The Backgammon Boom and the Internet

For most of its long history, backgammon was learned at a table. You played with family, with friends at a café or with members of a local club, and you improved only as fast as the people around you. The internet changed that. Within a few years, anyone with a connection could find an opponent at any hour and get access to material that once circulated only among experts.

Opponents any time, from anywhere

Backgammon fits online play very well. It is a two-player game, a single game is short, and the rules are the same almost everywhere. A player in one country can sit down against a player on another continent without a shared language, because the board says everything that needs to be said.

That matters more than it sounds. In many places, backgammon has deep roots, with whole communities that grew up playing it. In others, finding even one serious opponent used to be hard. Online play joined these worlds together. A beginner in a small town now meets the same range of styles and strengths as a player in a big city with an active club.

A game full of action

Part of the game's appeal online is how lively it is. You are never just waiting: as soon as your opponent finishes a move, it is your turn, and your options depend on what they just did. Positions can turn around quickly. A player who looks lost can roll the right numbers, hit a late shot and come back to win. Our article on a game of constant action looks at this side of backgammon in more detail.

From folklore to shared knowledge

Before the internet, a lot of backgammon advice was passed on by word of mouth, and some of it was simply wrong. Good books existed, but they were not always easy to find. Online, players began to share positions, discuss moves and post match records in public. Ideas could be tested and corrected by many people at once.

Over time this created a common body of knowledge that any player can use:

• introductions to the rules and the opening moves;
• articles on strategy, from priming games to bearing off;
• collections of problems with explained answers;
• reports and commentary on matches between strong players.

Faster feedback

The biggest change for learners is feedback. A player at a club might hear an opinion about a move, but rarely a precise answer. Today, finished games can be saved and checked with analysis software such as GNU Backgammon, which shows which moves cost the most and why. The story of how these programs changed the theory of the game is told in the internet and backgammon.

What stayed the same

For all the change, the core of the game is untouched. The board has 24 points, each side has 15 checkers, and every game still starts with a pip count of 167 for both players. Skill still wins over many games, while luck still decides plenty of single ones. The internet did not change what makes backgammon good; it made that game available to far more people.

If you are just starting, our page on how to play backgammon covers everything you need for your first game.