Tourne-Case Backgammon Variant

Tourne-Case is a French Backgammon variant that was well loved in the 17th century.

Every participant has only 3 checkers that all begin outside of the Backgammon board. Each player plays on his side of the board alone, shifting his men from left to right. The goal in Tourne-Case is to get every one of your checkers across the board and stack them on your home point.

In order to begin playing Tourne-Case, 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.

In this Backgammon variant, a checker can be brought into the board when you put it on the point of the number you rolled, but you can't bring a checker onto a point that is already held by other checkers.

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 rules of checker movement in Tourne-Case are as follows:

1. A checker can only be placed on a point that isn't held by any of the opponent's checkers. However, regarding the home point, the final point in a checker's course across the board, this rule does not apply. In other words, a home point can have multiple checkers stacked on it.
2. Checkers have to stay in the order in which they were brought into the board, meaning that when playing this Backgammon variant, once a checker moves, none of the other men can skip it.
3. There are 2 dice in Tourne-Case and the numbers on each of them signify 2 independent moves.
4. Doubles are only played 1 time.

In the case that you can not use every number you rolled, you have to use as many as possible, since the numbers that you did not play are dropped.

In this Backgammon variant, hitting from your home point is out of the question. Nevertheless, you can hit the other player's checker by going to a point that is open, right across the board from his checker. Once a checker is hit, it goes to the bar and has to be brought into the board once again by the opponent as soon as possible. In the case that the opponent can not bring in a checker from the bar, his turn gets lost.

Furthermore, if you bring every one of your checkers to your home point before your opponent, you win the Tourne-Case Backgammon game. If the defeated player has brought in every one of his checkers and doesn't have any checkers on the board, then he drops 1 point, while in any other case he drops 2 points.

David Carnegy - Managing Editor