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Winning and Losing Streaks
Like in any game, winning and losing streaks are normal, natural and expected in backgammon. Streaks happen to everyone who plays a lot of backgammon on any internet server or against flesh-and-blood opponents. Streaks affect bad players, average players, and good players. Any player who plays with any frequency is bound to experience them. |
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Checking the Dice on Jellyfish
While it is impossible to prove that Jellyfish never manipulates the dice you can at least satisfy yourself that Jellyfish has not manipulated the dice in any one particular game. |
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Ideal Qualities in Backgammon Boards
When shopping for a backgammon set there are certain qualities you should keep in mind, beyond simply its price. Many expert backgammon players often will customize their sets as opposed to buying one "off the rack". |
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Precision Dice
Precision dice are dice that are very carefully cut, so that their size is far more exact than regular dice. Also, the pips (dots) are flat, as opposed to scooped out, as in normal dice. This means that no side is lighter or heavier than another. They also have rounded edges and corners so that they roll better, and players can see through them, which precludes the question of loading or weighting. |
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Tips for Serious Backgammon Players
Once an opponent makes an advanced anchor it is imperative that you make one too, as your opponent can now afford to make bolder plays that could put you on the defensive.
If you are significantly behind in the race it may not hurt for you to fall further behind. Being way behind in the race may actually improve your timing to be hit again, thereby giving you a better backgame or avoiding crunching your board. |
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Backgammon Tips. Part 1
If you can make two points in your board and point on their head, do it. Making points in order is not as important as making points.
Doubles are the hardest rolls to play correctly. It's recommended that you play them as simply as possible. |
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Backgammon Tips. Part 2
When there is no reason to leave yourself open, don't do it.
If a loose hit gives you a chance to save the game rather than sit and die: go for it. |
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Backgammon Tips. Part 3
It is better to grab an anchor rather than an offensive point unless you are hitting. Don't needlessly strip your position when you have other options.
Everyone makes mistakes. However, when you keep making the same ones you have to look at your position differently. |
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How to Start a Backgammon Club
Find a good location. Choose a location that serves reasonably priced food and drinks and remains open until at least midnight. A side room with individual tables or booths is preferable to a closed room with long tables. |
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Optional Rules
There are some rules that may be played in some places, while completely absent in other. There is nothing particularly wrong with these optional rules, they just simply are what the name implies: optional. |
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Normalized Scoring
There are words and phrases that simply fail to capture the imagination, even if they have some relevance to what you are doing. The term Normalized Scoring in backgammon has exactly that sort of effect. |
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Keeping Your Backgammon Obsession Quietly in the Background
Face it, backgammon lovers, we know just how addictive our game is. We play a game that combines luck with strategy and skill, it's inexpensive to get started, and we can tote our game wherever we go – which means we can play our favorite game at just about any time of the day, too. |
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How Young Can You Be to Learn Backgammon? Actually, It Depends on the Teacher
Teaching young kids new games might test the patience of even the best instructors, but you will have more success – and maybe even have planted the seed of a lifelong enthusiast – if you can teach them thinking more like, well, a kid. |
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Backgammon in Education? Yes, It Works If Taught With Creativity
Teachers in elementary, middle, junior high or high schools often look for ways to keep students' interest, and that sometimes means they will creatively mix a game into the lesson to teach or reinforce a skill in their subject arena. |
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The Opening Move, How Important Is It in Backgammon?
There's nothing like starting fresh, or starting over - to see that board laid out perfectly in the ready-to-begin state, all the pieces or checkers resting on their proper positions, the dice or die waiting to be picked up and rolled to begin play. |
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The Myth of Dice Memory in Backgammon
Is it possible that dice have a memory? Of course not, but some players will assume that something akin to memory is at work with dice, saying things like "I'm due for doubles" and "I know I'm supposed to get Five Four once every so many tries, and I haven't in the last dozen rolls, so it must be coming." |
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Study and Practice Good Opening Moves to Have More Backgammon Success
The opening move can help you to do your homework and mentally prepare by knowing the key possible opening moves. So now let's hear from veteran backgammon player Phil Simborg, taking some cues from an article he wrote titled, "How to Play the Opening Moves." |
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The Roll of Dice in Backgammon - Art or Science?
