Backgammon History

Backgammon is one of the oldest games in existence alongside Go and Chess. It is about 5,000 years old and may well have originated in what today is Iraq.

Frescoes in many a Roman villa depict the game in progress. The Emperor Claudius was a keen player and Nero played for huge sums of money.

It became so popular during the Crusades that soldiers below a certain rank were banned from playing. It is mentioned in early literature by both Chaucer and Shakespeare.

No one knows for sure where the name came from - the word backgammon first appeared in print in 1645 - but most likely it comes from the Middle English baec = back and gamen = game.

The introduction of doubling sometime around 1925/6 enhanced the gambling element of the game and guaranteed its future. In the 1970`s the advent of the oil money saw a resurgence in the popularity of the game and big money tournaments attended by celebrities became the norm.

The real advances in theory and playing practice came with computers and particularly with the application of neural network theory. After pioneering work by Dr. Gerry Tesauro in the IBM Laboratories in White Plains New York commercial programs such as Snowie became available in the mid-1990`s.

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