How To Play Backgammon

This video tutorial will teach you how to play the game Backgammon.

This video will start by teaching you the general concepts of Backgammon and is followed by the more detailed features of the game. The video concludes with an example. This tutorial is perfect for beginning players, as well as, experienced players that need a refresher.

After watching, you will know the basics of how to play the game Backgammon. All that is left to do is grab a friend and start playing!

This Backgammon tutorial will cover the following topics:
- The setup
- The objective
- How to play
- How to win
- A review of the rules
- An example

Please leave a comment below if you need any additional information about the game Backgammon, if you have any questions about the game, or if any aspect of the game was not clear in the video.

Thanks for watching!

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[bretterry]

I've been wanting to teach this game to people for a while and I can't find a decent tutorial video anywhere. This one is okay for a refresher, but seriously lacking for teaching someone new. For those who already know how to play and don't understand why a lot of people are confused, here are some key things that this video left out.

First, an explanation of the board and pieces. The board is made up of four parts, each of which has 6 points. The checkers are lined up on the points. Only one color of checker can be on any one point at a time. The color of the point does not matter. It's just for decoration. The pieces move around the board like a letter C, entering at one end, moving along the board in one direction, then crossing and moving back along the board in the opposite direction. Really, it's like if it were a single line of 24 points but bent around to conserve space. Each player's pieces move in the opposite direction from the other player, so one is trying to move clockwise and the other is moving counterclockwise.

This may seem obvious to people who already know the game, but if you leave it out of the explanation, someone who is trying to learn by watching won't necessarily make the connection between what is being said and what is being shown. He starts the video by saying how many pieces are on each point, but he just rattles off the numbers of the points like you already know what points those numbers correspond to, and if you're a complete noob, you won't.

So let's show what the board looks like with the numbers for the points.

||12 11 10 09 08 07 || 06 05 04 03 02 01 ||

||13 14 15 16 17 18 || 19 20 21 22 23 24 ||

Here you can see the four sections and the direction of movement. One player is moving down numbers trying to get their checkers past the 1 point, and the other player is moving up numbers trying to get past the 24 point. For the player going down, the section with points 1-6 is "home" and for the player moving up, the section with points 19-24 is "home." You have to get all of your pieces home before any can go off the board.

The next thing he didn't explain well was capturing and entering pieces. A point can either be open, unblocked, or blocked, depending on the pieces that are on it. If a point has zero pieces on it, any player can move a piece to it without consequences. If a point has two or more pieces on it, it is blocked and only the player with pieces already on it can move pieces onto it. A point can hold any number of pieces, but in order to avoid confusion, if a point has more than 6 pieces, you begin stacking them on top of each other so they don't look like they are on the point across from it. If a point has exactly one piece on it, it is unblocked. Either player can move to an unblocked point. If that puts two of the same color on the point, that point becomes blocked. If that would put a new color on it, the old one is captured and only the new one remains. The point is still unblocked, but now for the other player.

Any number of pieces from either side may be captured at a time. A captured piece is placed on the bar and must re-enter the board at the end. For the player counting down, for example, they must enter by the 24-point. They enter with a die roll just like usual, as if they were on an imaginary 25-point. (For the player moving up, it is as if they are on an imaginary 0-point.) So if you roll a 3, you can enter them to the 22-point if it is open or unblocked. If it is blocked, you can't enter there. This makes entering trickier the later it gets in the game, because the six points you could enter by are in the other player's home, so they are going to fill up with opposing pieces and be blocked, or you could end up captured again right after entering.

Lastly, there were some problems with his explanation of boarding off. Once all of your pieces are home, you can begin boarding off. The first player to finish boarding off is the winner. Boarding off is done the similarly to moving pieces regularly. You roll the dice as usual and then move pieces accordingly. Just like entering, we can imagine a 0-point or a 25-point. In order to board off a piece, you must roll exactly the number that would move it to the 0-point or 25-point. If you roll a number too high for you to move or board off any of your pieces, then you board off a piece from the farthest point. If you have a piece on the 4-point, you can board it off with a roll of 4 or move it to the 1-point. If you roll a 6, you can't board off a piece from the 4-point unless the 5-point and 6-point are both empty. (This rule is to keep players from keeping all of their home board blocked for the opponent's reentering pieces. If, for example, you have three pieces on the 2-point, and two on the 4-point, and you roll a 3, it would be tempting to board off one from the 2-point, but you can't. You have to move one from the 4-point to the 1-point.) If any piece is captured after boarding off has started, boarding off stops until all captured pieces are home again.

Again, these things may seem obvious if you already know, but if he only ever shows one piece captured at a time, and he never explains how to enter a piece, just that it has to be done, which is a pretty glaring hole in a tutorial. They really needed to take their time and explain things better, as well as show more examples. Anyway, I hope this helps people make sense of what is going on in the video.

[carlosmatos]

To me, Backgammon was always "that one game" on the back of the checkerboard, lol

[alphazar]

When I was 8 my father gave me a magnetic chess with backgammon on the flip side. The chess was easy to understand though takes a lot to master. I never learned how to play backgammon because no one I knew knew. Now I'm 35 and saw your video, good effort but I don't understand shit 👏

[ctpaschal]

I used to play this game growing up and loved it. Wanted to start playing again with my kid and realized I couldn't remember it at all. This quick tutorial brought it all back to me. This game has been played for over 5000 years it's a great game. Thanks for the quick vid.

