Backgammon for Beginners
Backgammon is a popular board game that belongs to the family of race games. It is a one-on-one game played upon a special board with 15 game pieces called checkers. The backgammon board consists of 24 points and divided into 4 parts: each player has a home board and an inner board. The object of the game is to be the first player who moves his checkers to the home board and then bears off the checkers, while hitting and entering the opponent's checkers.
Even though the movement of the checkers is conducted by the roll of the dice, backgammon is more a game of skill than a game of chance. Backgammon is a strategy game often compared with chess. Since the introduction of the doubling cube, the backgammon game had been linked with gambling. It is a well known fact that many of the world's top poker players are also backgammon players.
Backgammon has a long and rich history that that traces back to 3500 BC. It is the most ancient board game known to man with evidence that show that its earliest versions used to be played in Ancient Egypt, Rome and Mesopotamia.
The origin of the name "backgammon" derives from the conjunction of the two Middle English words "back" and "gamen" (game). The peak of backgammon popularity in the 20th century was during the 1970s. Since the 1990s and until our days the backgammon game has been resurrected as an online game. Backgammon is currently played competitively by internet users worldwide.
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