Backagmmon rules | Tavli

Backgammon Rules

Tavli - Fevga

There was a young man in Greece, a visitor, who became obsessed with this game, and kept playing it for three months, day in and day out. He still could not win more than twenty percent of the games he played with some old experts in a local coffee shop. One day at the end of a game that he lost even though he thought he should have won, he became very angry. "Why is it that I can't win in this game?" he cried out. "Well," answered his opponent, an old man with grey hair and beard, "because you lack the personality for it. You are not mature enough. When you are ahead, you make small errors of complacency. When you are behind, you make small errors of panic. You simply need to grow up to learn it well."

Fevga, the purest of Backgammon games, is very difficult to master, although its considered as an easy learning game.
Well, in fevga it is the small detail that kills you. An overall plan is necessary as it was in Portes and Plakoto. In Fevga the execution depends on small details - seeming trivialities, and plays that the untrained eyes consider unimportant. You may be way ahead in the game, but you cannot relax like in the other two games. Every throw must be played perfectly, or you may lose some ground and may not even know it until the end.

How to play

Fevga is also played by two players, all the player's pieces are resting on his own first position. White sits in the South position, Black sits on the North side also whith three pieces. The overall purpose of the game is the same as in the other two games, you must move your pieces from your own position one to a designated final table and then bear them off the board. The player who accomplishes this first, wins the game. For White, the march of his pieces must progress from his own position one, through his inner table and through his opponent's inner table, all in a counterclockwise direction. Black's outer table is the final destination of White's pieces, and once all of them are there, White can begin to bear them off. Exactly the same holds true for Black, except that he has to start at his own position one and end up at White's outer table, moving also in a counterclockwise direction.
Fevga differs from Plakoto in several items:
No piece can be used to move into a position occupied by one or more of the opponent's pieces. Thus, having just one piece on a given position constitutes a "point" (or door) in the game of Fevga. The number of pieces that can be placed on a point is unlimited.
In Portes if the throw is pair, the throw is called "doublet" and the player plays twice the normal amount. In fevga a single piece is enough for a player to make a "point" (or door).
A blot is a point in this game. You cannot hit it or capture it. The game is simple itself, only deceivingly so.
In fevga the player may begin to bear his pieces off the board when all his pieces are in the opponent's outer table.
In fevga the concept of a blot does not exist.
A backgammon is scored when the loser still has pieces inside his own home.
There are two clauses here, unique only in the game of Fevga- At the start of the game only one piece may be used to execute the throws, until this piece has entered the opponent's inner table. After this has happened (and it may happen with the execution of one of the numbers of a throw), the player can move any piece wherever he wants, subject of course to the previous regulations.
A player can occupy a maximum of five positions in his own inner table. The remaining position must be unoccupied. As will be seen later, both these clauses are very important in the game of Fevga. The first one has some spectacular consequences as will be seen in one of the complete games described in a later section.the second leads to some rather subtle thinking and some interesting local strategies.

Portes
Plakoto

Gioul

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