Counting Pips
Counting pips is a way to determine the current state of your game. That is, to know who's ahead, and by much.
All it is is counting up how many spaces aways you are from bearing all your pieces off. This is the number that you have to roll on your dice (the number of "pips" that you need) in order to bear off.
I didn't used to care that much about counting pips, but the backgammon app I use on my phone shows each player's pip count, and I have come around to considering it useful, especially when used in conjunction with the doubling cube. For example, I might confidently accept a double if my pip count is much lower than my opponents.
What I don't currently have in my practice is a way to intuitively know the pip count when playing a physical game.
Here's an observation I made.
24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13
+------------------------------------------+
| x | | x |
| x | | x |
| | | x |
| | | x |
| | | x |
| |BAR| |
| x | | |
| x | | |
| x | | x |
| x | | x |
| x | | x |
+------------------------------------------+
01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12
If you count up the pips of each point in your starting position, you get, clockwise from the top left, 48, 65, 24, and 30
24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13
+------------------------------------------+
|48 | | 65 |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| |BAR| |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| 30 | | 24 |
+------------------------------------------+
01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12
So if you play perfectly, you need 167 pips to bear off. (If you get hit, your pip count will go up again when you enter from the bar.)
It's possible then to keep track of your and your opponent's pip count by subtracting rolls from 167 as you go.
I've kind of wanted to use a notebook and pen while playing anyway to keep track of moves so I can study and reflect on games later. Like they did on Queen's Gambit when playing chess. It would also allow me to keep a running pip count as well.
Okay listen up here's how to play backgammon.
Contents:
- Setting up the board
- Moving
- Hits
- Bearing Off
- Doubling
- Scoring
Setting up the board
There 2 dozen points on the board. They are numbered 1 to 24, clockwise from the bottom right to the top right. It looks like this.
13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
+------------------------------------------+
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| |BAR| |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
+------------------------------------------+
12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01
The bottom right quadrant is your "inner board". The bottom left quadrant is your "outter board". The top left and right quadrants are not yours.
To set up the board, put 2, 5, 3, and 5 checkers on points 24, 13, 8, and 6.
I don't know where, how, or when it was decided that this is the correct way to set up your checkers. It seems kind of arbitrary. But that's just the way it is, so get used to it.
13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
+------------------------------------------+
| x | | x |
| x | | x |
| x | | |
| x | | |
| x | | |
| |BAR| |
| | | x |
| | | x |
| x | | x |
| x | | x |
| x | | x |
+------------------------------------------+
12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01
Your opponent will set up their places in the same way, from their perspective.
13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
+------------------------------------------+
| x o | | o x |
| x o | | o x |
| x o | | o |
| x | | o |
| x | | o |
| |BAR| |
| o | | x |
| o | | x |
| o x | | x |
| o x | | x o |
| o x | | x o |
+------------------------------------------+
12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01
Moving
Your job is move your checkers anti-clockwise around and off the board, from the top right to the bottom right, before your opponent can bear their checkers off.
The way you do this is rolling two 6 sided dice. You can move one piece twice, or two pieces once.
For example, if I roll a 3 and a 1, I could move one checker from point 8 three spaces, and one checker from point 6 one space:
13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
+------------------------------------------+
| x o | | o x |
| x o | | o x |
| x o | | o |
| x | | o |
| x | | o |
| |BAR| |
| o | | |
| o | | x |
| o | | x |
| o x | | x x o |
| o x | | x x o |
+------------------------------------------+
12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01
3-1: 8/5 6/5
You cannot end your turn on a point occupied by more than one of your opponent's checkers.
Hits
If your opponent has a single checker on a point, it is called a blot, and if you land one of your checkers on it, you knock it off the board and send it to the bar! Not as enjoyable a fate as you might think. It is not a happy bar.
You can't make any moves until all of your pieces are off the bar and back on the board.
Your piece must re-enter the board from your point 24, so that it must make an entire circuit of the board before bearing off.
Bearing Off
The first player to bear all their pieces off wins.
You cannot start bearing pieces off until all 15 of your pieces are all in your inner board. i.e., they are all occupying points 1 - 6.
Here are the rules for bearing off:
- First bear off checkers from the points shown on the dice.
- If there are no checkers on the point rolled, you must make a legal move from a higher point.
- If there are no checkers on the point rolled or on a higher point, you must bear off from the highest point that still has checkers.
Doubling
The doubling cube is a new addition to the game, added in the 1920s to speed up play.
What it is: a six-sided die with the numbers labeled 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, and 64.
What it does:
In single match play: Assuming you are playing a game for stakes, anybody may double the stakes by turning the cube. If a player refuses the offer, they resign and the game ends.
When playing to a set point (say, playing to 10 points), the doubling cube works the same way, and it speeds up play by potentially multiplying the amount of points each game is worth so that you get to the end of the game more quickly.
If you have offered the cube to your opponent and they have accepted it, then they "own" the cube, and they can in turn offer you a double if they want to.
Scoring
If you win, you get one point.
If you win while your opponent still has checkers in your outer board (points 7 - 12) that is a gammon and you get 2 points.
If you win while your opponent still has checkers in your inner board (points 1 - 6) that is a backgammon and you get 3 points.
If you successfully used the doubling cube, multiply the number of points you got by the amount on the cube.
There. Now you know how to play backgammon. You're welcome.
Fibs is not lies.
Fibs is the First Internet Backgammon Server
. It's kind of wild because I think it's running on some kind of MUD software because of how you can say
things and look
at people and stuff.
Contents:
- Connecting
- Settings
- Playing
- Board
- After
Connecting
There are clients for it, but I haven't tried any, because I think it's most convenient to just use rlwrap
and telnet
and jack into it like rlwrap telnet fibs.com 4321
.
Then you'll log in as guest
, make a user name and password, and that's it! Now you can play!
Settings
It is annoyingly noisy when you first log in, so you'll want to toggle some settings:
toggle notify
: turn off login/logout messages
toggle report
: don't message when matches start/finish
toggle silent
: don't listen to shouts
Playing
Now you can invite a friend (or stranger) to play with invite dozens 1
for a one point match with dozens.
When I see your invitation, I'll join with join yourname
.
When the game starts, autoroll
will be on, so you'll roll automatically. And then you'll move with m
for as many moves as you want. e.g. if I roll a 3 and a 1, and want to move one checker 3 moves from point 8 and one checker one move from point 6, then I'd enter m 8 5 6 5
. I wish you could instead enter m 8 3 6 1
because that seems more intuitive and easy to me, but you can't, so oh well.
Board
fibs uses a board layout I've never seen before, and it is very disorienting at first.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
+------------------------------------------+
| x | | x |
| x | | x |
| | | x |
| | | x |
| | | x |
| |BAR| |
| x | | |
| x | | |
| x | | x |
| x | | x |
| x | | x |
+------------------------------------------+
24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13
So you're racing from 1 to 24, from the top left to the bottom left. They reversed the checkers and also the numbering. Everything is totally backwards!
UPDATE: so turns out the board is only flipped like this if you are Xs. That is, if you go second. If you go first, you play Os, and the board is oriented correctly. That makes the numbering make sense I think: the point numbers are the same for both sides. But I still don't know why the board should be mirrored like this for Xs...
After
After a game, you can review the game with oldmoves
. This shows you all the game moves, which you can download and save for later to review them if you want.