You can play backgammon safe, but that’ll get you nowhere in the long run. To be a winner you need to take risks, something that can’t be emphasized enough. You can, however, take risks either by minimizing them or by being a total fool and not thinking at all. Duplication is the tool you need understand to achieve the first one. There are differing opinions as to how much focus should there be on duplication in backgammon, such as noted in this posting on duplication in Backgammon Galore. We believe that when used correctly you don’t need to focus on duplication as such but that it will become an essential part of your backgammon.

Read the rest of this entry �

Backgammon has a new World Champion: Philip Vischjager from The Netherlands. Vischjager, a first time player at the world championship, defeated the 1979 world champion Luigi Villa from Italy in a tough final. Vischjager was leading throughout the match and despite Villa dramatically coming even in the end to 19-19, Vischjager eventually won the match 23-25 and took away the €75,000 prize money. Winning Backgammon congratulates Philip on his great victory!

The 31st Backgammon World Championship was held at the traditional Fairmont Luxury Resort in Monte Carlo, 10-16th July, 2006. A total of 335 players participated in Championship, Intermediate and Beginner flights with more than 200 players going for the world championship. The elite of backgammon players was naturally present at the tournament, such as Peter Hallberg, Lars Bønding, Luigi Villa, Mike Svobodny and Paul Magriel.

Backgammon revival

Backgammon is making a comeback after a couple of decades of low profile and the 2006 Backgammon World Championship was an excellent opportunity to introduce the game to a wider audience. This year there was an increased prize pool of €240,000 (nearly $300,000) and extended television coverage. The tournament was broadcasted live on television and you can expect the tournament highlights on DVD to hit the shelves later in September. This will hopefully attract new people to play Backgammon, which is expected to be the next big online game after poker.

Who wants to be a world champion?

Players who think they could make it in the World Championships can actually test their theory, as Play65 offers the possibility to play against Peter Hallberg, who is the 2004 Backgammon World Champion. Peter is playing every weekday evening for an hour, so now all world champion wannabees can test their skills against a top level player without travelling to Monte Carlo. I’d estimate that the chances of winning Peter vary from slim to none, but those who do win him can already start planning a trip to the next World Championships…

Hypergammon is one of the most recent variants of Backgammon. It is played with only three checkers on each side, starting with one checker on each of the opponent’s 1-point, 2-point and 3-point. Three checkers on each side inevitably means an extremely fast-paced game. It’s an excellent game to play when you take a break from regular backgammon or when you want to warm-up before real action.

Hypergammon starting position.

Doubling cube and the Jacoby rule are used in Hypergammon. The rest of rules are identical to those in regular backgammon.

Since both players have only three checkers it is needless to say that luck plays a greater role in Hypergammon than in regular backgammon - a real treat for a gambler.

Now that you are familiar with hypergammon you can continue reading about Hypergammon strategy

Even though hypergammon is easy and quick game to play, it is not widely available online. You can play hypergammon at Backgammon Masters.

Nacgkammon is one of most popular backgammon variants of all the dozens of variants played all over the world. It was invented by Nack Ballard, one of the great modern backgammon players.

In Nackgammon both players place two additional back checkers on their 2-points; one checker is taken from the mid-point and one from the 6-point. This creates a very interesting setting for the game because both players have four back checkers instead of the usual two. As a result priming games and back games are the core of Nackgammon and the games also tend to be clearly longer than regular Backgammon games.

Nackgammon starting position.

The doubling cube and the Jacoby rule are used in Nackgammon. The rest of the rules are identical to those in Backgammon.

Nackgammon is regarded as a highly strategic backgammon variant - a real thinker’s game. It’ll require a good knowledge of doubling cube strategy, priming and back games as well as holding games. We certainly recommend that you give it a go, it’ll only make you a better backgammon player. Many players like to play one Nackgammon game for every ten backgammon games. If you too follow this regimen you just may find out that you are making more wiser decisions in critical situations than before.

Ladies and Gentlemen, PartyGammon has entered the building. Only a couple of weeks after PartyGaming launched it’s latest addition to the Party family, PartyGammon.com, they announced the first Million dollar tournament in Backgammon’s history: PartyGammon.com Million.

Read the rest of this entry �

The Jacoby Rule is named after the late great gamesman Oswald Jacoby. The Jacoby rule states that gammon and backgammon will come into effect if and only if the player has announced a double and it has been accepted by the opponent.

Read the rest of this entry �

As we stated in our article Early game strategy article you should be concentrating mainly on building blocking points during the opening stage of the game. Blocking points will make it significantly more difficult for your opponent to achieve the second most important early game strategy goal, which is to escape the back checkers. In this article we’ll focus on what is called priming game, i.e. game where the focus is on making several consecutive blocking points - a prime.

This article deals only with regular priming games. Read also our Six point prime article for in-depth strategy with full primes.

Read the rest of this entry �

In article “Backgammon opening moves” we have examined all 15 possible opening moves. In this article we focus on the moves you need to make if when you lost the tossup and you need to react to your opponent’s opening move.

There are 21 possible rolls after each of the 15 opening moves. But don’t worry, we are not going to go in depth to all of those. We could examine all of them in detail just as we did with the opening moves, but we will keep it here as simple as possible.

Note: should you be unfamiliar with backgammon notation, be sure to read our Backgammon notation article before reading on. It’ll help you better understand the content of this article.

Read the rest of this entry �

When we talk about backgammon opening moves we are talking about a highly disciplined phase of the game. There are only 15 possible rolls and for many of them there is only one correct way to play it. Later on you can take more freedom with your strategy but not now.

Read the rest of this entry �