Gioul Backgammon Variant
Gioul is a Backgammon variant that hails from Greece and is played all over the Middle East. Doubles are Gioul's trademark feature.
Every Gioul participant begins with 15 checkers on his opponent's 1 point. Checker movement in this game takes place in opposing directions. As in regular Backgammon games, the goal in this Backgammon variant is to get every one of your checkers to encircle the entire board and bear them off.
In order to begin playing Gioul, each of the participants roll a die and the one with the higher number gets to play first. Next, the winner of the opening roll rolls both of the dice once more to begin his initial turn. Following the first game of Gioul, the victor of the preceding game plays first.
Players need to move their checkers in accordance with the points that correspond to the numbers that come up when they roll the dice. The following are the rules of checker movement in Gioul:
- A checker can only be placed on a point that isn't held by any of the opponent's checkers.
- There are 2 dice in Gioul and the numbers on each of them signify 2 independent moves.
- Doubling does not exist in Gioul.
- There is no hitting in Gioul since in this Backgammon variant, a single checker is enough to command a point.
The most distinguishing characteristic of Gioul is that in the case that you roll doubles, you can play that roll and any doubles roll that follows up to 6-6. In other words, you get to play the number that you have rolled 4 times, after which you can play the following higher double the same way, straight through to 6-6.
In this Backgammon variant, if you are unable to finish your turn, your opponent will take control and play your unused numbers. He will begin where you stopped and play the maximum amount of numbers in the order that you would have played them if you could. Once he is done, your opponent rolls the dice to start his turn.
The winner of a Gioul game is the first one to bear off every one of his checkers. In the case that the loser bears off at least one of his checkers, he loses just 1 point. In any other case, he loses 2 points.
David Carnegy - Managing Editor
