Backgammon is one of the oldest board games known. It is a two player game where playing pieces are moved according to the roll of diceand a player wins by removing all of their pieces from the board before their opponent.

Backgammon is a member of the tables family, one of the oldest classes of board games in the world. Backgammon involves a combination of strategy and luck from rolling dice. While the dice may determine the outcome of a single game, the better player will accumulate the better record over series of many games, somewhat like poker. The optional use of a doubling cube allows players to raise the stakes during the game.

Like chessbackgammon has been studied with great interest by computer scientists. Owing to this research, backgammon software has been developed that is capable of beating world-class human players see TD-Gammon for an example. Backgammon playing pieces are known variously as checkers, draughtsstones, men, counterspawns, discs, pips, chips, or nips.

The objective is to remove bear off all of one's own checkers from the board before one's opponent can do the same.

In the most often-played variants the checkers are scattered at first; as the game progresses they may be blocked or hit by the opponent. As the playing time for each individual game is short, it is often played in matches where victory is awarded to the first player to reach a certain number of points. Each side of the board has a track of 12 long triangles, called points.

The points form a continuous track in the shape of a horseshoeand are numbered from 1 to In the most commonly used setup, each player begins with fifteen checkers, two are placed on their point, three on their 8-point, and five each on their point and their 6-point. The two players move their checkers in opposing directions, from the point towards the 1-point. Points 1 through 6 are called the home board or inner board, and points 7 through 12 are called the outer board. The 7-point is referred to as the bar point, and the point as the midpoint.

To start the game, each player rolls one die, and the player with the higher number moves first using the numbers shown on both dice.

If the players roll the same number, they must roll again. Both dice must land completely flat on the right-hand side of the gameboard. The players then alternate turns, rolling two dice at the beginning of each turn.

After rolling the dice, players must, if possible, move their checkers according to the number shown on each die. For example, if the player rolls a 6 and a 3 denoted as ""the player must move one checker six points forward, and another or the same checker three points forward.

The same checker may be moved twice, as long as the two moves can be made separately and legally: If a player rolls two of the same number, called doubles, that player must play each die twice.

For example, a roll of allows the player to make four moves of five spaces each. On any roll, a player must move according to the numbers on both dice if it is at all possible to do so. If one or both numbers do not allow a legal move, the player forfeits that portion of the roll and his or her turn ends. If moves can be made according to either one die or the other, but not both, the higher number must be used. If one die is unable to be moved, but such a move is made possible by the moving of the other die, that move is compulsory.

In the course of a move, a checker may land on any point that is unoccupied or is occupied by one or more of the player's own checkers. It may also land on a point occupied by exactly one opposing checker, or "blot". In this case, the blot has been "hit", and is placed in the middle of the board on the bar that divides the two sides of the playing surface.

A checker may never land on a point occupied by two or more opposing checkers; thus, no point is ever occupied by checkers from both players simultaneously. Checkers placed on the bar must re-enter the game through the opponent's home board before any other move can be made. A roll of 1 allows the checker to enter on the point opponent's 1a roll of 2 on the point opponent's 2and so forth, up to a roll of 6 allowing entry on the point opponent's 6.

Checkers may not enter on a point occupied by two or more opposing checkers. Checkers can enter on unoccupied points, or on points occupied by a single opposing checker; in the latter case, the single checker is hit and placed on the bar.

More than one checker can be on the bar at a time. A player may not move any other checkers until all checkers on the bar belonging to that player have re-entered the board. If the opponent's home board is completely "closed" i. When all of a player's checkers are in that player's home board, that player may start removing them; this is called "bearing off".

A roll of 1 may be used to bear off a checker from the 1-point, a 2 from the 2-point, and so on. If all of a player's checkers are on points lower than the number showing on a particular die, the player may use that die to bear off one checker from the highest occupied point.

When bearing off, a player may also move a lower die roll before the higher even if that means the full value of the higher die is not fully utilized. For example, if a player has exactly one checker remaining on the 6-point, and rolls a 6 and a 1, the player may move the 6-point checker one place to the 5-point with the lower die roll of 1, and then bear that checker off the 5-point using the die roll of 6; this is sometimes useful tactically.

