Backgammon Rules - Object of the Game

Vic Morawski: Hi, I am Vic. We are introducing you to the game of Backgammon, today. Now, we would like to look a little bit at the rules of the game and what the object of the game backgammon is. What you see here is the setup for a standard game of Backgammon. The checkers are always setup in this kind of a mirror pattern. Each player, as we mentioned in the introduction gets 15 checkers. The object of the game is to take all of your checkers off the board before your opponent does.

Now, movement of both of blue here and white is in two opposite directions. Blue moves in a horseshoe or a U-pattern around the board this way and can only move forward. White moves in a horseshoe pattern around the board this way and can only move forward in the opposite direction from blue. No checkers can be borne off the board until all of them are in what are called the player's home board.

Now, the backgammon board is thought to be divided into four quadrants. This would be blue's home board, white will be over here and this white's home board and these are also sometimes called the inner board. This would be white's outer board and this would be blue's outer board.

So, the movement of blue for instance here, then would be all the way from being deep in white's inner board into a horseshoe pattern, back to blue's own inner board and you must have all of your checkers in your inner board to begin taking any of them off and if you're ever interrupted and we will talk in a few minutes, about how you can be interrupted while bearing off, you cannot begin again, taking your checkers off, until all of your checkers, however many are left, are in your home board.

Now, as I said the person who takes all of his or her checkers off first, wins the game, even if that person has only one left and you get yours off, you've won that game. Now, occasionally it will happen, let's say blue for instance gets all of his or her checkers off the board, before white can take even one checker off, that has a special name in backgammon, that's called a Gammon, in other words blue is said to gammon white and if you're playing for a stake, that would count twice whatever the stake, a regular game can only -- counting only once.

Now, in rare instances, blue for instance might take all of his or her checkers off before white not only gets one off, but before white can take all of white's checkers out of blue's home board. If blue bears all of his or her checkers off and white still has a checker left, then that is called a Backgammon and in the United States that counts for three times the stake.

Now, if you're watching this over the Internet, you want to see and check how Backgammon are scored in your area, because in some parts of the world, they're called simply as gammons.

Well, that's the object of the game in Backgammon. Next we will talk about the rules governing the movement of the checkers.