Backgammon: Sportier than Chess, Really

My apologies to the Columbia Milkshake Fanciers’ Society (not affiliated with the Barnard Sundae Enthusiasts Association), but yet another student club is about to pass you in line for funding.

Introducing the Columbia Backgammon Association. It’s like a chess club, only without the stigma and a far sexier image — think “Casino Royale.”

Perhaps the best place to begin when discussing backgammon is with the wise words of Homer—Homer Simpson. He was sitting across from Agents Mulder and Scully (imported from another television show) and proceeded to describe his activities on the night he spied an alien: “The evening began at the gentleman’s club, where we were discussing Wittgenstein over a game of backgammon.” Yes, it is a thinking man’s game, with a touch of flair, played by people ranging from stiff-upper-lipped Brits in Monte Carlo, to swarthy Turks and my daily backgammon nemesis (you know who you are).

Furthermore, it is not to be eclipsed by chess. From a strict game theory standpoint, after the opening moves, backgammon’s decision tree is in fact wider than chess’s. And how far did chess really get the mad, Icelandic, sandal-wearing Bobby Fischer anyway?
I’m not sure yet if the CBA will be open to the public at large, but either way, I intend to apply for funding. It would be nice to have a croupier and a waiter serving gin and tonics. It’s also worth spreading the word about a game that far too many people have seen but never played.

With games that fly by in 15 minutes flat, the game of backgammon has remained extremely pure since its somewhat protracted origination. Thought to have emerged from ancient Egypt and ancient Rome, it caught on in the Mediterranean around the turn of the first millennium. Its antecedent Nardschir was even mentioned in the Babylonian Talmud—that’s right, God plays backgammon, not canasta as previously thought. It then grabbed a foothold in England and France during the 12th century and became so pervasive that King Henry VIII’s advisor Cardinal Wolsey thought it best to ban the game in England in the 16th century.

But the formal rules of the game we play today have not been touched since Edmond Hoyle set them in writing in 1743. The only addition was that of the doubling cube, used by gamblers to alternately double the stakes of the game. The cube was invented in the 1920s in the gaming clubs on New York’s Lower East Side.

The CBA, of course, would never condone gambling, because I’m sure not a single dollar has ever changed hands at a Columbia University Poker Club event.
For now, though, the sophisticated group of individuals I’ve encountered who know the right way to play a back game or love to split the backmarkers on the opening roll is, sadly, very small. Luckily, the website www.bkgm.com provides a detailed explanation (with pictures!) of the rules to this game that is easy to play, but difficult to play well.

As tenuous as backgammon’s place on the sports page may be, I turn to English novelist and dramatist Douglas William Jerrold: “The only athletic sport I ever mastered was backgammon.”

So to those of you still donning your running tights and bobble hats in this miserable winter, there is another athletic alternative—apparently. (Though when people qualify things with “apparently,” they tend not to be true, but it’s good enough for me.) All you need is a board, a pair of dice in your hand, and a large chunk of time because I warn you, backgammon is habit-forming, much like “Law & Order” and crack.
And very much unlike milkshakes. Sorry CMFS.