Backgammon

Backgammon is a board game for two players. Each player has fifteen pieces (checkers) which move between twenty-four triangles (points) according to the roll of two dice. more...

The objective of the game is to be first to bear off, that is, to move all fifteen checkers off the board. The oldest recorded game in history, backgammon traces its roots to the ancient Mesopotamian game tabula, which appears in an epigram of Byzantine Emperor Zeno (476–481 A.D.). Further archaeological excavations have placed the possible date of origin of backgammon to 3000 B.C.

Though the gameplay is quite basic—each player is trying to move his checkers to his home board and then bear them off before his opponent is able to do so—backgammon incorporates strategy insofar as with each dice roll, the player must choose between multiple options for movement of the checkers. Furthermore, the doubling cube, which raises the stakes of the present game when a match consists of multiple games, and rules like the Crawford Rule and the Jacoby Rule, introduce more strategic intricacies. Experts have also developed a nomenclature to define commonly used general strategies for play such as the running game and the backgame.

As with chess, backgammon has been significantly interfaced with computer technology. By 1979, Hans Berliner's BKG 9.8 program had defeated a world champion backgammon player, and since then neural network and other approaches have improved the playing quality of the virtual backgammon opponent. In addition, a number of other computer programs, most notably Snowie, have combined the capabilities of an intelligent opponent with extensive statistical analyses of individual moves and possible outcomes.

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