If you are new to Backgammon or when you didn’t play the game for a while, you may find it challenging to remember the correct way to set up the board. How to set up a backgammon board is one of the most asked questions related to backgammon, and that’s why we created this tutorial that will help you to memorize the backgammon setup once and for all. In this guide, we’ll provide you with a simple and easy-to-follow method for setting up a backgammon game that you can use as a reference whenever you need it.
4 Simple Steps to Set Up Your Backgammon Board Easy, and to Never Forget
Step 1
- Place two red checkers in the top right corner and two checkers of the other color in the bottom right corner.
These two checkers are your back checkers and are furthest from your home board.
Step 2
- Place five red checkers in the top left corner.
The current setup is easy to remember. Place two red checkers at the top right, and five at the top left, and do the same for your opponent. Place two orange checkers in the bottom right corner, and five in the bottom left corner to mirror the setup.
Step 3
- In this step, we will position five red checkers opposite the orange player’s two back checkers in the bottom right quadrant.
This area is known as our home board, where our objective is to move all checkers and eventually remove them from the board. To mirror the opponent’s setup, we’ll place their checkers (in this case, orange) far left in the top right quadrant, opposite the back checkers of the red player. As a result of this step, we’ll be left with only three checkers.
Step 4
- For this final step, we’ll have three checkers remaining for each color. We’ll position these three checkers two spaces behind the five checkers we just added in step 3.
In our example, we’ll place the red checkers in the bottom left quadrant on the second point from the right, and the last three orange checkers will be placed in the top left box on the second point from the right.
This concludes the backgammon setup process, and the image above represents the complete starting position for backgammon. For more information on how to play Backgammon, visit our guide with Backgammon rules.