Send us a textLearning to play backgammonLesson oneLearning about the bits and the board.Take the bits out of the box You will find you have fifteen white bits and fifteen black bits. Or chequers as they are called.Look at the board. Notice it before you put any pieces, aka as chequers, on it. It looks complicated, but it isn’t once you see its basic pattern. Lay it open. It’s actually two boards separated by a gap like a main motorway running down the middle, like a motorway, Its main use is for chequers taken off the board during a game.I’m going to explain where the starting places of the pieces are.  By the way, they all move identically so it’s not like in chess.First though, the purpose of the game is to move your pieces from where they started right around the board. White pieces move counter clockwise (right to left).  Black pieces more clockwise, left to right. Now, the starting positions of the pieces. Easier to copy a diagram. There’s one in most instruction booklets, maybe in your Backgammon set.  If you can’t find a set of instructions you’ll have to put up  with what I’m about to say.The pieces are placed in different parts of the board. Those long triangles are their parking lots. Each parking lot can take a maximum of five pieces. At the start, the fifteen pieces have special parking slots. For each player, there are two parking triangles with full up with five pieces left and two other triangles one with three pieces and one with two.  That’s the fifteen pieces at the start of the game.To position the pieces put your first five white pieces on the top half of the board , to the right of that centre line, and five black pieces pieces opposite them,I’m going to explain  later where the other pieces start.  First though you should know that the white pieces as I mentioned will move around right to left, and the black pieces from left to right. The numbers of places moves will depend on the dice you throw, and on other pieces on the triangles we described as parking lots.With only five pieces on the board, you can see how the game continues. Each player in turn throws the two dice, and can move pieces forward, one piece for the number on each of the two dice. You can see the general principle if you play first white then black in turn moving the pieces, white ones in one direction, black one in the other.. For the moment it’s simple but there’s more complications when you start with all the pieces in their triangular starting places.But that’s the subject for Lesson 2. Stay up-to-date with all of Tudor's podcasts, blogs and current affairs commentary by signing up to our newsletter! Email [email protected] to sign up! Follow Tudor on Twitter @Tudortweet Follow Tudor's blogs: everydaycreativity.uk leaderswedeserve.wordpress.com

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