Talk:Backgammon

Backgammon was one of the Sports and recreation good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
August 7, 2005	Featured article candidate	Not promoted
August 9, 2006	Peer review	Reviewed
August 11, 2006	Good article nominee	Listed
October 22, 2006	Peer review	Reviewed
April 21, 2007	Featured article candidate	Not promoted
July 24, 2009	Good article reassessment	Delisted
Current status: Delisted good article

Board and table games Top‑importance

	Games portal This article is part of WikiProject Board and table games, an attempt to better organize information in articles related to board games and tabletop games. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.Board and table gamesWikipedia:WikiProject Board and table gamesTemplate:WikiProject Board and table gamesboard and table game
Top	This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale.

Turkey

	Turkey portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Turkey, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Turkey and related topics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.TurkeyWikipedia:WikiProject TurkeyTemplate:WikiProject TurkeyTurkey
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.

Greece

	Greece portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Greece, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Greece on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.GreeceWikipedia:WikiProject GreeceTemplate:WikiProject GreeceGreece
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.

Cyprus

	Cyprus portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Cyprus, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Cyprus on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.CyprusWikipedia:WikiProject CyprusTemplate:WikiProject CyprusCypriot
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.

Syria

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Syria, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Syria on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.SyriaWikipedia:WikiProject SyriaTemplate:WikiProject SyriaSyria
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.

Israel

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Israel, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Israel on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.IsraelWikipedia:WikiProject IsraelTemplate:WikiProject IsraelIsrael-related

???

This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.

Project Israel To Do:

Here are some tasks awaiting attention:

Assess : Rate the Unassessed Israel-related articles and Unknown-importance Israel-related articles.
Cleanup : Cleanup listing for this project is available. See also the list by category and the tool's wiki page.
Collaborate : Participate in WikiProject Israel Palestine Collaboration.
Copyedit : Timeline of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in 2005
Deletion sorting : Participate in discussions at WikiProject Deletion sorting/Israel.
Expand : Ayala Procaccia, Diamond industry in Israel, Edna Arbel, Levin Kipnis, Rami Kleinstein, Sephardic Haredim, Zman Tel Aviv, Nachum Heiman, Public Defence (Israel), Prisoner of Zion, Trial of Benjamin Netanyahu, Day to Mark the Departure and Expulsion of Jews from the Arab Countries and Iran, Pre-Modern Aliyah
See also Articles needing translation from Hebrew Wikipedia.
Geographical coordinates : Add geographic coordinates to Israel articles missing geocoordinate data.
Infobox : Add infoboxes to Israel articles needing infoboxes.
Maintain : See Israel articles needing attention.
Map : See discussion at Module:Location map/data/Israel. Add maps to articles in Wikipedia requested maps in Israel.
NPOV : Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries
Photo : Add pictures to articles in Wikipedia requested photographs in Israel.
Stubs : See Israel stubs.
Update : Basic Law proposal: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People
Other :
- Translate to Hebrew : David Bar-Hayim, Guy Bavli, and Guy Oseary.

Lebanon

	Lebanon portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Lebanon, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Lebanon-related articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.LebanonWikipedia:WikiProject LebanonTemplate:WikiProject LebanonLebanon
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.

Palestine

	Palestine portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Palestine, a team effort dedicated to building and maintaining comprehensive, informative and balanced articles related to the geographic Palestine region, the Palestinian people and the State of Palestine on Wikipedia. Join us by visiting the project page, where you can add your name to the list of members where you can contribute to the discussions.PalestineWikipedia:WikiProject PalestineTemplate:WikiProject PalestinePalestine-related
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.

Egypt

	Egypt portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Egypt, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Egypt on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.EgyptWikipedia:WikiProject EgyptTemplate:WikiProject EgyptEgypt
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.

Archives

1, 2

This page has archives. Sections older than 180 days may be auto-archived by if there are more than 4.

Add reference for sentence

"The objective is for players to bear off all their disc pieces from the board before their opponent can do the same"

Add source: [1] 80.208.69.137 (talk) 09:31, 8 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Nomenclature Consistency in Rules

Within the Rules section, the terms "piece" and "checker" are used interchangebly and inconsistently. One term should be used within the section (if not the entire article) unless it is for the purpose of distinction or historical discussion.

Given the different names for the backgammon board piece, the generic name "piece" would be suitable over the relatively modern American English term "checker" PaulLandolt (talk) 16:53, 5 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Etymology of backgammon

The proposed derivation of backgammon from back and game appears to be tentative. An equally if not more likely origin could be back and gammon, gammon being derived from jambe, French for leg, which itself goes back to Latin, gamba, for leg. Backgammon has two legs, from one end of the board to the other on each player's side and then back again. Jontel (talk) 17:53, 27 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Without a source, this would be original reasarch. Sources seem to go with the "game" etymology.

Nø (talk) 20:58, 27 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Murphy" Rule

Until recently, this article described the automatic doubles rule as the "Murhphy Rule"

I was unable to find any reliable source that called it that, although there were plenty of hits citing this page. Lacking success, I removed the material.

So, who was "Murphy" and when did that rule come into effect? The second question is fairly easy, sometime around 1930, shortly after the concept of doubling was introduced. this article has probably more than you wanted to know about it.

As for "Murphy", the best hypotheses I've heard is that at the FAQ on doubling at bkgm.com, automatic doubles is followed immediately by a section on the Jacoby Rule. And that section has a pointer to a post on usenet by Daniel Murphy in 1997. Looks like somebody got confused; it made it into Wikipeda and then AI, reddit, et al ran with it. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 00:47, 25 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Movement

The first sentence is hard to understand: "To start the game, each player rolls one die, and the player with the higher number moves first using the numbers shown on both dice."

It says to roll *one* dice, then to move using: "the numbers shown on both dice".

This should be clarified to make it clearer whether you are also using the dice value that was rolled by the other player, or, if you first roll both dice again? — Preceding unsigned comment added by GregZoneNZ (talk • contribs) 19:37, 18 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The source says this:

To start the game, each player throws a single die. This determines both the player to go first and the numbers to be played. If equal numbers come up, then both players roll again until they roll different numbers. The player throwing the higher number now moves his checkers according to the numbers showing on both dice. After the first roll, the players throw two dice and alternate turns.

Is that any clearer? Mr. Swordfish (talk) 21:54, 18 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]