As before, if there is a way to use all moves showing on the dice, by moving checkers within the home board or bearing them off, the player must do so. If one player has not borne off any checkers by the time the opponent has borne off all fifteen, then the player has lost a gammonwhich counts for double a normal loss.

If the losing player has not borne off any checkers and still has checkers on the bar or in the opponent's home board, then the player has lost a backgammonwhich counts for three times a normal loss. To speed up match play and to provide an added dimension for strategy, a doubling cube is usually used. The doubling cube is not a die to be rolled but rather a marker with the numbers 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, and 64 inscribed on its sides, to denote the current stake.

At the start of each game, the doubling cube is placed on the bar with the number 64 showing; the cube is then said to be "centered, on 1".

When the cube is centered, the player about to roll may propose that the game be played for twice the current stakes. Their opponent must either accept "take" the doubled stakes or resign "drop" the game immediately. Whenever a player accepts doubled stakes, the cube is placed on their side of the board with the corresponding power of two facing upward, to indicate that the right to re-double belongs exclusively to the player who last accepted a double.

For instance, if the cube showed the number 2 and a player wanted to redouble the stakes to put it at 4, the opponent choosing to drop the redouble would lose two, or twice the original stake. The game is rarely redoubled beyond four times the original stake, but there is no limit on the number of redoubles. Although 64 is the highest number depicted on the doubling cube, the stakes may rise to, and so on.

In money games, a player is often permitted to " beaver " when offered the cube, doubling the value of the game again, while retaining possession of the cube. A variant of the doubling cube "beaver" is the " raccoon ". Players who doubled their opponent, seeing the opponent beaver the cube, may in turn then double the stakes once again "raccoon" as part of that cube phase before any dice are rolled.

The opponent retains the doubling cube. White doubles Black to 2 points, Black accepts then beavers the cube to 4 points; White, confident of a win, raccoons the cube to 8 points, while Black retains the cube. Such a move adds greatly to the risk of having to face the doubling cube coming back at 8 times its original value when first doubling the opponent offered at 2 points, counter offered at 16 points should the luck of the dice change.

Some players may opt to invoke The Murphy rule or the "automatic double rule". If both opponents roll the same opening number, the doubling cube is incremented on each occasion yet remains in the middle of the board, available to either player.

The Murphy rule may be invoked with a maximum number of automatic doubles allowed and that limit is agreed to prior to a game or match commencing. When a player decides to double the opponent, the value is then a double of whatever face value is shown e. The Murphy rule is not an official rule in backgammon and is rarely, if ever, seen in use at officially sanctioned tournaments. The Jacoby rulenamed after Oswald Jacobyallows gammons and backgammons to count for their respective double and triple values only if the cube has already been offered and accepted.

This encourages a player with a large lead to double, possibly ending the game, rather than to play it to conclusion hoping for a gammon or backgammon. The Jacoby rule is widely used in money play but is not used in match play. The Crawford rulenamed after John R.

Crawfordis designed to make match play more equitable for the player in the lead. If a player is one point away from winning a match, that player's opponent will always want to double as early as possible in order to catch up. Whether the game is worth one point or two, the trailing player must win to continue the match. To balance the situation, the Crawford rule requires that when a player first reaches a score one point short of winning, neither player may use the doubling cube for the following game, called the Crawford game.

After the Crawford game, normal use of the doubling cube resumes. The Crawford rule is routinely used in tournament match play. If the Crawford rule is in effect, then another option is the Holland rulenamed after Tim Hollandwhich stipulates that after the Crawford game, a player cannot double until after at least two rolls have been played by each side.

It was common in tournament play in the s but is now rarely used. There are many variants of standard backgammon rules. Some are played primarily throughout one geographic region, and others add new tactical elements to the game.

Variants commonly alter the starting position, restrict certain moves, or assign special value to certain dice rolls, but in some geographic foreign exchange rate pakistan open market even the rules and directions of the checkers movement change, rendering the game fundamentally different.

