rulesbeginnerssetup
The backgammon setup never changes. Whichever side of the board you sit on and whichever colour you play, fifteen checkers go onto exactly four points at the start of every game, and your opponent mirrors you. Learn it once and you will never think about it again.
Below is the position itself, then the check that tells you in ten seconds whether the board is right, then the four mistakes that account for almost every board that is wrong.
What is the backgammon starting position?
Number the points from your own home board outwards, so the point nearest your bottom right is 1 and the far corner is 24. Your checkers start like this:
- Two checkers on the 24 point, your furthest point, sitting inside your opponent's home board.
- Five checkers on the 13 point, the long midpoint across the bar.
- Three checkers on the 8 point.
- Five checkers on the 6 point, inside your own home board.
Your opponent has the exact mirror image, so their two far checkers sit on the point you call 1, and their five midpoint checkers face yours across the board. Every game of backgammon in the world begins from this position, and it is the same in tavla, tavli, tawla, shesh besh and nard.
How do you check the board is set up correctly?
Count to fifteen. Two plus five plus three plus five is fifteen, and that is the only arithmetic the setup needs. If your four stacks do not add to fifteen, something is in the wrong place before a single die has been thrown.
Then run three shape checks, which catch the errors counting does not:
- The two tallest stacks are five high, and they sit on opposite sides of the bar, six points apart on your side and thirteen on the far side.
- Your two loneliest checkers are as far from home as they can be, and they are staring at your opponent's five stack.
- Half the board is empty. Twenty of the twenty four points hold nothing at the start, and if the position looks crowded it is wrong.
Which direction does each player move?
Towards your own home board, and the two players move in opposite directions. Your checkers travel from 24 down to 1 and then off the board. Your opponent's travel the other way around the same circuit, which is why the two back checkers of each player have the furthest journey and meet the heaviest traffic.
Your home board is the quadrant nearest you, the six points where you will eventually bear off. It is not the quadrant you happen to be facing when you sit down, and swapping those two is the most common reason a beginner's first few moves feel wrong.
Twenty of the twenty four points start empty. Backgammon is a game about the space, not the checkers.
What are the most common setup mistakes?
Four, and all four are visible before the first roll if you look.
- Swapping the 8 point and the 6 point. Three checkers belong on the 8 and five on the 6, not the other way around. This is by far the most frequent error, and it quietly ruins the opening.
- Setting up mirrored on the same side. Both players' five stacks should face each other across the bar, not sit side by side.
- Putting the back checkers on the 23 point instead of the 24. They belong on the very last point, inside the opponent's home board.
- Playing the wrong direction. Point at the quadrant where you intend to bear off before the first roll, and make sure your opponent points at the opposite one.
There is a fifth that is not a setup error but costs the same: not agreeing whether the doubling cube is in play. Set it to 64 in the middle of the bar if it is, and put it away if it is not.
Is the setup the same in every backgammon variant?
No, and this is worth knowing before you sit down with someone who learned the game elsewhere. The position above is standard backgammon, the game a Greek player calls portes and a Turkish player calls tavla. The other games played on the same board start differently: in plakoto and fevga all fifteen checkers begin stacked on a single point, and in fevga both players even run in the same direction.
If your opponent stacks all fifteen checkers in one corner, they have not made a mistake. They are setting up a different game, and the two of you should agree which one you are playing.
What comes after the setup?
Both players roll one die, and whoever rolls higher goes first, playing the two numbers that are already on the table. From there the rules are short enough to learn in a single evening, and the full walkthrough lives on the rules page.
On a digital board none of the above can go wrong. Orion sets the position for you, nothing slides when someone knocks the table, and the direction of travel is obvious from the first move. What is left is the roll, and because you cannot watch the hand that throws it, the dice are provably fair: the server commits to the whole sequence with SHA-256 before the game begins and reveals the seed when it ends, so anyone can recompute every roll at orion.arthea.ai/verify, with no account.