How To Play Backgammon Hello And welcome to the very simple lesson on how to play backgammon I have played backgammon for thirty
years I actually have taught a lot of children
how to play backgammon a lot of people sometimes think that
when they look at a game like this, it's very overwhelming and I'm here to tell you that it's very simple to play
this game, and if you watch my few videos I'm going to show you not only how to
play this game as a beginner, but in the later videos, I'm gonna show
you how to play it a little more advanced. okay I want to
just jump right into it, what you're looking at is a backgammon board and as you can see there are whites and there are blacks. when you sit on
this side of the board, your the whites, when you're sitting on
this side of the board, your'e the blacks. now as you can see here there are points and there are six
points here and there are six points here, down below their six points here, and there are six points here. every piece lands on a point nothing can land in the middle of a
point. everything lands on a point and this is a game about being able to
move your pieces around the board. now, as the whites, as somebody
here, each player has 15 pieces. looking at this board
right now this is how a board is set up. it's
something you just need to remember. at the beginning so i'm going to walk you
through it since you're here, you have five of your pieces on this side, and you have three
pieces over here, some people when they set the board cant remember do these three pieces go here?
do they go here? do they go here? but a good way to
remember it is that it's not against the wall, but it's
just next to the wall. 3 there, 5 there, and then these are
also my pieces there's five pieces up here on the right and up on the left side there's two of
my pieces now to look at the black pieces the opponent's pieces, you'll see
that they have the exact same setup. they have five pieces exactly across
from mine three pieces exactly across from mine,
and then of course the five on the side and the two on this side. if you're ever
in one question how to setup the backgammon board, all you need to do is look at what your opponents doing and set up on the other side . I've got two dice my opponet has two dice, and we're not going to worry about this cube
here this red cube that says 64 we're not going to worry about that for a while
that's a pretty advanced concept this is actually for people who
are so good at backgammon that they gamble so we're going to not worry about that
now until we actually just know how to play a single game because usually this gambling cub e called, a doubling cube, really refers to people who are
playing multiple games okay there's two other things I wanna
point out on this backgammon board before we kinda get started. number one is you'll notice that there's a side here where pieces would go, and when you clean up the board, you put them away you put all your pieces in here, and the
other team puts their pieces in here,
that's actually not the only purpose of these, because in the game of backgammon your goal is to actually move all your pieces
around the board, and i'm going to explain that the second, but also to move your
pieces off the board. so as you move them off the board usually use stack them back where they belong. so it is significant that these things are here because you will be taking you pieces off the board.
the other significant thing to notice is this bar here. a lot of
people play backgammon in a briefcase type of a case that folds in half. that's where
this crease is, but it's actually called 'the bar', because as i get into the game and i'll explain a little bit you actually can take your opponents off the board and when they have no place to be they are on the bar. okay but we'll get
to that later. now the goal of the game, to win the game of backgammon you have to get all your pieces off the
board, so since I'm white and because this is in front of me, and this is in
front of me. my goal is to take these two pieces here work them all the way across and down and into this until I can get all the pieces all 15
pieces in here. so these two pieces need to come across down and in. these five pieces here need to come down and in. these three
pieces here need to come in, and these five are
already here and once all 15 of my pieces are in then I can start taking them off the
board and all the moves are done based on
the dice, and I'll get to that in just a second. we take all the pieces off the board and
the first person to get all your pieces off the board wins. now while the white player is moving
their pieces here and down and around and off, the same thing is happening although backwards, to the black player. the black players' pieces are coming this way, down to them, and then around and
they're trying to get all 15 of their pieces in here. once they have of 15 if their
pieces in here they're going to then take their pieces
off and stack them up there the first player to get all the pieces
off wins. now, one more interesting thing to sort of note to
help you with the moves. most people when they're starting off in this game, you roll the dice, and you count your moves, so if you roll a three and you're going to move a piece three you go 1-2-3. or if you're going to
move it six you count it 1-2-3-4 5 , yes you do count a point if your opponent on it, 6. so the thing to sort of remember is since
there is six if these getting a six moves your piece from here to here getting a 6 would move this
piece from here 1-2-3-4-5-6 to here this piece getting moving six
would go 1- 2-3-4-5-6 and be here but notice what you're doing you're
going pretty much across the board to exactly the same
pin number to the same pin color so here's a a bit
on a black point this if you remove 1 piece 6, you just go to
this black point and the reason that backgammon board is
usually a different colored is to help you count. you know if you
moving this piece two you're going to the next black one
from this black to this black removing it 4 to there, if you're
moving its six to there, now let's get to the dice, because the
dice is something that people think they understand but it's a little
different than craps. and other dice games. each turn you're gonna roll your dice and when you
roll your dice you're going to move obviously the number on the dice that the that comes up but there's something you have to
understand. let's just work of
this here, you have a five and five so that's thats 10 it actually though it is 10, and you are allowed
to move one piece 5 and another piece 5 you could use in move one piece 10 but there is one
important thing to know which is it still is really just moving one piece
