Backgammon
The originals of Backgammon are slightly unclear as all around the world, from as early as the sixth or seventh century, board games have been played in Iran, Egypt, Iraq, Rome, East Asia, Europe, England, Greece, Turkey and the United States.
However, all the board games that were played had all their own variations and it is only in the twentieth century that the dice along with the board became standard with Prince Alexis Obolensky, who is known as “the Father of Modern Backgammon”, co-founded the International Backgammon Association with an official set of rules and regulations.
Backgammon is played by two people on a board with twenty-four narrow triangles called points. There are always two colours, so each set of points has 12 narrow triangles, 6 on one side of the board and 6 on the other side.
To start any game of Backgammon, each player gets a total of fifteen checkers, in the colour matching the points that he/she will be playing and will be set out as follows: two checkers, of the same colour on point twenty-four, five on thirteen, three on eight and five on six with the opposing colour putting two checkers on one, five on twelve, three on seventeen and five on nineteen.
Both players have their own pair of dice, which one will be thrown by each player to start the game. The player with the highest number will then automatically start the game by rolling both sets of dice.
Once the dice have been rolled, the player will then move his checkers to an open point, which is a point that is not occupied by two or more opposing checkers. A player can either use each number represented by each dice to move separate checkers, but if no points are available, the two numbers can be combined and one checkers is moved to an open point.
The whole idea behind Backgammon is move all your checkers from one side of the board to the other before your opponent which would be termed as bearing off. The player who bears off first would then be deemed the winner of this particular game.