Acey-deucey is a variant of backgammon in which players start with no checkers on the board, and must bear them on at the beginning of the game. The roll of is given special consideration, allowing the player, after moving the 1 and the 2, to select any desired doubles move. A player also receives an extra turn after a roll of or of doubles.

Hypergammon is a variant of backgammon in which players have only three checkers on the board, starting with one each on theand points. The game has been strongly solvedmeaning that exact equities are available for all 32 million possible positions.

There are also different starting positions. Nackgammon is a variant of backgammon invented by Nick "Nack" Ballard [10] in which players start with one fewer checker on the six point and midpoint and two checkers on the 23 point.

Russian backgammon is a variant described in as: In this variant, doubles are more powerful: Gul Bara and Tapa are also variants of the game popular in southeastern Europe and Turkey.

The play will iterate among Backgammon, Gul Bara, and Tapa until one of the players reaches a score of 7 or 5. Coan ki is an ancient Chinese board game that is very similar. PlakotoFevga and Portes are three versions of backgammon played in Greece. Together, the three are referred to as Tavli.

Other minor variants to the standard game are common among casual players in certain regions. For instance, only allowing a maximum of five checkers on any point Britain [15] or disallowing "hit-and-run" in your home board Middle East. Backgammon has an established opening theoryalthough it is less detailed than that of chess. The tree of positions expands rapidly because of the number of possible dice rolls and the moves available on each turn.

Recent computer analysis has offered more insight on opening plays, but the midgame is reached quickly. After the opening, backgammon players frequently rely on some established general strategies, combining and switching among them to adapt to the changing conditions of a game. The most direct strategy is simply to avoid being hit, trapped, or held in a stand-off. A "running game" describes a strategy of moving as quickly as possible around the board, and is most successful when a player is already ahead in the race.

As the game progresses, this player may gain an advantage by hitting an opponent's blot from the anchor, or by rolling large doubles that allow the checkers to escape into a running game. The "priming game" involves building a wall of checkers, called a prime, covering a number of consecutive points.

This obstructs opposing checkers that are behind the prime. A checker trapped behind a six-point prime cannot escape until the prime is broken. Because the opponent has difficulty re-entering from the bar or escaping, a player can quickly gain a running advantage and win the game, often with a gammon.

A "backgame" is a strategy that involves holding two or more anchors in an opponent's home board while being substantially behind in the race. The backgame is generally used only to salvage a game wherein a player is already significantly behind.

Using a backgame as an initial strategy is usually unsuccessful. For example, players may position all of their blots in such a way that the opponent must roll a 2 in order to hit any of them, reducing the probability of being hit more than once. Many positions require a measurement of a player's standing in the race, for example, in making a doubling cube decision, or in determining whether to run home and begin bearing off. The minimum total of dice rolls needed to move a player's checkers around and off the board is called the "pip count".

The difference between the two players' pip counts is frequently used as a measure of the leader's racing advantage. Players often use mental calculation techniques to determine pip counts in live play. Backgammon is played in two principal variations, "Money" and "Match" play. Money play means that every point counts evenly and every game stands alone, whether money is actually being wagered or not. The format has a significant effect on strategy. In a match, the objective is not to win the maximum possible number of points, but rather to simply reach forex mt4 history data score needed to win the match.

For example, a player leading a 9-point match by a score of would be very reluctant to turn the doubling cube, as their opponent could take and make a costless redouble to 4, placing the entire outcome of the match on the current game. In money play, the theoretically correct checker play and cube action would never vary based on the score. InEmmet Keeler and Joel Spencer considered the question of when to double or accept a double using an idealized version of backgammon.

In their idealized version, the probability of winning varies randomly over time by Brownian motionand there are no gammons or backgammons. To reduce the possibility of cheating, most good quality backgammon sets use precision dice and a dice cup. Online cheating has therefore become extremely difficult.

