How to Play Backgammon
Backgammon is a race. You (white) move your 15 checkers from point 24 toward point 1, while your opponent moves the opposite way. Each turn you roll two dice and move checkers that many points - a roll of doubles gives you four moves. You must use both dice if legally possible. A point holding two or more enemy checkers is blocked; a point holding exactly one is a blot, and landing on it sends that checker to the bar, where it must re-enter in your home board before its owner may do anything else.
Once all 15 of your checkers reach your home board (points 1-6), you may bear them off using exact rolls, or higher rolls when no checker sits on a higher point. First player to bear off all 15 wins - and if the loser hasn't borne off a single checker, that's a gammon. On PlayVersusAI there is no doubling cube: every game is played to the finish against the AI or a friend online.
Strategy Tips
- Count pips before deciding - the pip count (shown under each player) tells you who's ahead in the race. Ahead? Simplify and run. Behind? Hold anchors and look for a hit.
- Make points, don't stack them - two checkers make a point safe; five on one point waste material. Spread pairs across key points, especially your 5-point.
- The 5-point is golden - making your 5-point (and the opponent's 5-point as an anchor) is worth more than almost any other early play.
- Hit when it hurts - sending a checker to the bar costs your opponent the full length of the board, but only hit when you won't leave easy return shots.
- Build primes - four or more consecutive made points form a wall that trapped checkers cannot jump. A full six-prime is a near-certain win.
- Minimize shots, not blots - a blot 12 points away is far safer than one 4 points away. Count how many dice rolls can actually hit you before you worry.
Read the full Backgammon guide →
Playing Backgammon on PlayVersusAI
Standard backgammon: twenty-four points, fifteen checkers each, dice deciding how far you may move, and a race to bear all your checkers off the board. A lone checker on a point is a blot and can be hit and sent back to the bar, and doubles let you play four moves rather than two.
Dice make this fundamentally different from the other strategy games here. The AI cannot simply search the best line, because it does not know what will be rolled — instead it averages outcomes across all twenty-one distinct dice combinations, weighted by how likely each one is. That is far more expensive to compute, so the backgammon engine searches shallower than the deterministic games and relies more on positional judgement: pip count, blot exposure, prime building and anchor placement.
What's on This Page
- Four difficulty levels — switch between Easy, Medium, Hard and AI Training at any time, including mid-game.
- Online multiplayer — play a friend in real time using a private room code, or take on a stranger from the public lobby.
- Tracked results — wins count toward your profile statistics and the site leaderboard.
- No account required — the full game is playable as a guest, on desktop, tablet or phone.
Easy moves checkers forward without much regard for what it leaves exposed. Medium avoids obvious blots. Hard weighs the risk of being hit against the value of the position. AI Training plays a decent positional game, though its shallower search shows most in complicated races — this is the AI on the site most likely to be outplayed by a strong human.
Mistakes That Lose Games
- Leaving blots within direct range. A single checker six or fewer pips from an enemy checker is hit roughly a third of the time. Count the shots before you commit.
- Racing when you are behind. If your pip count is worse, a pure race loses. Hold an anchor in your opponent's home board and play for a hit instead.
- Breaking your home board too early. Points you give up are points your opponent can re-enter onto after being hit.
- Stacking checkers on one point. Five or six checkers piled on a single point are doing almost nothing. Spread out and make new points instead.
Backgammon Questions
Is the dice roll actually random?
Yes. Rolls come from the browser's random number generator and are not weighted for or against either player at any difficulty. The AI gets no better dice on harder settings — what changes is how well it uses them.
Is there a doubling cube?
No. Games are played for a single point without doubling, which keeps matches short and removes the cube-handling skill that would otherwise dominate the result.
Why is the backgammon AI weaker than the chess one?
Because dice multiply the number of positions to consider enormously. Every move must be evaluated across all possible rolls that follow, so the engine cannot search anywhere near as deep in the same time. We would rather tell you that than pretend otherwise.
For the complete rules, the deeper strategy and the history of the game, read the full Backgammon guide, or browse guides for all 20 games.