Domino Backgammon Variant

Domino Backgammon is a Backgammon variant played with dominoes rather than dice. The first step to playing Domino Backgammon is extracting the blanks from your domino set, meaning that you are left with 21 tiles that are divided among the players in the following manner:

Set the Backgammon board up as usual and put the dominoes on your right side with the doubles in the highest places, detached from the rest of the dominoes.

To begin playing Domino Backgammon, take any of your dominoes (as long as it's not a double), put it in the inner part of your board and make the play like it was a roll of the dice. Afterwards, put the tile back in its place facing downwards. In the meantime, this tile can not be played. That way every one of the dominoes in this Backgammon variant that isn't a double will get played and wind up facing downwards. As soon as all the dominoes that are not doubles have already been played, the players exchange sets and proceed with the game.

Furthermore, you can not move the dominoes in the back until the 4th play in the Backgammon game. Whenever you find yourself stuck, you turn a domino over.

Regarding doubles, the only time they get to be played is following the initial swap of the tiles that are not doubles. In addition, doubles can only be played in rising order, just once a game and they are not interchangeable. When playing a doubles domino, you also have to turn over a domino that isn't doubles.

The Domino Backgammon strategy involves understanding that while you play, your hand continues to dwindle. The most important point when playing this Backgammon variant is when both players are down to several of their final tiles. Each player can see what the opponent has, meaning that you can take action and uncover blots that you certainly would not be able to reveal in a dice game of Backgammon. Hence, you should pre-plan in order to steer clear of trouble.

David Carnegy - Managing Editor