Ancient origins (3000 BCE – 600 CE)
- ~3000 BCE — Mesopotamia. The earliest distant ancestor is the Royal Game of Ur, excavated by Sir Leonard Woolley in the 1920s — a clear dice-driven race game on a 20-square track with tetrahedral dice.
- ~3100 BCE — Egypt. Senet shared the dice-and-race idea and appears in the tomb paintings of pharaohs.
- ~200–600 CE — Persia. Nard (nardshir) is widely considered the direct ancestor of modern backgammon — already a 24-point layout with the same race-and-bear-off structure. Iranians still call the game takhteh nard.
- Rome. Ludus duodecim scriptorum ("the twelve-lined game") evolved into tabula — 24 points, 15 checkers a side, initially three dice: essentially the modern skeleton. Emperor Claudius was a devoted player and reportedly wrote a book on the game.
Medieval and early modern Europe (600 – 1850)
- Variants spread across Europe as tables, Irish (England and Ireland), tric-trac (France), and puff (Germany).
- 1645 — England. The word "backgammon" first appears in print — likely Middle English baec ("back") + gamen ("game"), for checkers sent back to the bar.
- ~1850. The rules stabilize into essentially their modern form.
The doubling cube era (1920s onward)
- 1920s — New York. The doubling cube is invented, allegedly in a Manhattan gambling club. One small block of wood transforms a luck-driven race into a game of nerve and judgment — and revives interest worldwide. (Cube theory has been arguing about it ever since.)
- 1931. The first authoritative modern rulebook is published.
- 1960s–70s. The jet-set boom: Hugh Hefner, Lucille Ball, Aristotle Onassis and the celebrity circuit make backgammon glamorous.
- 1967. The first World Championship is held in Las Vegas; in 1979 it moves permanently to Monte Carlo.
- 1981. Paul Magriel publishes Backgammon — the era's most influential primer.
The computer era (1990s – today)
- 1992. IBM researcher Gerald Tesauro's TD-Gammon reaches near-world-class strength by teaching itself through temporal-difference reinforcement learning — one of the most-cited early triumphs in AI history, years before chess fell to computers.
- Late 1990s. Commercial bots Jellyfish and Snowie become standard analysis tools.
- 2000s. Online play arrives (FIBS, GridGammon, Play65, PartyGammon), followed by mobile apps and engine-assisted study with XG and GNU Backgammon.
- 2010s. Neural nets surpass the best humans, and opening theory is rewritten from rollouts.
- 2020s. Cryptographic provably fair dice, streamed commentary, and content-driven communities define the modern scene — with engines grading every move by PR.
Cultural footprint
Backgammon is a national pastime across a striking sweep of the world:
- Iran — as takhteh nard, woven into Persian poetry and miniature painting for centuries.
- Turkey — as tavla, with boards built into café tables and matches played in fast series.
- Greece — as tavli, the Portes / Plakoto / Fevga triplet.
- The Levant and North Africa — as ṭāwla / shesh besh.
- The Balkans, Russia and the Caucasus (as nardy), Israel, Japan, and Mediterranean cultures throughout.
Five thousand years, several civilizations, one recognizable game — see how each region plays it today.