Vic Morawski: Hi, I am Vic and we're introducing you to the game of Backgammon. Now, we would like to look at some of the rules that govern checker movement in the game. Now, when rules are made in Backgammon, they're counted as two individual numbers. I want to show you what happens in the case where white moves or rolls a 5-4. The rules of Backgammon do not say that you have to take those numbers in any particular order.

Now, if an opponent has two or more checkers on a space that number is blocked. The 5-4 is not considered as a total but as two separate numbers. So, here white could not move a five since it's blocked. However, if white would want to move out into blue's outer board, white can do that by moving the four first and then moving the five.

So, white can move that checker out by taking the numbers in a separate order, but now suppose blue were to roll a 3-1 and make blue's five point early on. Now, look what happens if white rolls at same 5-4 after blue has just done that. Note that fives are blocked and so are fours.

So, white -- if white rolled a 5-4 in this situation, it could not move either of these checkers and must move somewhere else on the board, for instance by bringing two checkers down from what is called the midpoint. So that's an important part of Backgammon because you can block the numbers that you're opponent rolls.

Now, notice there are other nines which would have allowed white to get out of there. If white had for instance rolled a 6-3, white can move the three and white can move a six or white can move both of those numbers and move three and then six and be out.

So, it's not just the total, but it just the specific numbers, that you roll that are important in Backgammon. To watch the other segments in this video series or for how-to videos on almost any other topic, visit monkeysee.

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