Free Sample
The Purple Guide to Learning Backgammon in 10 Days
A 10-day first taste of the board, the dice, and the decisions — no jargon, no gear-buying sprees, just enough to know if backgammon is your game.
by Alumigogo Books
Chapter 1: First Day
Welcome. You've just opened the first chapter of a ten-day experiment, and by the end of this hour — yes, just one hour — you'll be able to set up a backgammon board, move the checkers legally, and understand what on earth is actually happening when you watch two people play. That's the whole goal for today. Not strategy. Not winning. Just moving the little plastic discs around the board without breaking the rules.
Let's start with what you're looking at. A backgammon board is a rectangle with a ridge down the middle, and on each side there are two rows of twelve narrow triangles pointing inward — those are called points. The colors alternate, usually light and dark, and they form a loop around the board that your checkers travel on. Forget everything else for now: the dice, the little cup, the bar down the middle, and especially that weird cube with the numbers 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, and 64 printed on it. That cube matters later. Today, you can ignore it completely.
Get yourself a board. If you have one gathering dust in a closet, dig it out. If you don't, there are free apps for your phone or computer — I'd suggest opening one and selecting "play against a computer" with the lowest difficulty. Do not buy a real board yet, even if you're already excited. That's a day-two conversation, and I'm going to save you forty bucks if you decide this