History
Backgammon is a board game for two players in which pieces are moved according to the roll of dice. The first player to remove all
of one's own pieces from the board is declared the winner. Many variants of the game have developed throughout the world, but most of them share
common traits. It is a member of the tables family, one of the oldest classes of board games in the world.
Although the game has a substantial random component, backgammon offers a significant scope for strategy. With each roll of the dice, a player must
choose from numerous options for moving the checkers and plan for possible counter-moves by the opponent. Opportunities for raising the stakes of the
game introduce more strategic intricacies. Players have developed a vocabulary for common tactics and occurrences.
Like chess, backgammon has been studied considerably by computer scientists. Research has led to development of backgammon software which is capable of
beating world-class human players.
Bradspel ("board game") set recovered from the warship Vasa, which sank in 1628.The ancient Egyptian game senet resembled backgammon, with moves controlled by the roll of dice. However, the Royal Game of Ur, played in ancient Mesopotamia, is a more likely ancestor of modern day tables games. Excavations at the "Burnt City" in Iran have showed that a similar game existed there around 3000 BC. The artifacts include two dice and 60 pieces, and the set is believed to be 100 to 200 years older than the sets found in Ur.
The ancient Romans played a number of games remarkably similar to backgammon. Ludus duodecim scriptorum ("Game of twelve lines") used a board with three rows of 12 points each, and the pieces were moved across all three rows according to the roll of dice. Little specific text about the gameplay has survived. Tabula, meaning "table" or "board", was a game mentioned in an epigram of Byzantine Emperor Zeno (AD 476–481). It was similar to modern backgammon in that the object of the game was to be the first to bear off all of one's checkers. Players threw three dice and moved their checkers in opposing directions on a board of 24 points.
Herr Goeli, from the 14th century Codex ManesseIn the 11th century Shahnameh, the Persian poet Ferdowsi credits Burzoe with the invention of the tables game nard in the 6th century. He describes an encounter between Burzoe and a Raja visiting from India. The Raja introduces the game of chess, and Burzoe demonstrates nard, played with dice made from ivory and teak. The jeux de tables, predecessors of modern backgammon, first appeared in France during the 11th century and became a favorite pastime of gamblers. In 1254, Louis IX issued a decree prohibiting his court officials and subjects from playing. Tables games were played in Germany in the 12th century, and had reached Iceland by the 13th century. The Alfonso X manuscript Libro de los juegos, completed in 1283, describes rules for a number of dice and tables games in addition to its extensive discussion of chess. By the 17th century, tables games had spread to Sweden. A wooden board and checkers were recovered from the wreck of the Vasa among the belongings of the ship's officers.
In the 16th century, Elizabethan laws and church regulations prohibited playing tables, but by the 18th century backgammon was popular among the English clergy. Edmund Hoyle published A Short Treatise on the Game of Backgammon in 1743; this described rules and strategy for the game and was bound together with a similar text on whist.
In English, the word "backgammon" is most likely derived from "back" and Middle English "gamen", meaning "game" or "play". The earliest use documented by the Oxford English Dictionary was in 1650.
The most recent major development in backgammon was the addition of the doubling cube. It was first introduced in 1926 or 1927 in New York City among members of gaming clubs in the Lower East Side. The cube required players not only to select the best move in a given position, but also to estimate the probability of winning from that position, transforming backgammon into the expected value-driven game played in the 20th and 21st centuries.
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