Backgammon Rules

The full rules, as Gammon Rivals plays them. New to the game? The short version is on How to Play.

The board and the setup

The board has 24 narrow triangles called points, in four quarters of six. Each player has 15 checkers and moves them in opposite directions, from their opponent's home board towards their own. The starting position never changes:

2 checkers on your 24-point (the far corner);
5 checkers on your 13-point;
3 checkers on your 8-point; and
5 checkers on your 6-point.

Both players start 167 pips from home. The pip count is the total distance all your checkers still have to travel, and it is the honest measure of who is ahead in a race.

The object

Bring all 15 of your checkers into your home board, then take them off the board. The first player to bear off all 15 wins the game.

Moving

Each die is a separate move. A roll of 5 and 3 moves one checker five points and another three, or one checker five then three.
Doubles are played four times: 4-4 gives you four moves of four.
You may land on an empty point, on your own checkers, or on a point holding exactly one enemy checker.
A point with two or more enemy checkers is blocked. You cannot land there, not even as the middle step of a two-die move.
You must play as many dice as the position allows. If only one number can be played, play it; if either die alone is playable but not both, you must play the higher one. If nothing is playable, your turn is skipped.

Hitting and the bar

A single checker alone on a point is a blot. Land on it and it is hit: the checker goes to the bar and starts its journey again from the beginning.

While you have a checker on the bar you may do nothing else. You must enter it in your opponent's home board first, on the point matching a die — a 3 enters on their 3-point. If both entry points are blocked, your turn is lost.

Bearing off

Once all 15 of your checkers are in your home board, you can start taking them off:

Roll a 6, take a checker off your 6-point; roll a 3, take one off your 3-point.
If the matching point is empty, you must make a legal move inside your home board with that number instead.
If the number is higher than any point you still occupy, you bear off from your highest occupied point.
If a checker is hit while you are bearing off, it goes to the bar and you must bring it all the way home again before you can take any more checkers off.

Gammon and backgammon

Single game — the loser has borne off at least one checker. Worth 1 point.
Gammon — the loser has borne off nothing. Worth double.
Backgammon — the loser has borne off nothing and still has a checker on the bar or in the winner's home board. Worth triple.

The doubling cube

The cube turns a good position into points. Before your roll, you may offer to double the value of the game. Your opponent chooses:

Take — the game is now worth twice as much, and only they may offer the next double; or
Drop — they concede immediately and you win the current value.

The cube runs 2, 4, 8, 16 and on up, and it multiplies with gammons: a gammon at 4 is worth 8 points.

Match play and the Crawford rule

A backgammon match is played to a target score rather than as one game. Games continue until a player reaches the target, and the Crawford rule applies: when a player first reaches one point short of the target, the next game is played without the cube. After that single game the cube is live again.

Tables in Gammon Rivals are single games today, so a table match is decided by one game and the cube does not come into it. The cube, match targets, and Crawford are supported by the game engine and appear in multi-game formats.

What the app does for you

You never have to remember any of this at the table. Gammon Rivals highlights only legal moves, blocks illegal ones, counts pips, applies the Crawford rule, and scores gammons and the cube automatically. The rules above are here for the times you want to know why a move was refused.

Ready for a game? Get the game, or readhow our dice work.