Backgammon History

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Backgammon variants

From:   Raccoon
Address:   racgammon@yacannedmeathoo.com
Date:   22 August 2003
Subject:   Re: Global reply
Forum:   rec.games.backgammon
Google:   eikckv4uikvefnl87ulgqjv7a2c70de652@4ax.com

Alexandre Charitopoulos wrote: > Oriental playing is not a mere variant but a complete game. I > distinguish backgammon from tavli. Those are two different games. Quite so. As you yourself pointed out, the Greek tavli is actually three different games, one of which -- portes -- closely resembles backgammon but with certain differences in rules of movement, scoring, and of course the doubling cube. Portes, plakoto, fevga, acey-deucey, hypergammon, nackgammon, tapa, narde, cubeless "backgammon," gul bara, "Russian" backgammon, trictrac, longgammon, duodecagammon, jacquet and feuga have each their own rules and likewise demand particular strategies. Whether you call any or all of these games "variants," each is a "complete game." While most discussion in this newsgroup is about "backgammon," rec.games.backgammon is certainly the appropriate Usenet forum for discussion for all variants, if you will excuse the term, of backgammon. All variants of the game we play today with two dice, 30 checkers and 24 points stem, as best we can tell, from Middle Eastern board games much, much older than the middle ages. One or more forms of the game spread to Egypt, to India, to China, to Greece, to Rome. The legions of Rome spread "Tabula" through that empire, and the game seems to have survived the middle ages in at least some parts of Europe (cit. England, 1025 A.D.). A form of backgammon called "Nard" appeared, perhaps in the 700s, perhaps in Persia, and spread eastward and westward with the Moslem expansion and the Crusades. Apparently, it is to this later "variant" that we owe the use of two dice instead of three, and renewed popularity of our ancient game. The written word "backgammon" appears in English for the first time in 1645. You have written of your dislike of "American backgammon" and its culturally imperialistic doubling cube -- this 1920s late addition which has disgracefully turned a respectable tavli fit for grandfathers and coffee drinking friends into a professional, disreputable gambling game. Certainly backgammon's doubling cube is an American invention, and it is a popular invention, and it is a popular gambling device. But surely gambling on backgammon hardly began with the addition of the doubling cube! If you are familiar with any of the many online backgammon servers, you would find players from all over the world, including Greece, Turkey, Israel, Egypt, enjoying backgammon with the doubling cube. You would also find that the vast majority of online players playing with the doubling cube do not gamble. And yet they enjoy the game. Most online players use backgammon for precisely the same reason that you find so admirable among cafe players: it's a way of socializing.

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