Nackgammon, Tapa and Other Backgammon Games

Readers often ask us for new ways to use their backgammon board. The good news is that the board, the dice and the checkers support a whole family of games. Some differ from backgammon only in the starting position; others change one rule and with it the whole character of the game. Here are two of the best known.

Nackgammon

The name differs from backgammon by one letter, and so does the game: only the starting position is new. All other backgammon rules stay the same.

Starting position

• 2 checkers on the 24-point;
• 2 checkers on the 23-point;
• 4 checkers on the 13-point (the mid-point);
• 3 checkers on the 8-point;
• 4 checkers on the 6-point.

Compared with backgammon, one checker is taken from the mid-point and one from the 6-point, and both go to the 23-point.

Where it came from and how it plays

The variant was devised by the American player and teacher Nack Ballard, after whom it is named. He wanted his students to practise positional play. With four checkers back, it is much harder to escape and start a pure race early, so even a big roll such as 6-5 or 6-6 rarely ends the contact. Games are longer and richer in priming battles, back games and holding positions. That makes nackgammon a useful training tool and an interesting game in its own right.

Tapa

Tapa is a pinning game, popular in Bulgaria; in Greece a very similar game is known as plakoto. The name means "cap" or "lid": the idea is to put a lid on your opponent's checkers and trap them.

How it differs from backgammon

The direction of movement and the aim of the game are the same as in backgammon: bring all your checkers home and bear them off first. The key difference is what happens to a blot. A single checker that is "hit" is not sent to the bar. Instead, the attacking checker sits on top of it and pins it. The pinned checker cannot move until the checker above it leaves, and the point counts as held by the player on top. Points can also be made in the ordinary way, with two or more of your own checkers.

A blot left on your starting point is especially dangerous. If the opponent pins it there, that checker may be trapped for the rest of the game. Under the rules described to us, this ends the game as a heavy loss for its owner, unless both players have been pinned on their starting points, in which case the game is a draw.

Strategy

• Pin your opponent's blots as close to his starting point as you can. The deeper the pin, the longer the checker stays trapped, and you can keep it there until your own bear-off.
• Large doubles, such as 5-5 and 6-6, are excellent pinning rolls early on, when many blots are still on the board.
• Do not hurry. Primes are less important than in backgammon, so the two sides often advance slowly in loose, almost-primed formations, and the moment the two armies pass each other can be dramatic.
• The game is never over until it is over. Even a checker pinned deep in enemy territory can be freed if you block enough of your opponent's checkers that he is forced to move the pinning one.

Three games in a row

In Bulgaria tapa is especially loved by older players in parks and cafés. It is traditionally played as part of a series of three games: backgammon, gulbara and tapa, played one after another without the doubling cube. Bulgarian players use many Turkish terms for the rolls; "shesh besh", for example, means a roll of 6-5.

More variants

The board offers many more possibilities. Acey-deucy and the Dutch and Russian games are described in other game variations of backgammon, and one-point matches and hypergammon in more new backgammon variations.