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.

Backgammon can prove to be a very challenging game to learn, much less master, even for adults. So at what age can you start teaching your child how to enjoy YOUR favorite game? That, of course, depends on several factors – your child's attention span, some physical dexterity, and, again, your patience level. We know a person who had one child, at age 3, playing chess. That boy did not turn out to be a chess prodigy, but the timing and patience of his parents – plus the fact that the child saw genuine joy in their parents playing the game – did the trick. Here are a few tricks for teaching the really young to have more than a passing interest in our favorite game:

• The numbers game – although it might seem like cheating and teaching them math at the same time, kids normally gravitate toward the dice first. So teach them how to add up the dots after each roll (forget about the Doubling Cube, for now).
• The mirror – the board layout can be intimidating. Where to line up the pieces? How many on what space? Don't overwhelm them with too much information, even with the layout. First, line up the pieces for them and then tell them how the board, when you view it in half down the center line, looks like a mirror - the pieces reflect and line up exactly the same from one side to the other. Let them soak in the visual aspects this way.
• Remember, go slow, only one or two new "introductions" at a time, and keep the games short, and let them "win" now and then (or often, even better). But for the very young, make sure they master this one rule: don't eat the pieces, no matter how tasty they may look.