11 Facts About Backgammon

1.

Backgammon is a two-player board game played with counters and dice on tables boards.

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2.

Backgammon is a two-player game of contrary movement in which each player has fifteen pieces, known traditionally as 'men' but increasingly known as 'checkers' in the US in recent decades.

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3.

Backgammon is a recent member of the large family of tables games that date back to ancient times.

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4.

Irish had been popular at the Scottish court of James IV and considered to be "the more serious and solid game" when the variant which became known as Backgammon began to emerge in the first half of the 17th century.

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5.

Backgammon clubs were formed and tournaments were held, resulting in a World Championship promoted in Las Vegas in 1967.

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6.

Backgammon has an established opening theory, although it is less detailed than that of chess.

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7.

Backgammon is played in two principal variations, "money" and "match" play.

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8.

In 2008, the World Series of Backgammon ran the world's largest international events in London, the UK Masters, the biggest tournament ever held in the UK with 128 international class players; the Nordic Open, which instantly became the largest in the world with around 500 players in all flights and 153 in the championship, and Cannes, which hosted the Riviera Cup, the traditional follow-up tournament to the World Championships.

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9.

Backgammon is considered the national game in many countries of the Eastern Mediterranean: Egypt, Turkey, Cyprus, Syria, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon and Greece.

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10.

Backgammon software has been developed not only to play and analyze games, but to people to play one another over the internet.

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11.

Backgammon applied principles of fuzzy logic to improve its play between phases, and by July 1979, BKG 9.

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