Backgammon

In Backgammon, you will have to roll the dice, move strategically, knock out your opponent's pieces, and quickly retreat to win a dramatic victory.

How to play Backgammon?

The objective of the game

The winner is the first person to eliminate all 15 of their pieces. To achieve this, players need not only luck with the dice, but also have a reasonable strategy in protecting their pieces, controlling their positions, and stopping their opponents.

How to move the pieces

Each turn, the player rolls two six-sided dice. Each die represents the number of steps a piece can move. The player can:

• Move two different pieces, each moving the number of steps corresponding to each die, or
• Control a piece to move along both dice faces.

When you roll a pair (e.g. 5-5), you can move 4 times, each time according to that number (i.e. 4 times 5 steps). The piece moves in a counterclockwise arc, from the starting area to the player's home base.

Interactions between pieces

When one of your pieces moves to a spot where there is only one opponent piece, that opponent piece is knocked off the board and temporarily removed from the board. The knocked off piece is placed on the center bar and cannot move further until it is returned to the board.

To return a piece, the player must roll the dice and move it to a spot in the opponent's home base corresponding to the number just rolled. If all the corresponding spots are blocked by the opponent (there are 2 or more pieces), the player loses their turn and must wait for the next turn.

Important Terms

Bear off: This is the final stage of the game when you have brought all your pieces back to your base. You start removing pieces from the board one by one based on the number of dice rolled. Whoever takes all their pieces first wins.

• Hit: If your piece enters a point where your opponent only has one piece, you will knock that piece down. The piece that was hit will be moved to the center bar and temporarily removed from the game. To return to the game, your opponent must roll the dice and choose the corresponding point in your base to bring the piece back, before they can continue making other moves.
• Prime: This is a series of consecutive points where the player occupies at least two pieces on each point. This chain forms an impassable wall, paralyzing the opponent's movement.
• Blot: A piece that stands alone on a triangle, very easy to be knocked off (hit) by the opponent. Therefore, protecting blots is an important part of the strategy.
• Doubling cube: A special cube with the numbers 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 used to increase the bet points in the game. Players can propose to double the points, creating more drama and high strategic calculation in each game.