You can't play backgammon long without developing a style or personality in your performance or playing protocol - it's bound to happen. |
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You Lose Points If You Don't Know a Gammon from a Backgammon
One of the more common mistakes by rookie or new backgammon players is in thinking that when they win or even when they play or bear off all their pieces in victory while leaving their opponent with no pieces of theirs played out but still in their home court or side of the bar that it is a "backgammon." |
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Picture in Your Mind Aspects of Backgammon that First Attracted You to the Game
Have you ever stopped to ponder what it was about the game of backgammon that attracted you to it in the first place? You might stop to give this some thought and confirm just what you fell in love with about backgammon. |
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Let the Backgammon Dice Fall Where They May, But in the Proper Arena
It doesn't matter whether you are left- or right-handed with your cast; it doesn't matter how long you shake them; and you are assessed no penalties for your style of rolling the backgammon dice - but you do have to adhere to a few basic rules of the game in this area of play. |
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Can a Love for the Game Be Called an Addiction?
Speaking of our favorite game, backgammon, do you know someone who just can't get enough of the game, plays almost non-stop from morning to dusk or dusk to morning? And if you do, is this, really, a bad thing? |
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The Opening Backgammon Game Roll - Who Goes First and How?
All is fair in love and war, you might have heard. It helps to be fair in games, too, including backgammon. There is a clear statement of this from the earliest possible moment of a backgammon game – the roll of the dice to decide who will move first, even before you begin playing. |
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Welcome to the Wild Animal Kingdom of Backgammon?
In backgammon, our playing pieces often go by many names – men, stones, checkers, and, pieces, to pick a few. Fair enough, we have to call them something. But why in the world would you occasionally hear a player yelling out, "Beaver!" or "Raccoon!" |
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Check Your Equipment When You Take Your Backgammon on the Road
Whenever you take your backgammon board on the road with you, it pays to do a double-check first before stepping out the door to make sure you have a complete set ready for action. |
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The Art of the Start - In Backgammon, Not the Book
Yes, you can over think a simple move or strategy in a game, even in Backgammon. You can also be accused of not giving enough thought into a move or even the beginning of a backgammon game. Whether fact or fiction, many players swear that there is an "art of the start" of our favorite board game. |
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Your New Year's Backgammon Resolution: To Recruit a New Player
As we welcome in the year 2007, there is a tradition among several countries across the globe to ring in the new year with a short or long list of resolutions (in reality, a to-do list) - aspirations and goals for us privately or as a group. Have you ever stopped to think that you could set some backgammon resolutions, too? |
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Backgammon Is Great, But PR Never Hurts
True backgammon lovers have a passion for their game, and it shows. You find them carrying around a travel set with them just about anywhere they travel, or they even buy one to keep in the lunchroom at work for lunch play or on breaks. There are even more extreme examples, but the point we want to make here is that some creative public relations (PR) or banner "cheerleading" is a nice offshoot of that passion. |
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Passing the Bar Exam Is No Game
Someone dropping in on the middle of two or more players discussing a "bar" may assume the wrong conversation topic - that perhaps this is a chat about the local tavern or drinking hole, maybe a sporting talk about two gymnasts on their technique on that equipment, or even pole vaulters or high-jumpers setting new heights for themselves. |
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Keep That Ace Up Your Sleeve
Going beyond the basic rules of backgammon can be an easy path to take, or it can evade some beginning players, depending on a variety of environmental factors. |
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End Contacts Are a Mini-Game Themselves in Backgammon
In backgammon, the end-contact positions or scenarios are a sign of a game nearing its end and that the game is almost a dead-heat or tie thus far as the final pieces are about to face and cross each other on their final route home. |
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Don't Be Overwhelmed, Beginners, Just Don't Use the Cube
Some of us started our journey into the wonderful world of backgammon with a certain amount of curiosity at this odd-looking board layout and the strange (we call it "unique" now) starting positions of the blots or checkers. |
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To Hit or Not to Hit? The Question for Savvy Backgammon Players
No matter how meticulous we are in maneuvering our checkers to just the right pips and setting up various blocks along the path for our opponents, we sometimes are done in by a rather cruel roll of the dice and forced to play the next few rolls with a man or two exposed. |
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How Desperate and Crafty Are You Without a Board?
