An Overview of Mexican Backgammon

admin · Site Admin Joined: 15 May 2007 Posts: 860

The game known as Mexican backgammon is a close relative to the original game, with a few differences. It is, in fact, a variation of Acey-Duecy – a popular choice among backgammon players. Setting up the Mexican backgammon board is done in the same way as you would a traditional game of backgammon. The objective of the game is to move all the checkers around the backgammon board to the home board and then off the board altogether. The first player to manage this is the winner of the game.

So what makes Mexican backgammon different to the original game? First off, the person who wins the opening roll has the option of re-rolling for the first turn – something that is usually not accepted in traditional backgammon. Another difference is that players always need to move the lower number of a roll first. Also, players cannot move more than five checkers to one backgammon point at a time.

Doubles is an important factor in Mexican backgammon. Once players roll and play doubles, they get to roll the dice again. If they cannot play all four numbers, they lose the remaining numbers and don’t get to roll again. Rolling a ‘Mexican’ (1-2) is especially valuable as players get to name and play a doubles of their choice and then, as an extra bonus, get to roll the dice again. Another difference is that checkers need to be borne off exactly from the board. Finally, there is no gammon, backgammons or doubling in Mexican backgammon.