Today I am going to teach you how to play a timeless and very entertaining game. But this is not just any game. It’s a game that combines luck and skill all into one. What game am I talking about? Backgammon. Now maybe some of you are saying to yourselves right now, “Eww, backgammon what a loser! That’s an old fartsie game” but I am here today to maybe change those opinions. I will explain the history, fundamentals, and rules of the game. And hopefully by the time that I am done with this speech I will have gained the interest of at least one of you in this classroom. I mean if this game can make a cameo on such a popular t.v. show like “Survivor” it has to be good, right? What makes backgammon so interesting to me is that the rules are quite simple and once you have got the hang of the game, you don’t have to worry about another opponent being better than you are, because that’s when the luck aspect of the game comes into play. So let’s go ahead and get started with how backgammon came into being.Backgammon has been around a long time, with origins dating back possibly 5000 years. The ancient Greeks played. So did the Romans. The game we know today was refined in England in the seventeenth century, which is also when it acquired the name backgammon. One significant innovation of the twentieth century was the addition of the doubling cube in the 1920s, which is used mainly for betting and making stakes. But now that you know how old the game is let’s go ahead and learn the fundamentals.Backgammon is a game for two players, played on a board consisting of twenty-four narrow triangles called points. The triangles alternate in color and are grouped into four quadrants of six triangles each. The quadrants are referred to as a player's home board and outer board, and the opponent's home board and outer board. The home and outer boards are separated from each other by a ridge down ...
