Backgammon Correspondence games

Gin · Joined: 14 Jun 2007 Posts: 15

I have one good friend that I like to play backgammon with. We usually get together about once a week or once every couple of weeks and play a few games for fun and it’s a blast. The problem is, I’m moving to Europe in a month (now I live in the United States) and I won’t be able to play backgammon with my friend anymore. We are thinking about playing correspondence games either by mail or email but we aren’t really sure how this works. Anyone have any advice?

Maddox · Joined: 14 Jun 2007 Posts: 25

Correspondence games can be played either by email or regular mail. If you want to play by email then I would suggest using a form like this one:

+24 – 23 – 22 – 21 –20-19 ------18 – 17 – 16 – 15 –14 –13-+
| O O O - - |
| O - - |
| - - |
| - - |
| - - |
| - - |
| X - - |
| X - - |
| X X - - |
| X X X - - |
+-1 -– 2 -–- 3 -– -4 –- 5 --6---------- 7 --- 8 ---9 ---10 –- 11 –- 12+

This is a graphic representation of the backgammon board, the points are numbered from one to twenty four. Obviously one of the players will have to visualize the board from the other side. One player is X and one is O and each time you receive the game you just change the position of the X or O, based on the move you are making.

If you want to play by regular mail you can also use a graphic representation of your choice. By regular mail you may have to re-draw or print the whole board each time so there is no confusion. However, you should always keep a running record of the whole game so that you can be sure that both players agree on the current status of the board.

However, I think that the easiest thing for you and your friend would be to play online against each other. There are a huge number of websites that offer you the opportunity to play backgammon online and you and your friend can use them to play against each other for fun or for real money and continue your tradition of playing backgammon together. You will also find a lot of other opponents all over the world that you may also enjoy playing against. I used to play correspondence games but it can be pretty frustrating while you are waiting to receive your opponent’s next move. Especially if you are playing correspondence games by regular mail it can take weeks to receive your opponent’s next move and months or even over a year to finish a game! Online backgammon is definitely the way to go.