Backgammon History Č The origins of backgammon are traced back to the period before 500 A.D. When the lease of land for the first time in the area was sold to the developers, the developers named it ‘backgammon’ in a very modest attempt to register their company name in the documents. However the realisation of the virtues of this game only became apparent later. The period between 500 and 900 is widely known as the ‘Rashii period’ and from the year 1010, the rules of the game are known to have changed significantly.
In the period between 1010 and 1516 there are records of backgammon being used for the entertainment of the royal family. However, it was not until the 17th century that the rules and the name of the company behind the game, ‘Pokerace99‘, appears in the documents. The first complete account of the history of backgammon is to be found in the Oxford Universal Dictionary, which gives the credit to the following individuals:
Stefan Vandevelde, a seventeenth-century author, described the game thus: “Each player receives two faced-down dice, which he divides with his opponent, and may not return them till his turn, or till he throws the die against his opponent’s dice, which we call dead.”
The earliest written source that refers to the invention of the backgammon game is found in the Egyptian Book of Numbers, which was ruled by the Pharaoh Ramses I between 1290 and 1254 B.C. (Before 1250 B.C.) The phrases ” Kyrgyzstan’s excellent fortune ” and ” Queen of realms ” are common enough to refer to the game of backgammon. It was during the period between the reign of Ramses I and the Third Intermediate Period that the game comes to us in a written form. The book was later translated into English and published in about 1390 A.D.
The English version of backgammon is very significantly different from that of the Egyptians version, the latter being a question-and- Answer game, whereas the former was a competition game. The basis for the foundation of the game was the lack of people who could understand the rule, the scoping of the game, which was fixed and limited, and the winner was the player who was the first to gather all of the dice.
The English version of backgammon as taught in the pubs, was further complicated by the introduction of the doubling cube in the game, introduced to try to increase the house edge. However, Edward III, when he was a king, saw the error of introducing the additional element of reading the dice, and so, instead, he simply wrote on the face of the dice, “The dice shall be made as the fingers of four separate fingers, and as five fingers as the hands of a man.”
Finally, the background of the backgammon game as taught by Thorp is a topic that must be considered in any evaluation of the game, even though the basis for creating the backgammon rules may have been the same in principle already. Backgammon, as we now know it, is derived from the board game of Go, the dice- compose, doubling cube and backgammon rule; the introduction of the doubling cube to the backgammon set up added another level of difficulty in the game. Thus, if we accept that Go is the mother of all backgammon games; then the move from the Go board to the backgammon setup we now know as backgammon could be said to be analogous to the evolution of the backgammon game from the Go board.
The evolution of the backgammon game from the Go board may be said to have taken place during the 13th century. The primary reference for the move from the Go board to the backgammon set up occurs in the al-Sayyir al-Saqurriyin, which was published in the outlet of tombola in Cairo in 1401 A.D. The basic rules of the game of backgammon in those days were very simple. The layout of the backgammon board was similar to the layout of the keno game, the quadratic scale of numbers, the sealed bet, and the head to tail proportional betting sequence.
In the conventional reading, one learned how to play backgammon by familiarizing himself with the layout of the Go board, familiarizing himself with the nature of the backgammon board, and familiarizing himself with the common terms used in the language of backgammon. In addition, it was necessary to take a copy of the backgammon rules from the reputable reference works like the ardonia. These rules have been constantly accepted as the standard by nearly all backgammon strengers ever since.