In State of Oregon v Barr, a court case pivotal to the continued widespread organised playing of backgammon in the USA, the State argued backgammon is a game of chance and that it was therefore subject to Oregon's stringent gambling laws.

Paul Magriel was a key witness for the defence, contradicting Dr. Roger Nelson, the expert prosecution witness, by saying, "Game theory, however, really applies to games with imperfect knowledge, where something is concealed, such as poker.

Backgammon is not such a game. Everything is in front of you. The person who uses that information in the most effective manner will win. After the closing arguments, Judge Stephen S. Walker concluded that backgammon is a game of skill, not a game of chance, and found the defendant, backgammon how to get paid to take surveys legitimate director Ted Barr, not guilty of promoting gambling.

Enthusiasts have formed clubs for social play of backgammon. A backgammon chouette permits three or more players to participate in a single game, often for money. One player competes against a team of all the other participants, and positions rotate after each game. Chouette play often permits the use of multiple doubling cubes.

Backgammon clubs may also organize tournaments. Large club tournaments sometimes draw competitors from other regions, with final matches viewed by hundreds of spectators.

Winners at major tournaments may receive prizes of tens of thousands of dollars. The first world championship competition in backgammon was held in Las VegasNevada in Tim Holland was declared the winner that year and at the tournament the following year. For unknown reasons, there was no championship inbut inTim Holland again won the title. The competition remained in Las Vegas untilwhen it moved to Paradise Island in the Bahamas.

InLewis Deyong, who had promoted the Bahamas World Championship for the prior three years, suggested that the two events be combined.

By the 21st century, the largest international tournaments had established the basis of a tour for top professional players. Major tournaments are held yearly worldwide. PartyGaming sponsored the first World Series of Backgammon in from Cannes and later the 'Backgammon Million' tournament held in the Bahamas in January with a prize pool of one million dollars, the largest for any tournament to date. The event was recorded for television in Europe airing on Eurosport.

The World Backgammon Association WBA has been holding the biggest backgammon Tour of the circuit sincethe " European Backgammon Tour " EBGT.

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Inthe WBA collaborated with the online backgammon provider Play65 for the best futures broker australia of the European Backgammon Tour and with "Betfair" in WBA also staged the "US Open" and other events around the globe.

WBA has contributed to a high-stakes event called make money backgammon Cup" broadcast on several TV-channels. When backgammon is played for moneythe most common arrangement is review of forex signal providers assign a monetary value to each point, and to play to a certain score, or until either player chooses to stop.

The stakes are raised by gammons, backgammons, and use of the doubling cube. Backgammon is sometimes available in casinos. Before the commercialization of neural network programs, proposition bets on specific positions were very common among backgammon players and gamblers.

Backgammon software has been developed not only to play and analyze risk management strategies currency options, but also to facilitate play between humans over the internet. Dice rolls are provided by random or pseudorandom number generators.

Real-time online play began with the First Internet Backgammon Server in July[34] [35] but there are now a range of options; [36] many of which are commercial. Backgammon has been studied considerably by computer scientists. Neural networks and other approaches have offered significant advances to software for gameplay and analysis.

The first strong computer opponent was BKG 9. It was written by Hans Berliner in the late s on a DEC PDP as an reliance petroleum share market price in evaluating board game positions. Early versions of BKG played badly even against poor players, but Berliner noticed that its critical mistakes were always at transitional phases in the game.

He applied principles of fuzzy logic to improve its play between phases, and by JulyBKG 9.

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It won the match, 7—1, becoming the first computer program to defeat a world champion in any board game. Berliner stated that the victory was largely a matter of luck, as the computer received more favorable dice rolls.

In the late s, backgammon programmers found more success with an approach based on artificial neural networks. TD-Gammondeveloped by Gerald Tesauro of IBMwas the first of these programs to play near the expert level. Its neural network was trained using temporal difference learning applied to data generated from self-play. Tesauro proposed using rollout analysis to compare csi how much money do they make performance of computer algorithms against human players.

The rollout score of the human or the computer is the difference of the average game results by following the ensign stock market software move versus following the best move, then averaged for the entire set of taken moves.

