Almost everybody is familiar with how a backgammon board looks,but not everybody is sure how a backgammon board setup actually works.What is sure is that the checkers are not placed randomly on the board, nor arethey moved ‘any which way’ around or across the board. A backgammonboard has a very specific setup and this is one of the first things thatplayers learn when being introduced to the game.

A backgammon board has two sides, divided vertically by a raisedridge called the bar. The board is divided into four quadrants, each with sixpointed triangles known as points. All in all, there are 24 points on the backgammonboard. The section of the board that is nearest on the right to the player isknown as his home board. The other two quadrants are referred to as the outerboards. Each player in the game has 15 checkers each, and these are setup deepinside the board so that they do not obstruct the dice throwing across theboard.

Beginning at each player’s home board, all points on the board havetheir own numbers. The opponent’s point number 1 will automatically correlatewith the player’s point number 24. The backgammon board setup is asfollows: 2 checkers are placed on points 24; 5 checkers are placed on points13; 3 checkers are placed on points 8 and 5 checkers are placed on points 6.
Once players have setup the board correctly, they can commenceplay.