Learn how to Play Backgammon Before you Join an Online Casino

Backgammon has been around for a very long time now, from over the past 5,000 years. The credit for inventing the game goes to the ancient Egyptians. The game is not at all hard to learn, and involves skill as well as a slice of luck. The luck factor comes into play at the time of rolling the dice. Other than that, it is all skill and strategy. To learn how to play backgammon, you need to know the finer points of the game as well as the rules to enhance your chances of winning.

The first thing you need to know in order to learn how to play backgammon is the objective of the game. The sole objective of the game is to get all your checkers, 15 of them in all, off the board before your rival. The checkers come in two different colors black and white, red and black, etc. There are 24 triangles on a backgammon board, all of the same color, and each of them is called a point. All these points are clustered in groups of six, called a quarter. Each quarter is called a home board and an outer board. The home board is yours and the outer board is your rivals.

When the game starts, a quarter may have a combination of checkers, three of yours and six of your rivals or two of yours and six of your rivals, and vice versa. You must have a fair idea of the layout of the board before playing the game. You can do this best by looking up an online backgammon board to actually see how the board looks like instead of trying to picturise it in your mind after reading the rules.

The game starts with a throw of the dice to decide who rolls first. For this, you use a single dice, unlike in the game itself where you must use two. Once the game commences, you roll the two die and move your checkers according to the number the roll throws up. You are allowed to move two checkers for each dice in case there is some blank space, or one of your opponents checkers is in such a space. In the case of the latter, you are free to send your rivals checker off the board. In such a situation, your rival has to try to get back to your home board when he rolls the die again next.

It may be difficult for you to actually visualize the game before playing it if you are a newcomer, especially if you want to learn how to play backgammon. The best option is to go through a tutorial at a backgammon website and learn the basics about playing the game. Once you are familiar with the game, you can practice it until you are ready and confident enough to play for money.