It may be a rare occurrence, but there may come a time when you find yourself up a creek without a backgammon board and you are desperate to play. |
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Please Note That a Pip Does Not Include Gladys Knight
The word "pip" is another common moniker for the exact position your checker or piece is on or moving on with your roll of the dice. |
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Online Leagues Can Enhance Your Backgammon Lifestyle
If you are looking to supplement your local game play, backgammon devotees, but can't travel far, don't lose your hope - you are just a phone line or internet cable connection away from getting just what you crave. |
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Who Thinks More, Chess or Backgammon Players?
Alright, let's take a break from the political, bi-partisan wars or real war talk and start or revisit a "heated" debate that has lived on in legend for years: who thinks more, chess players or backgammon players? |
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Mean Spirited? No, It's Just Backgammon
We've all been there. We've all played against friends or strangers in our beloved backgammon circles and run across the opponent who - by what seems any means or any opportunity possible — knocks you up onto the bar in what feels like a deliberate forsaking of "normal etiquette" for the "I'm going to hit you as many times as I can" strategy. |
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When Is a Player Officially Done With His Move?
For some of you longtime backgammon players out there this may be a non-issue - some may even call it a "no-brainer" - but how would you explain to a new player to the game when his single move or play (his turn) is officially over or final? |
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Touchy-Feely? Hand-Held Rolls vs. Computer Rolls
While we are on the subject of real life play versus that other surreal, digital software version of our beloved game of backgammon, let's focus on one aspect of this debate, and it's perhaps one of the more "touchy-feely" aspects at that: the roll of the dice. |
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You Are Seeing Double When You Roll Doubles
Have you ever stopped to ponder what non-backgammon people think when they stop and take their first look at our game in action? It makes perfect sense to us, but to those first-time onlookers our game can look rather strange - and we are not just talking about the layout of the board. |
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Changing the Dice
The are a multitude of variants of backgammon in existence. Many of them make large and fundamental changes to the way the game is played, but almost all of them have one major thing in common. They use traditional dice. One way to switch up your backgammon game is to use dice of different values. |
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Double It Up
The doubling cube is an interesting variant applied to most backgammon games today. It allows you to double your points from a victory, but it also means that any following rounds will also have their points doubled. Knowing when to use the doubling cube is an important skill necessary for successful play in games where it is involved. If you use it at the wrong time, you may end up handing your opponent an advantage. If you use it at the right time, your opponent will have no choice but to accept. |
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Mind the Spread
When playing backgammon, you are racing your opponent towards victory. Which one of you clears his or her pieces first is the victor. This may lead you to think only of moving your pieces as quickly towards your home territory as possible, but there are many other things you should consider when maneuvering your pieces. One of the most important amongst these is the spread. |
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Rolling Sets
Rolling sets is a variant way to play backgammon that can be very useful tool when practicing your strategies and tactics. It is a sort of backgammon that is very similar to solitaire in that you can play it all on your own. |
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Establish a Pace
"The Tortoise and the Hare" is especially relevent to thinking about backgammon. If you remember the old story, the slower Tortoise wins the race against the quick Hare because he establishes a steady pace instead of sprinting forward and stumbling later in the race. In backgammon, establishing a strong pace is a better course towards victory than just rushing forward. |
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Get Out of Home
Backgammon is nothing more than a race, but there are many important strategic concerns involved in winning that race. How you move your checkers along the board and not just how fast you move them can have a very strong impact on your chances of victory. |
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Stalling for Time Is Stalling Out
We all see it sometimes. Players will hold out on their forward advance to allow straggling pieces to catch up. Instead of moving home as quickly as possible with the available pieces, they'll have a chunk of pieces half way along and scattered singles that they're trying to clump into that group. |
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Understanding the Math of the Dice
The dice are your vehicle in backgammon. They are what moves your pieces into your home and into scoring position. On the surface, they appear to be a pretty unreliable vehicle, like a Jaguar or Alfa. They don't always do what you want them to do, and sometimes they do the exact opposite of what you want them to do, but unlike high end automobiles, there is a rhyme and reason for the way the dice act the way they do, and it's simple math. |
