Backgammon Game Rules

The rules of backgammon have been the same for many years. Many people have been playing the game and taking the challenge of backgammon and many off them realized that the rules are quite simple and fun. This may be the reason for the increasing popularity of this game.

The object of the game is move all your checkers into your own home board and then bear them off. The first player to bear off all of their checkers wins the game.

The roll of the dice indicates how many points, or pips, the player is to move his checkers. The checkers are always moved forward, to a lower-numbered point.

A checker may be moved only to an open point, one that is not occupied by two or more opposing checkers. The numbers on the two dice constitute separate moves. For example, if a player rolls 5 and 3, he may move one checker five spaces to an open point and another checker three spaces to an open point, or he may move the one checker a total of eight spaces to an open point.

A player who rolls doubles plays the numbers shown on the dice twice. A player must use both numbers of a roll if this is legally possible (or all four numbers of a double). When only one number can be played, the player must play that number. When neither number can be used, the player loses his turn.

At the end of the game, if the losing player has borne off at least one checker, he loses only the value showing on the doubling cube (one point, if there have been no doubles). However, if the loser has not borne off any of his checkers, he is gammoned and loses twice the value of the doubling cube. Or, worse, if the loser has not borne off any of his checkers and still has a checker on the bar or in the winner's home board, he is backgammoned and loses three times the value of the doubling cube.

At first all these rules may be tricky and pretty hard to remember so if you get confused just take the instructions and read them again. Anyway the more you play you'll see that it will be really easy to remember all the rules.