Backgammon: Moving and Hitting Checkers

Okay, you have decided to play backgammon and know the general rules of the game. But you are wondering how the moving and hitting of checkers proceeds. There are certainly a number of articles on how the game progresses but they are quite vague. And so to understand such actions, you will read about them here.

The movements of checkers will depend on their color. Dark-colored ones will move counter-clockwise while the light-colored checkers will move clockwise. The backgammon checkers will always move forward accordingly and never backwards. The dark and light checkers are moving in opposite directions of each other.

The dice will determine the number of moves to be taken. Let us say you rolled seven and three, a total of ten. You may choose to move one checker seven points and another checker three points. It also all right to move one checker by ten points (if no opponent checker blocks the way).

You can only move to points that are vacant, are occupied by your other checkers or are occupied by one opponent checker.

If you roll a double, the total move is twice the rolled number. Let us say you rolled two fours, your total move is not anymore eight but 16. With such number of moves, you may move one checker by 18 points if there is no blockage. It is also possible to move two checkers at four points each. It could be that you move two checkers by five points and another one by six points. The combination could be many as long as the total moves made are not beyond the total of 16 points. This is only true if you rolled a double.

If your contemplated moves are blocked or cannot be legally executed in the game, you lose your turn. And so it is better to play both dice. If only one checker has a legal move then move that checker.

Remember that you can move your checker to a point occupied by one opponent checker? Such action is called hitting. That loner checker is called a blot. When you hit this blot, it will be removed from the point it is occupying and moved to the bar, the raised center of the game board. The blot will stay there until it can move to a free space by roll of the dice.

The blot on the bar can only be moved to a free space. That free space refers to a point not occupied by either player. For you to move this blot from the bar you should roll the dice to correspond to the free space - the long triangles on the board are numbered. If upon rolling the dice the result of the rolled is an occupied space, you lose your turn.

To summarize, you move your checkers according to the color of your checker and the result of the dice roll. Players move in opposite directions. You can only move to a point that is vacant, occupied by other checkers you own or is occupied by one opponent checker. When you move to a point occupied by one opponent checker, that opponent checker is moved to the bar and can only be back with a proper dice roll.