Scoring the gammon.

Backgammon is a two player game, where each player has 15 pieces that move between 24 triangles according to the roll of two dice.

It is one of the oldest known board games, dating back nearly 5,000 years to Mesopotamia.

Goal

Each player's goal is to move their own 15 pieces off the board, called bearing off.

Players move their pieces in opposing directions.
White starts at 1 and moves their pieces towards 24. Black starts at 24 and moves their pieces to 1.

Setup

1 - 6 is Black's home row
19-24 is White's home row
|13 14 15 16 17 18  | 19 20 21 22 23 24 |
| ●           ○     |  ○              ● |
| ●           ○     |  ○              ● |
| ●           ○     |  ○                |
| ●                 |  ○                |
| ●                 |  ○                |
| ----------------- | ----------------- |
| ○                 |  ●                |
| ○                 |  ●                |
| ○           ●     |  ●                |
| ○           ●     |  ●              ○ |
| ○           ●     |  ●              ○ |
|12 11 10  9  8  7  |  6  5  4  3  2  1 |

Both players roll the dice. The player with the higher total begins.

For each number on the dice, two pieces must be moved. The same piece may be moved twice as long as two moves can be made sepparately and legally.

The piece may land on an unoccupied point, on a point occupied by one or more of the player's own pieces or or on a point occupied by exactly one opposing piece. In this case, the piece has been hit as is placed in the middle of the board on the bar. All pieces on the bar must re-enter the game though the opponent's home board before any other move can be made.

Bearing off

When all of a player's pieces are in their home row, they may start removing them. The number rolled by the dice determines the point from which a piece can be borne off. If all of the player's pieces are on lower points than the number, the player must bear off from the highest occupied point.

The first player to bear off all fifteen of their own pieces wins the game. If the opponent has not yet borne off any piece when the game end, the winner scores a gammon(double the stakes). If the opponent still has pieces on the winner's home board or on the middle bar, the winner scores a backgammon (triple the stakes)

incoming(1) | games