible rolls would hit it. Leaving a blot six points away from an enemy checker is far riskier than leaving it one point away, because six can be made several ways — and direct shots are more likely than most players assume.

Race when you are ahead, hold when you are behind

If you are clearly winning the race, break contact: run your checkers home and refuse to give your opponent hitting chances. If you are behind, do the opposite — keep a checker back in their home board and wait. You cannot out-run a player who is ahead, so your only chance is a hit.

The five-point is the most valuable point on the board

Your own five-point — the fifth from your edge — blocks the most useful escape square for your opponent and anchors your prime. Standard opening theory prioritises it above almost anything else, and taking it early is worth accepting some risk for.

Use doubles aggressively

Four moves of the same number is a large tempo swing and it is the roll most likely to let you make a point, escape a trapped checker, or bear off two at once. When you roll a double, look for the move that changes the structure of the board rather than simply advancing.

Variants

The doubling cube — the standard tournament addition, letting a player offer to double the stakes; the opponent must accept or concede. It transforms the game into a running assessment of who is actually winning.
Nackgammon — a different starting position with two checkers held further back, producing longer, more tactical games.
Hypergammon — only three checkers each, all on the furthest points. Very fast and heavily analysed.
Acey-deucey — a looser American variant with special rules for rolling 1-2, popular in the US military.
Tavla, Tapa and Plakoto — the Turkish and Greek families, where pinning an opponent’s checker rather than hitting it is the core mechanic.

Where Backgammon came from

Backgammon is one of the oldest games still played. Boards resembling it have been excavated at Ur in Mesopotamia and at Shahr-e Sukhteh in Iran, dating to roughly 3000 BC, though whether those games were played by anything like modern rules is unknowable. The Roman game Tabula, and the Persian Nard, are clearly recognisable ancestors, and the two-dice race-and-hit structure has been stable for a very long time.

The English name appears in the seventeenth century, and Edmond Hoyle published rules for it in 1743. The decisive modern change came in the 1920s in the United States, with the invention of the doubling cube — an addition usually attributed to an anonymous American club player, and one that turned a dice race into a game of continuous risk assessment. That single innovation is why Backgammon has a serious competitive scene at all. The game also has an unusual place in computing history: Gerald Tesauro's TD-Gammon, developed at IBM around 1992, taught itself to play at world-class level using neural networks, and its evaluations changed how human experts understood several standard positions.

Questions people ask about Backgammon

How do the dice work in Backgammon?: You roll two dice and move checkers by those amounts — either one checker twice or two checkers once each. Rolling a double gives you four moves of that number instead of two.
What is a blot?: A point occupied by a single checker. If your opponent lands on it, your checker is sent to the bar and must re-enter from the start before you can make any other move.
What does bearing off mean?: Removing your checkers from the board once all fifteen are in your home quadrant. A checker comes off when you roll the exact number it needs, or a higher number if no checker needs more.
Do I have to use both dice?: Yes, if any legal sequence lets you. If the game appears to be refusing a move you think is legal, it is usually because a different sequence would let you play both numbers and the rules require it.
What is the difference between a gammon and a backgammon?: A gammon is winning before your opponent has borne off a single checker. A backgammon is winning while they still have a checker on the bar or in your home quadrant — a heavier defeat still, and worth more in match play.
Is Backgammon mostly luck?: The dice decide what options you have; you decide which to take. Over a single game luck matters a great deal, but over a match the better player wins consistently — which is exactly why the doubling cube was invented.