History & Variations on the Game of Backgammon

Series Summary

Backgammon is a board game in which the object is to be the first player of the two to get all your pieces off the board first. It is based largely on luck but there is a bit of strategy involved by implementing counter-moves on your opponent. Just like chess terms have been developed for strategies and there are recognized masters of backgammon. A form of the game was found to have been played as far back as 3000BC in Iran. Since then there have been several versions of similar attributes played in Egypt, Mesopotamia and Rome.

In this free video series you will learn rules and information on how to play backgammon or how to improve your game if you already know how to play. There are several strategies explained in detail throughout the series that will expand your view of the game and help you identify possible weaknesses in your opponents that you might otherwise miss. Use these videos, tips and techniques to either learn the basics of how to play or to improve but keep playing.

Video Transcript

"Hi! I am Grady Johnson and I am a competition backgammon player and today I am representing expertvillage.com. This is a really fun game that people have played way back in written history, all the way back to Greeks. They had a form of tables that utilized the 24 points on the board. Now the set rules of backgammon, we are going to go over a little bit today so that you will know the basics of the game, how to set up the board and what the object of the game is as well. The real fun in this game though is competition. We will get a little bit into money play. A lot of people do play for money; sometimes a little, sometimes a lot or also a way you can use it alternatively playing for points or for whatever object you desire. There are some variations on that. We will go over to that so that if you do come across another player who plays a little differently you will know what that is and there are a lot of variations to the game that you might enjoy as well. This is a game that you can get into very quickly, you can get good at very quickly and it has strategy, luck and skill all at the same time so it is a game that has a lot of variations. Some of the variations increase the luck, some of the variations decrease the luck and we will kind of go over that a little bit as well. The key to the game is hitting an inner ring. We will show how crucial that is in one of the segments we will be doing today and you will find out that there are a lot of different strategies that you can utilize, some that will be unique to your own game. There are some other games that are not even backgammon and Acey Ducey is a completely different game similar in a lot of ways but completely different. We will go over the rules of that. Acey Ducey is one of the most popular variations of backgammon. You will find that this was really, really popular in the military and it is a great way to intensify the game and make it a little more fun. There are some other variations I would like to go over with you. Also once you understand how the dice work if they land irregularly, we will cover a little bit of that and what the rules are on that as well. When we get done today you will know how to enter, how to hit, how to block, the basic strategies of the game how to play backgammon and how to really have a good time with it. When you really know how to play backgammon well and you know some of the variations, you will find that you have a game you can play with most anyone and anywhere."