How to Play Backgammon: Rules, Setup & Scoring

Backgammon rules: how to play backgammon at a glance

If you already know the shape of the game, here is the whole thing in one paragraph: two players each own 15 checkers that start spread across four points on a shared 24-point board, and race them toward their own home board and off it. Dice decide how far checkers move each turn; landing alone on an opponent’s point sends it to the bar, and from there it must come all the way back on. Whoever bears off all 15 checkers first wins the game, and the doubling cube lets either side raise what the game is worth before it ends. Everything below spells out setup, turn order, hitting, bearing off, the cube, and scoring in full, plus where common house rules diverge from the tournament rules this page describes.

Setup

Backgammon is played on a board of 24 narrow triangles (“points”), grouped into four quadrants of six, with the bar running down the middle separating the two halves. Each player gets 15 checkers of one color and places them in the same pattern, mirrored across the board: two checkers on their own 24-point, five on their 13-point, three on their 8-point, and five on their 6-point. Point numbers run from each player’s own perspective — your 24-point is your opponent’s 1-point — so the position is symmetric even though both players call their own board “1 through 24.”

Solid circles above mark one player’s checkers; outlined circles mark the other’s. Notice they occupy different points in the same four quadrants — the position is a mirror image, not a repeat.

How a turn works

Each player rolls one die to see who moves first; that player plays both dice shown (not just their own die). From then on, players alternate full turns, rolling two dice each time. The two numbers are two separate moves — you can move one checker the full distance of both dice combined, or move two different checkers, one per die — as long as each individual landing point is legal. A point is legal to land on if it is empty, already held by one or more of your own checkers, or held by exactly one opposing checker. You can never land on a point held by two or more of your opponent’s checkers.

Rolling doubles (the same number on both dice) gives you that number four times rather than two, distributed across your move however you choose, subject to the same legality rule for every individual landing point. If no legal move exists for part or all of a roll, that part of the turn is forfeited — you are never allowed to skip a legal move to avoid one you’d rather not make.

Hitting and re-entering

Landing exactly on a point occupied by a single opposing checker “hits” it: that checker comes off the board and onto the bar. A player with a checker on the bar must re-enter it into the board before making any other move that turn. Re-entry happens in the opponent’s home board, at the point matching an unused die roll — for instance, rolling a 3 lets a checker re-enter at the opponent’s 3-point, if that point is open or held by one opposing checker (which gets hit in turn). If every entry point is blocked by two or more opposing checkers, the player with a checker on the bar forfeits that turn entirely, even if the rest of the roll would otherwise be playable elsewhere.

Bearing off

Before any checker can be removed from the board, all 15 of a player’s checkers must be inside that player’s own home board (points 1 through 6). Once that’s true, a roll of, say, a 4 lets the player either move a checker four pips within the home board or bear off a checker sitting exactly on the 4-point. A higher roll than any occupied point can also bear off the single highest remaining checker — a 6 can bear off a checker on the 4-point if no checkers remain on 5 or 6. If a checker gets hit after bearing off has started, it must re-enter and travel all the way back around the board before bearing off can resume, which is why racing a trailing checker home safely matters as much as speed.

The doubling cube

A six-sided cube marked 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, and 64 tracks the stake the game is being played for, starting at 1 (no cube turned yet). At the start of their own turn, before rolling, either player holding the right to double may turn the cube to the next value and offer it to their opponent. The opponent must either accept, becoming the new owner of the cube and continuing to play at the higher stake, or decline, which ends the game immediately as a loss at the previous stake. Only the player who last accepted a double may offer the next one — the cube changes hands with each acceptance. A common house option, the beaver, lets the player accepting a double immediately redouble back while keeping the cube themselves; it is not part of the core tournament rules and should be agreed on before play if you want it.

Scoring and how the game ends

The game ends the instant one player bears off all 15 checkers — no further rolls are played. If the loser has already borne off at least one checker, the winner collects the value shown on the doubling cube. If the loser has not borne off a single checker, it’s a gammon, worth double the cube’s value; if the loser still has a checker on the bar or in the winner’s home board when the game ends, it’s a backgammon, worth triple. In match play to a target score, the Crawford rule suspends the doubling cube for exactly one game immediately after a player reaches a score one point from winning the match, to stop the trailing player from using the cube purely out of desperation.

Common variations and house rules

This page describes the standard rules for a two-player money game, the same base rules the USBGF’s tournament rules formalize for competitive play. Casual games widely add a few optional rules that are not part of that standard: the Jacoby rule, which voids gammons and backgammons in a money game unless the cube has already been turned at least once; beavers and raccoons, which let a player accepting a double immediately redouble once or twice more while keeping the cube; and automatic doubles, where an opening roll of equal numbers doubles the stake before play even starts. None of these apply in sanctioned tournament play unless a specific event’s rules say otherwise, so agree on them with your opponent before the game if you want them.