Neural network research has resulted in three modern proprietary programsJellyFish, [39] Snowie [40] and eXtreme Gammon [41] as well as the shareware BGBlitz [42] and the free software GNU Backgammon. The strength of these programs lies in their neural networks' weights tables, which are the result of months of training. Without them, these programs play no better than a human novice.

For the bearoff phase, backgammon software usually relies on a database containing precomputed equities for all possible bearoff positions. Computer-versus-computer competitions are also held at Computer Olympiad events. Backgammon Mobile Applications have been developed not only to play against the computer but also to play in communities over the internet.

The artifacts include two dice and 60 checkers, and the set is believed to be to years older than the Royal Game of Ur. On the board found at Shahr-e Sukhteh the fields are fashioned by the coils of a snake.

Touraj Daryaee —on the subject of the first written mention of early precursors of backgammon—writes:. The use of dice for the game is another indication of its Indic origin, since dice and gambling were a favorite pastime in ancient India. According to the historical legend, the Indian king Dewisarm sends his minister Taxritos to Persia with the game of chessand a letter challenging Sasanian King Khosrow I to solve the riddle or rationale for the game.

Khosrow asks for three days to decipher the game, but initially no-one in the court is able to make any progress. On the third day, Khosrow's minister, Wuzurgmihr, successfully rises and explains the logic of the game.

As a reciprical challenge, Wuzurgmihr constructs the game of backgammon and delivers it to the Indian king who is unable to decipher the game. In the 11th century Shahnamehthe Persian poet Ferdowsi credits Burzoe with the invention of the tables game nard in the 6th century. He describes an encounter between Burzoe and a Raja visiting from India. The Raja introduces the game of chessand Burzoe demonstrates nardplayed with dice made from ivory and teak.

Murray details many versions of backgammon; modern Nard is noted there as being the same as backgammon and maybe dating back to — AD in the Babylonian Talmud, [50] although others believe the Talmud references the Greek race game Kubeia. As today, each player had 15 checkers and used cubical dice with sides numbered one to six.

The only differences with modern backgammon were the use of an extra die three rather than two and the starting of all pieces off the board with them entering in the same way that pieces on the bar enter in modern backgammon. The epigram of Zeno describes a particularly bad dice roll the emperor had for his given position.

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Zeno, who was white, had a stack of seven checkers, three stacks of two checkers and two blotscheckers that stand alone on a point and are therefore in danger of being put outside the board by an incoming opponent checker. Zeno threw the three dice with which the game was played and obtained 2, 5 and 6. As in backgammon, Zeno could not move to a space occupied by two opponent black pieces.

The white and black checkers were so distributed on the points that the only way to use all of the three results, as required by the game rules, was to break the three stacks of two checkers into blots, exposing them and ruining the game for Zeno. The earliest known mention of the game is in Ovid's Ars Amatoria The Art of Love written between 1 BC and 8 AD.

In Roman times this game was also known as aleaand a likely apocryphal Latin story linked this name, and the game, to a Trojan soldier named Alea. Race board games involving dice have existed for millennia in the Near East and eastern Mediterranean, including the game senet of Ancient Egypt and the Royal Game of Ur in Babylon. The ancient Egyptian game senet was excavated, along with illustrations, from Egyptian royal tombs dating to BC.

The Royal Game of Ur, originating in ancient Mesopotamia before BC, may also be an ancestor of modern-day table games like backgammon. It used tetrahedral dice. In the modern Middle East, backgammon is a common feature of coffeehouses. The usual Tavla rules are same as in the other neighboring Arab countries and Greece, as established over a millennium ago, [52] but there are also many quite different variants. Backgammon is popular among Greeks. It is a game in which Greeks usually tease their opponent and they create a lively atmosphere.

The game is called "Tavli", derived in Byzantine times from the Latin word "tabula". Set-up and rules the same as backgammon, except that backgammons count as gammons 2 points and there is no doubling cube.

