Backgammon Variants
by Michael Strato
There are a myriad of exciting games one can play on a backgammon board and if you're keen on it you can even invent one of your own.
Variants can be played with fewer checkers, alternate setups or even with all the checkers starting off the board. In some, checkers are frozen on points instead of hit and put on the bar, and rules can vary in other ways, such as dice roll combinations may have a special bonus feature in which you get to roll again.
At least one variant requires that numbers rolled during bear off cannot be used to move checkers inside the home board – you can only remove checkers on points that match the numbers on the dice rolled.
Two common variants of backgammon that you will find online are HyperGammon and NackGammon which are described below.
For the rules and board setups of dozens of other backgammon games please visit Tom Keith's superb Variants section at Backgammon Galore.
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