Backgammon notation

It will be hard to improve our checker play without being able to accurately describe specific positions or moves. So, before learning anything “fun,” we will learn some notation. Below is a photo of the starting position for a backgammon board:

The triangles that mark where the checkers can sit are actually called points, and each one is assigned a number. The numbers start at 24, where your two backcheckers sit, and count down to 1. This number corresponds to the number of steps (or pips) that a checker on it needs to travel before it can be borne off. For example, backcheckers are at the start of their journey on the 24-pt, and so each needs to travel 24 pips to get to their destination. On the opposite end of the board, you have a stack of 5 checkers on the 6-pt. These checkers only need to travel 6 pips each.

This forms the basis of backgammon notation (the backgammon version of chess’s algebraic notation). We’ll show how the point numbers can be used to describe a backgammon match by way of example below.

To begin a game, each player rolls one die, and whoever rolls the larger number gets to start. Suppose you, in blue and playing clockwise, roll a 2 and your opponent Gary rolls 1. You go first! You don’t know what to do with your roll, so you just move your furthest back checker up 3 pips. Your resulting board would look like this:

The notation to describe this move is 21: 24/21. You rolled a 2 and a 1, and moved a checker from the 24-pt to the 21-pt.

Following your move, Gary rolls a 42. Bummer, that’s a great roll for him! He uses it to make his 4-pt (your 21-pt), putting your checker on the bar. This is the resulting position:

The notation for this move is 42: 8/4*, 6/4, where the asterisk represents hitting a checker. From your perspective, the checkers moved 17/21*, 19/21, but the convention is to always describe the move from the perspective of the player making it.

Now from the bar, you are hoping for a good roll, and you get it! You roll a double 3 (33). As you should know, you get to move 4 checkers 3 pips each. First you come off the bar and put the first checker on the 22-pt, and then play 3 checkers down from the 13-pt to the 10-pt, resulting in the following position:

This move contains the last bit of notation we need to learn. The “point” that makes up the bar doesn’t have a number, it’s simply called the bar. So the notation for this move is 33: bar/22, 13/10(3). The 3 in parentheses represents that 3 checkers have made the same move.

That’s it for backgammon notation. In the next section we’ll discuss different scoring outcomes in a backgammon game.

Further reading:

• A series of videos by GM Marc Olsen of Backgammon Galaxy, talking about the character of each point on a backgammon board.

Next lesson: Gammons and Backgammons