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Backgammon Articles
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Backgammon in the Renaissance
Backgammon is the only member of the family of renaissance board games used to be known as Tables that survived the damages of time. That is, in short, the thesis of Bruce Padget, a game history expert with special interest in the renaissance and the middle ages and an active member of Board Games Geek, the platform on which he has chosen to publish his lecture on Tables Variants.
Backgammon rules during the renaissance where almost identical to the rules of the modern game. No doubling cube yet, the game was played on the same backgammon board that was already introduced by the Roman Empire "Tabula" backgammon ancestor, with a pair of dice, and 15 game pieces, also known as men, to each player. Also, doubles are played twice, single checkers can be hit and captivated, and a player is committed to re-enter the hit checkers.
The scoring system in renaissance backgammon is also very close to today's backgammon. A player's victory can be either counted as a single win (if the loser has started bearing off), a double win (if he did not start with the bearoff), a triple win (if not of the opponent's, or a quadruple win, if the winning player has rolled a double on his last roll.
Bearing Off
The bearing off rules have changed since then; Contemporary backgammon rules determine that a player starts bearing off by the roll of the dice (after moving his entire checkers to his home board, but if there is not an available checker on the rolled dice, the player has to move a checker on a higher numbered point, or the highest numbered point, if the former option is unavailable as well.
There are conflicting opinions regarding bearing off rules in renaissance backgammon. According to one assumption, a player has to roll exactly according to the roll of the dice. According to another, a player can bear off using any number that corresponds with a point occupied by checkers or higher.
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