page_title: Backgammon
section_title: Great Britain
hierarchical_section_title: Backgammon / History / Great Britain
caption_attribution_description: The title page of Edmond Hoyle's book A Short Treatise on the Game of Back-Gammon
context_page_description: Backgammon is one of the oldest known board games. Its history can be traced back nearly 5,000 years to archaeological discoveries in Mesopotamia. It is a two-player game where each player has fifteen pieces that move between twenty-four triangles according to the roll of two dice. The objective of the game is to be first to bear off, i.e. move all fifteen checkers off the board. Backgammon is a member of the tables family, one of the oldest classes of board games.
  Backgammon involves a combination of strategy and luck. While the dice may determine the outcome of a single game, the better player will accumulate the better record over series of many games. With each roll of the dice, players must choose from numerous options for moving their checkers and anticipate possible counter-moves by the opponent. The optional use of a doubling cube allows players to raise the stakes during the game.
  Like chess, backgammon has been studied with great interest by computer scientists. Owing to this research, backgammon software has been developed that is capable of beating world-class human players.
context_section_description: In the 16th century, Elizabethan laws and church regulations prohibited playing tables, but by the 18th century, backgammon was popular among the English clergy. Edmond Hoyle published A Short Treatise on the Game of Back-Gammon in 1753; this described rules and strategy for the game and was bound together with a similar text on whist.
  In English, the word "backgammon" is most likely derived from "back" and Middle English: gamen, meaning 'game' or 'play'. The earliest use documented by the Oxford English Dictionary was in 1650.
caption: A Short Treatise on the Game of Back-Gammon, by Edmond Hoyle
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