Any backgammon fans on here?

I played it for the first time a few weeks ago and i have a friend coming around tomorrow for a few games.

We are both new to the game, does anyone have any pointers for a couple of novices?

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LQOTW is by Moth;
"A Badger 200 with bottom feed is around your price range"

It's the national sport in Holland's coffeeshops. And as such, I am a bit of a pro!

Look at how the pieces are set out at the start. Learn the different "distances" between each stack. e.g. there are two stacks two apart. So if you roll a 3 and 5, you can move one of each to a clear spot and not have a single pice to be "taken"

The other standard is a difference of 6, so you can move at least one out of the furthest quarter safely.

IFKWIM?

EDIT: Good Lord I sound like a geek!

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Life's a bith [sic]. Deal with it.

I would love to help you l_c but I'm looking for a tutorial type thing on t'internet myself. If I find one I'll let you know.

It's played all the time here and I'd like to get started. My neighbour stopped playing at twenty past midnight last night! I'd get him to teach me but his English is worse than my inadequate Turkish. Not many people are keen to teach, they just like playing

My mate (who im playing tomorrow) got hooked on it while on holiday in Turkey about a month back.

I had found some video tutorials on the rules and basic opening strategy, i will link to them if i can find them again.

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LQOTW is by Moth;
"A Badger 200 with bottom feed is around your price range"

What he said. Never take your opponent's piece just because you can either.

Backgammon has to be one of the easiest classic boardgames to learn after draughts. It's not so easy to master it though.

It's still a staple of Windoze ready loaded internet games (well it is on XP), learn to play on line. Then spank your mates

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onli mrns Us txt spk

Love it. Trouble is I play it with impeccable male logic and arithmetical correctness against the wife and she trashes me every time. Not that I get so angry that she refuses to play me now, of course not.

Is that the prize if you win or lose?

Whatever gets you through the night love

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onli mrns Us txt spk

I just learned how to play a couple of weeks ago! I loved it, but haven't played again yet. As we don't have a backgammon board yet... Tips would be good though, otherwise it'll go the way of Chess - I know how to play, but I'm so bad I just get cross!

*taptap*

Is this thing on?

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onli mrns Us txt spk

Its a brilliant game and I've played it for over 30 years. At one time used to play all-nighters for serious money but not anymore. Thing with Backgammon is the most important piece is the doubling cube which you can't really utilise properly unless you are playing for stakes. Sky sports feature backgammon tournaments sometimes and its worth watching the pros play to pick up the subtle nuances of the game. If you play poker you must have heard of Gus Hanson... not many people realise he is also one of, if not the best backgammon players in the world and well worth watching. Now get some money out and play properly

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The former Baldicoot.

Used to play it a lot a long time ago, from what I can remember, learn to use the numbers on the dice to your advantage, play your own game and don't worry too much about messing up your opponenet.

See, this means nothing to me!

Another tactic that only really makes sense if you're playing for stake money

Start here

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onli mrns Us txt spk

I was taught by a girlfriend many years ago, we spent many an evening with oral sex as the stake. It was quite some time later I discovered that she was cheating, in more ways than one, unfortunately.

There's quite a lot of well known poker pros (well known in poker, anyway) who are also known to be deadly chess and backgammon players.