Backgammon: the world’s greatest game!

Peter and I have been playing Backgammon for 21 years. We play at every meal, even when we eat in a restaurant. In fact, the servers at all of the restaurants we go to know us because we are “the Backgammon couple.”

Each year, I buy a new book in which I record our scores. We have recorded every game we’ve played since 2003. We also play for money, not huge amounts, but just enough to give the game a little edge. At the end of each month, I put the money we owe into a special bank account, which is saved for a vacation.

We used to play on a standard Backgammon board, but in the last 10 years or so, we have played on an iPad. It’s easy to carry to the restaurant and doesn’t take up much room on the table.

We are definitely addicted to Backgammon and will keep on playing forever…or until I beat Peter! If you haven’t tried Backgammon, I urge you to give it a try. I’m pretty sure you will enjoy this easy-to-learn game.

Here is a little history of Backgammon:

Played by leaders of ancient civilizations in Greece, Rome, Persia and the Far East, there are few games that are as old as backgammon yet continue to be played today. Believed to date back 5,000 years, archaeological discoveries in ancient Mesopotamia – modern-day Iraq – in the 1920s give us a tantalizing glimpse of the game’s potential origins: six artifacts that look remarkably like today’s backgammon boards, one with dice and different coloured playing pieces still intact. The birthplace of backgammon continues to be hotly debated, however, and there is evidence that the Egyptians, Sumerians and Persians all enjoyed a game resembling the backgammon we play today.