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As one of my little addictions, I enjoy playing backgammon – a lot. Although it is a dice game and not much depends on thinking and strategy, it is something I deeply cherish for a few reasons. First and foremost, I associate the game with the closest person to me, namely my mother. This is one of our traditions whenever we are together – drinking wine and rolling the dice. Second, the games are always funny because she is extremely animated but so am I. Everything is always a big joke and regardless who wins or loses we would always laugh about it.

What I love about backgammon is the part in which regardless of your strategy, you depend on your luck and what dice you’ll roll. It actually reminds me quite a lot of life. It doesn’t really matter what kind of skills and knowledge you have, sometimes all you need is a little bit of luck or just to be on the right place at the right time. The same rule applies to backgammon I guess. Sometimes the doubles can save you from losing spectacularly and sometimes they can make things even worse.

Googling backgammon you’re going to find a bunch of Wikipedia articles explaining what the game is. In short, it is a two-player board game played with, as I mentioned earlier, dice and some checkers/counters. It is also played on a board which consist of 24 narrow triangles called points.

Backgammon came from Persia or Mesopotamia and currently in Bulgaria is played mostly by elderly people. The goal of the game is to move all 15 of your pieces around the board and be the first to remove them from it.  

The funniest part about our games are the trips to Mars. Excuse me? Trips to Mars? This generally doesn’t make much sense but in Bulgaria when you lose the game and you haven’t managed to remove a single checker from the board, then you have to put the space suit. Right, now I’ll go into more detail and stop making unfamiliar references. Usually when you lose a game, your opponent wins a point. Whenever you lose a game without removing at least one checker from the board, your opponent scores two points instead of one. Hence, the trip to Mars. Needless to say, I have been wearing my space suit pretty often.

Honestly, there is a lot to talk about when it comes to it. In Bulgaria we have three versions of the game whose purpose is the same. What is different, however, is the way you play and the rules. Yet again, it is awfully fun. Though it is not only tactic but a significant amount of luck.

Nowadays you can learn to play not only physically but also online. Personally, I am not big on the online game because you don’t have the thrill of rolling the dice and moving the checkers one or two pieces at a time. This in my humble opinion is the biggest charm of the game. I guess for people with less experience playing digitally can help polish their skills and give them the needed time to think and react to their opponent. It also helps because some players may be rather aggressive when they play.