5 and then moving that same piece 5 now the one thing that you can't do is
you cannot move your piece and land on a point that your opponent has at least to 2 of their chips so you can actually land on them if they have one chip, and then you
take them off and put them on the bar I'll get to that in a second, but what i'm saying is eventually, just to talk about the movement a moving around the board you really can only land on a place
where there is... you cannot land
on a place where there's two so for example if this was my move 5 and
5 and I was to move this piece, it would
go one 2 3 4 5. well 5 would be here. I can't
actually land here so this piece cannot move five and then since we are
talking about it. can't move 10? actually this piece cannot move 10,
because, like I said before it's really just moving five and five and
each time it has to land safely so it really can't
move 1 2 345 cuz I can't land here now you have two dice you don't have to
move the same piece every time so you could moves these pieces 1 2 3 4 5 yes you can move a piece onto yours itself that can be done but let's look let's look here. Can this piece move 5? 1-2-3-4 5 no because there's two blacks here so
if you were to play in opening move a five and five, you
actually can't move these because you can't move five here you can't move these because you
can't move five here you could move these, but you would be moving them
to a place where you already have your pieces could you move these 5? 1-2-3-4 5 yes you could move these 5 now before I go too far, that was just
an example because the truth is, a doubles is a
special move. when you're playing the game and you get doubles you don't just get to move five and five but you get to move five and five and
then again five and five. doubles actually gives you the value of the two dice doubled! which is a great thing if
you're behind in the game and you can pull doubles that's always a good
thing to have double fives and again we'll get
to this in the playing the game you're actually getting a 5 and a 5 and a
5 and a 5 you can move one piece five four times, you can move four pieces 5 one-time you could move any combination you can
move 2 pieces 5 two times, so you see I'm trying to get
at is like your each time you are moving the piece the value of
the dice. players start by taking turns and the first thing that you do is you roll
the dice and you get going so let's just start
the game and usually when you start a game each
player's gonna roll one dice the person with the highest die actually takes that move. so lets start the game and I rolled a 2 and this opponent has rolled a 1. so I've won
because I have a 2 so I get the opening move and in this
case I get to move it to and a 1 so I could get into strategies, but I'm
gonna do that next lesson so let's just practice the moving in this one so I can move one piece one and I can move this piece 2 or I can
move this piece 2 I could move this piece 2 I could move
this piece 1 or 2. this piece 2 the
only thing at this point that you can't move your piece to is one of your
opponents points that has two or more of his pieces okay so now it's my so let me just move
this to now it's when it's that is since I'm playing against myself it's
moved so I have a view of the the other site. its flip the board
for me so another black player would roll the
dice and they have a six and one. they could move their pieces if they
wanted to for example this could be moved 1 2 3 4-5-6 that would be an acceptable move,
it could be moved 1 but noticed that this cannot be moved
1-2-3-4-5-6 and 1 because there's a piece here this could be moved 1 it cannot be
moved 1 but it could be moved 1 2 3 4-5-6 now it's actually interesting is that
and this is very important to note that even though you can't move it one,
but you can move it six if you want to get here, which is 1-2-3-4 5-6 7 points away you though you can't go one and six you still can get here because you could
go 6 and then one so it's a really important thing to
understand is just because you can't you can move any piece either the six or
the one it just has to be able to land safely as a 6, or safely as a 1 so in
this case in this one can move safely is a 1 but it cannot move the other six so
cannot get to here so we can move is a1 it moved to a six but can't move to a 6 and 1 cause of this it can't move to a one and six because
if this now this piece here only has five
possible moves before off the board 1-2-3-4-5 this piece
cannot move here yet because you can't take pieces of the
board until all 15 all your pieces are in this area so while this piece can move a one this
piece cannot move is sex as we've said before this piece cannot
move a1 but this piece can move this 6 and then it could continue on with the
one or that move could be broken up this for
example could be moved to a 6 and then this could be moved one or
this could be moved one now the last thing I want to say in this
lesson before we recap is how would you move this? well this
certainly could be moved is a 1 this could also be moved as a six 1-2-3-4 5 6 and in this case since the opponent only has one you can take it off and it would go up on
the bar so let's actually do that and I
going to explain the advantages are taking why you wanna take somebody off the next
lesson he's up on the bar. now
my six has been moved I still have a 1 to move I could move this guy one more I can
move this one more I could move this one more, I could move
this one or spread them out, I cannot move this one
because this is the one so in this case I'm going to actually
move one more and now my turn is over the board has been
flipped it now as you can see the white play players on this side as well at this point in the game when you're a
beginner backgammon don't worry about the cube don't worry about making combinations
of moves worry about just getting the idea being
able to move one two 3 4 across-the-board. in later lessons
were going to talk about being able to move in combinations of moves and how to protect yourself and playing
offensive game or a defensive game but that's really especially for someone just
beginning and especially for children as well just worry about moving the
numbers as you need. each dice represents one
move that one piece can make you cannot land
on a plate and a player's can with two or more if you land on one you're allowed to take that player of
the goal as you said before is to move all your pieces around into
here and then to take them off before your
power opponent can move all their pieces around here and take them off. this is the end a
lesson One comeback for lesson two we were really going to get into the
details of how to play this game I thank you very much for watching I
bye bye