A game where one checker can trap another checker on the same point. A game where one checker by itself can block a point. Also known as Acey-deucey where all checkers are off the board, and you enter by rolling either doubles or acey-deucey. These games are played one after another, in matches of three, five, or seven points. Players use the same pair of dice in turns. After the first game, the winner of the previous game starts first.

There is no doubling cube. In Japan ban-sugoroku is thought to have been introduced from China in the sixth century. As a gambling game it was made illegal several times. By the 13th century the board game Gooriginally played only by the aristocracy, had become popular among the general public.

The jeux de tables Games of Tablespredecessors of modern backgammon, first appeared in France during the 11th Century and became a favorite pastime of gamblers. InLouis IX issued a decree prohibiting his court officials and subjects from playing. In Spainthe Alfonso X manuscript Libro de los juegoscompleted indescribes rules for a number of dice and table games in addition to its extensive discussion of chess. A wooden board and checkers were recovered from the wreck of the Vasa among the belongings of the ship's officers.

Backgammon appears widely in paintings of this period, mainly those of Dutch and German painters Van OstadeJan SteenHieronymus BoschBruegel and others. Some surviving artworks are " Cardsharps " by Caravaggio the backgammon board is in the lower left and " The Triumph of Death " by Pieter Bruegel the Elder the backgammon board is in the lower right. Others are the Hell of Bosch and interior of an Inn by Jan Steen. In the sixteenth century, Elizabethan laws and church regulations prohibited playing tables, but by the eighteenth century backgammon was popular among the English clergy.

In English, the word "backgammon" is most likely derived from "back" and Middle English " gamen ", meaning "game" or "play". The earliest use documented by the Oxford English Dictionary was in The most recent major development in backgammon was the addition of the doubling cube.

It was first introduced in the s in New York City among members of gaming clubs in the Lower East Side.

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The popularity of backgammon surged in the mids, in part due to the charisma of Prince Alexis Obolensky who became known as "The Father of Modern Backgammon". He also established the World Backgammon Club of Manhattan, devised a backgammon tournament system inthen organized the first major international backgammon tournament in March,which attracted royalty, celebrities and the press.

Cigarette, liquor and car companies began to sponsor tournaments and Hugh Hefner held backgammon parties at the Playboy Mansion. Most recently, the United States Backgammon Federation USBGF was organized in to repopularize the game in the United States.

Board and committee members include many of the top players, tournament directors and writers in the worldwide backgammon community. The USBGF has recently created a Standards of Ethical Practice to address issues on which tournament rules fail to touch.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For the film, see Backgammon film. A backgammon set, consisting of a board, two sets of 15 checkers, two pairs of dice, a doubling cube, and dice cups. List of World Backgammon champions. Backgammon for Winners Third ed. Morehead and Geoffrey Mott-Smith. Hoyle's Rules of Games Third Revised and Updated ed.

Backgammon for Serious Players Second ed. Archived from the original on 13 September Archived from the original on Archived from the original on 13 March The three games together are called 'Tavli' and are usually played one after the other in matches of three, five, or seven points An exposure of the arts and miseries of gambling. The Daily Telegraph Australia. Before Planning Big Attack, Be Sure to Cover Your Rear". The New York Times, Late City Final Edition. Archived from the original on 7 September FIBS, the First Internet Backgammon Server.

Archived from the original on 13 August Retrieved 6 March ACM SIGART Bulletin Communications of the ACM. Archived from the original on 25 February The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin.

New Series 1 9: A History of Board-Games Other than Chess. The Journal of Hellenic Studies. Vyzantinon Vios kai Politismos. New Series 4 7: Retrieved 1 February InternetSecond Edition. Text and Images in Alfonso El Sabio's Libro de Acedrex, Dados e Tablas". Fore-Edge Books Are Unique Additions to Ransom Collection".

The University of Texas at Austin. The Oxford English DictionarySecond Edition. The New York Times. A disk and dice game that has been played in Middle Eastern streets for thousands of years, in English homes for hundreds of years, and on Bronx stoops for dozens of years has suddenly gripped the bankers and brokers of old-line men's clubs all over town.

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