Backgammon rules | How To Play Backgammon

Backgammon Rules

How to play - Gambling

The mechanics of betting
Gambling is inherent in backgammon. There are more stories about financial catastrophes, fortunes that changed hands, wives sold, cheating and suicides than there are rules and instructions on how to play. During and after the Middle Ages, state and church joined in a desperate attempt to restrain players from losing vast amounts of money in backgammon, but their combined efforts came to nil. It seems that "the bug of gambling" has developed complete immunity from the various forms of advice and exhortation. In brief, the apology for gambling is that it satisfies an ingrained need of the social being to improve his lot by taking calculated - and not so calculated - risks. On the other hand, backgammon and the whole tables family would not have survived without the "obverse" side of the coin, which is the sheer pleasure derived from playing a game combining skill and luck in almost ideal proportions.
Before we talked about thebackgammon rules, and how to play backgammon well.
Now we shall try to complete the picture by pinpointing the traps and helping the beginner to avoid them. For one thing, betting is not necessarily gambling. It depends on the frequency and the scale. In Western Europe there is a widespread notion that backgammon is the game of the affluent classes. This is only partly true. Backgammon is a classless game. Its association with the affluent is due to the fact that their habits are better monitored than those of all the other classes put together. In Southern Europe and the Middle East, backgammon is not only highly popular but equally loved by rich and poor alike. No one ever attempted to associate it with gambling. In the eyes of the law and the conscience of the people, it is not a gambling game like Poker. A typical bet is playing for your opponent's coffee, in the same way that chess or draughts - games of pure skill - may be played for a cup of coffee. It is a "fee" paid to the better player rather than a bet.

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