How to play backgammon

Five minutes to learn. Everything below is the whole game - the rules, then a few things worth knowing once you have played a couple.

What you are trying to do

You have fifteen checkers and so does your opponent. Yours travel one way round the board, theirs the other way. The first player to bring all fifteen round and take them off the board wins. Everything else is detail.

The board

The twenty-four triangles are called points, and they are numbered from your side: point 1 is the one nearest where your checkers finish, point 24 the one furthest away. Your opponent numbers them the other way round, so their point 1 is your point 24 - which is why every number on this page is from your seat.

Taking a turn

Roll two dice. Each die moves one checker that many points forward, and the two dice are separate moves: you may move two different checkers, or the same checker twice.

• Doubles are worth four moves, not two. Roll two fives and you play four fives.
• Play both dice if you legally can. If only one of them can be played, you must play the higher one. If neither can, you lose the turn.
• Moving one checker twice is really two moves, so it has to be able to stop on the point in between. That makes the order matter: six-then-three sometimes works where three-then-six does not.
• A move is only legal if the point you land on is open to you - which is the next bit.

Where you are allowed to land

A point is open to you unless your opponent has two or more checkers on it. It makes no difference how many of your own are already there.

Hitting, and the bar

Landing on a blot hits it. The checker you hit comes off the board and goes on the bar, and has to start its journey again from the beginning.

While you have a checker on the bar you may move nothing else until it is back on the board. It re-enters in your opponent's home board, on the point matching the die: a one enters on point 24, a two on 23, and so on down to a six on point 19.

More on hitting and the bar - blots, points and anchors, why the numbers run backwards when you come back on, and what to do about being shut out.

Bearing off

Once all fifteen of your checkers are home - on points 1 to 6 - you can start taking them off. A die takes a checker off the point with that number: a four takes one off point 4.

• If the point matching your die is empty and you have checkers further back, you must move within your home board instead - a four would go from 6 to 2.
• If the die is higher than any point you still occupy, it takes a checker off your highest point. With nothing left above point 3, a five or a six takes one off point 3.
• Get hit while bearing off and that checker goes to the bar and has to come all the way round again - so you cannot start taking checkers off until it is home.

How to bear off, in full - every roll you can be dealt at the end of a game, and what you are allowed to do with it.

Winning

The first player with all fifteen checkers off wins. How much they win by depends on how far behind the loser was:

• One point - the loser has borne off at least one checker.
• Two points, a gammon - the loser has borne off none at all.
• Three points, a backgammon - the loser has borne off none and still has a checker on the bar or stuck in the winner's home board.

What a win is worth - the three results worked through, and how the doubling cube multiplies them.

Seven things worth knowing

None of this is a rule. It is the difference between moving checkers and playing backgammon.

• Move in pairs, not singles. A checker on its own can be hit; two on the same point cannot, and they close that point to your opponent. Given the choice between two safe landings and one clever one, take the safe pair.
• Point 5 is the one to want. Your 5-point is the most valuable point on the board - it blocks the checkers your opponent most needs to move, and it is where their bar checkers most want to land. Your opponent's 5-point, your point 20, is the next best.
• Count to six before leaving a blot. Anything six points or fewer in front of an opposing checker can be hit with a single die, and closer is more dangerous, not less. If you must leave a blot, leave it further away.
• Blocking beats hitting. Points in a row are what really hurt: an opposing checker cannot pass them at all, and six in a row is a wall no roll gets through.

• Keep an anchor while you have checkers back there. Two checkers together in your opponent's home board are safe from being hit and give you somewhere to land later. Splitting them up early usually costs more than it gains.
• Work out whether it is still a race. Add up how far all your checkers have to travel, and do the same for your opponent's. Ahead in that count: run for home and avoid contact. Behind: stay back, keep the chance of a hit alive, and take the risk.
• Nobody is out of it. One hit late on can undo twenty good moves, which is the whole charm of the game. Losing positions are worth playing out.

Playing on bearoff

bearoff plays the game above, with a few things to know:

• Games are played a turn at a time, not in one sitting. You take your turn, your opponent takes theirs whenever they next open the app, and you get an email or a notification when it is your go. A game can take days, and several can run at once.
• The doubling cube is optional, and off unless you ask for it. A game has one only when both players have it on in settings, and the invitation says so before it is accepted. There is no match play either way - every game stands on its own.
• Nothing is committed until you confirm the turn. Move your checkers around as much as you like, undo any of it, and only then end the turn. The server checks every move, so an illegal one simply will not go.
• The dice are rolled by the server, one throw for both of you, drawn from the same randomness a computer uses to make encryption keys. In the phone apps with no signal, a game against the computer is rolled on the phone from its own secure source of randomness instead, and every move of it is checked by the server when it is uploaded. Nothing looks at who is winning and nothing adjusts the odds: doubles turn up one time in six here as they do on a table, and a run of them either way is what that actually looks like over a short game.
• Two players, one device. There is also a game for two people sitting either side of one screen: Virtual game board, in the lobby. The phone or tablet lies on the table between you and stays where you put it, like a real board, so you each read it from your own side, and it works with no signal at all - which means the two points above are the other way round for it: the dice are rolled and the moves are checked on the device itself, by the same rules, rather than on the server. Nothing about it is recorded; when you leave, the game and the score go with you.
• The turns you have no choice about - a roll with no legal move, a forced entry from the bar - are played for you, so you are not asked to confirm a decision that was never yours. The one part of that you can switch off, in preferences, is bearing off automatically on an exact die once nothing can be hit.
• The hint suggests a move and says why in plain words. It is not cheating and you are welcome to it, but it is not a secret either: your opponent can see that you asked, in the game history.
• Three computer opponents - a panda, a grizzly bear and a polar bear, in that order of difficulty - if you would rather practise than wait for somebody.
• On a phone, the board wants landscape. Turn it sideways to play and back upright to chat.

Everything else - the board colours, which corner your home board sits in, the language, what you are emailed about - is in preferences, under the cog.

In more detail

Three parts of the game are fiddlier than a paragraph can carry. Each has a page of its own.