Moving the Stones in the Game of Backgammon

Video Transcript

"Hi! I am Grady Johnson and I am a competition backgammon player and today I am representing expertvillage.com. Alright, I would like to talk a little bit about movement of the stones and you know how we play this game. One of the most important things here is the dice. Now to start the game, you each take one of your die and roll. Now you can do this anyway you want. We like to split it between two. I have the white side go on one side and the brown side on the other. We just simply roll and you see that we both got a five. Now we can see here that we are actually tied on this one. Now this will happen periodically where you will both roll the same number and it is real simple what happens here, you just roll again. The object of this is to get different numbers on the die so that one of us does win to determine who will go first. So we will try that again. Now my opponent rolled a six and I rolled a two therefore my opponent will win this round and they are going to go first. Now what that means is my opponent will have to move either two stones a six and a two or one stone and eight. Now while you can move one stone eight spaces, you are still required to move the six and the two. Now it is very important to note that if a point is covered up by two or more of your opponent’s stones, you simply cannot land there. This is extremely important to understand. It is not a matter of combining the two numbers to come up with a number or using both. It is a matter of always using both of the numbers that are indicated. Now you can do this with two stones or one but both of those numbers must be available for you to move it. Now we are a little early in the explanation of backgammon but what that means is that the point is open when you land on it. In order for it to be open that means that only one of your opponent’s stones are on it or none of your opponent’s stones are on it. Now remember too, this opening roll you are required to take that roll. It can seem a little confusing but the key thing to remember here is that you always have to move the numbers that are indicated on each of the dice. Now after this initial roll and the initial move, the opponent then takes his roll and he is then required to move the spaces that are indicated on each of the two dice that the opponent then rolls. Remember it is not a combination of the numbers but it is two separate numbers that you can use in combination."