Backgammon with different rules?

Tommo · Joined: 14 Jun 2007 Posts: 14

I have a few friends that, when I play backgammon with them, insist on playing by different rules than I’m used to. I don’t know if they have made these rules up themselves, or if this is just a variation I’m not familiar with. Anyhow, I’ll post these rules here and maybe someone can tell me if they’ve ever heard of this style of play before.

The first difference is that when you hit a blot inside your own home board you may not run that blot to safety. You must leave the checker in the spot where you have hit. You can cover that checker with another checker, but you may not “hit and run”. This makes the decision to hit in your home board a lot more difficult as it’s not very safe to hit a checker to the bar leaving an open blot for your opponent to hit you right back when they re-enter the board.

The other difference between the backgammon I’m used to and the backgammon that my friends play is that after the first game in a match the winner of each game will go first in the next game, instead of re-rolling the dice to determine this.

So, has anybody else played this way before?

Deuce · Joined: 14 Jun 2007 Posts: 38

If there is no three-point backgammon win and no doubling cube then I think your friends are playing Tavla, a Turkish version of backgammon with the rules you have described.

http://www.bkgm.com/variants/Tavla.html