[yekaneast]

I still have no idea how to play this game, I have watched so many videos

[marcuswong]

I dunno man. To me this tutorial is pretty well done. I’ve never touched backgammon before and this video teaches me all I have to know. Personally I don’t understand why people are confused

[aluwanimoyo]

Having two actual players on the video would had made it SO MUCH EASIER.

[chrismoody]

I taught this game to my 8 year old granddaughter. She absolutely love playing it with Papa.

[cherri_tsuuuu]

i feel like i might understand better if u explained the confusing terms of backgammon like the "home something" or "...point" first before

[Jaydoggy]

Thank you for this concise explanation. The reason why most included rule books of backgammon look so overwhelming is because 75% of it is about various strategies, rather than its otherwise simple game play.

[maureenlevandowski]

One of the best video on how to play the game....I don't know what's so confusing to those who commented as such!

[gioschirmer]

Grew up playing this game with my family. Now I’m teaching my husband. This is a great refresher. Thanks for the video!

[christophersanders]

He lost me as soon as he started talking.

[rindallbroxmitten]

I also still have no idea how to play the game. Let me explain why:

0:38 "with five on the six point". First confusing point, because what are the points? How do you know which one is which? After looking at it, it's easy to see. But a quick mention of it would've been nice.

1:20 "Each dice is moved seperately and can be moved to any point that is not blocked." What? Is this a mispronounciation? Should it have been "Each checkers"? Why would you move dice? Do you have to roll with one of your opponents dice for the first time? Does that really matter?

1:40 "Player one rolled the higher four and moves one checker two points to an open point." Wait, what? Player one rolls a four and moves two points. Can you divide your dice throw?

1:45 "And another checker four points on top of it." Oh, so for the first time you use both your opponents die and your own and you can choose which you use first, when and if you had the higher dice throw. The order in which it is explained makes it very vague.

1:55 "Player two moves a checker four points." So at the twelve point you get to jump across. Would have been nice to know in advance.

2:29 "A player is required to return any checker on the bar back into the game before making any other moves." How? Please explain.

2:36 "With player one's next turn, he rolls a one and a two and is able to return his checker into play." Why? How? Because he rolled a one? Because he rolled a two? Because together it is a three? Because you need to be able to throw the dice? What do you need to do to return a checker from the bar back into the game?

2:49 "Player one is able to get all his checkers into the home board with the six point move." What is the six point move? Do you need to get the last checker in with a six?

2:55 "He is now able to begin removing his checkers from the board. This is also known as bearing off." How does that work? Why does he remove one checker while still having a four left? Is is one checker per die?

3:08 "By rolling a five and a three, player one is able to remove his last two checkers to win the game." How? Are the five and three important?

3:37 "A checker on the bar must be returned into play before other moves can be made. If the checker is blocked from being returend into play, the players turn is over with no moves being made." So how does it get blocked? Are those sixes of any importance? Where does a checker from the bar go?

[voltron]

My girlfriend and I have been learning to play backgammon during lockdown and this video has really helped us. Thank you for posting this.

[heatherraejensen]

It's been years since I played but I got a new board for Christmas and this was the PERFECT refresher!! It all came back to me now....thanks! 😊

[aleksakocijasevic]

THE RULES FOR BEGINNERS:

Basically, for the white player, his first 6 "squares" are in the bottom right corner, and then, his checkers move in the clockwise direction on the board, starting from the bottom-right to the left, and then going on the top side, from top-left to top-right.
For the black player it is reversed. You have to move all of your checkers to the last quadrant of the board (top-right for white, bottom-right for black) in order to start taking them of the board. The goal is to get all of your checkers off the board, before your opponent. You can go to every point with your checkers, except on those that are occupied by more than one opponents checkers (those checkers are safe from capture). If you land on the point where there is only one opponents checker, you "capture it" and send it to the middle bar. You can't play other checkers while you have any of your own on the middle bar. The numbers that you roll determine on what point you can put your checkers that were on the bar (in your starting quadrant). When you get all of your own checkers in the last quadrant of the board, you can start to "bear off".

RULES WHEN BEARING OFF:

-you have the exact number on the dice that you need, to get the checers off the board: you can symply move those checkers
-you have numbers bigger than those that you need to get the checker off the board: you can only move the furthest checker/s
-you have a smaller number: you can move the checkers by only that number.

I hope this is helpful.

[DesignDaniel]

Nice this video starts imminently with talking about "points" which he didn't cover at the basis

[mishagelenava]

In my country(Georgia) this game is traditional, played for centuries and we call it Nard as it's called in Iran, because we got this game from them. A little difference though. First of all we don't have two sets of dice, we just take turns with one set. Secondly, when we roll one dice each player, to decide who starts the game, we don't use that initial numbers for the first player to make first moves, he has to roll the dice again for the first move. And of course with some practice, we play faster, skipping over positions and moving two or more pieces together if we throw a double, but I guess you do that too, just needed to brake it down for the beginner. And one thing I doubt you do, we name numbers not in our language, but in Persian LOL Actuall, more like, twisted version of Persian, not sure, I don't know the exact pronunciations in Persian, but it seems like some Georgians listened while Persians played and copied the words as they could hear them.

[aakoge]

Okay, for anybody who doesn’t understand this video should watch the beginner’s tutorial first on his channel. He talks about more stuff he doesn’t explain in this video like entering and capturing. It’ll help you understand this video better.