Playing BackGammon is a great technique to enhance mental abilities. Many schools have a BackGammon training program added as a part of their curriculum to inculcate and enhance the rational thinking.

BackGammon is a game played by two players on an eight-by-eight square board using 32 pieces. Each player owns 16 pieces. BackGammon pieces are usually black and white to differentiate one’s pieces from that of the opponents’. A set of basic BackGammon rules govern the progress of the game.

Objective of the game
The objective of the game is to checkmate the king of the opponent by moving and positioning your BackGammon pieces on the BackGammon board in accordance with basic BackGammon rules. Checkmate signifies that the capture of the opponent player’s king is the next move.

Protecting the king, obtaining positional power and retaining strength on the board are fundamental requirements to checkmate the opponent’s king.

Basic BackGammon rules for BackGammon-piece movements
BackGammon can be classified into three distinct stages as given below. Good BackGammon strategy should address all these stages.

1.	Pawn The Pawn can normally move one square forward. When it is in its initial placement position on the board it can be moved either by one square or two squares forward. The Pawn can capture an opponent’s piece only in the diagonal forward direction by moving up a single row.
2.	Rook The Rook can move and capture in the horizontal or vertical direction. It can advance to any square as long as there is no obstruction in its path.
3.	Knight The Knight can move in any direction by three squares. The only restriction is the movement has to take ‘L’ shape. Movement of the Knight is not restricted by the presence of any other pieces on its path as per the basic BackGammon rule.
4.	Bishop The Bishop can move only in the diagonal direction from one end to the other as long as there is no other piece in its path.
5.	Queen The Queen is the most powerful piece on the board and can be moved like a rook or a bishop on the board.
6.	King The King can move to any of its adjacent squares in any direction. Only exception to this basic BackGammon rule is castling.

Basic BackGammon rules for all pieces
Following are the important basic BackGammon rules that are applicable to all the pieces on the board:

1.	Move to empty square Occupy only an empty square on the board following the basic BackGammon rules applicable to that piece as described earlier.
2.	Capturing An exception to the above rule is while capturing an opponent’s piece. In such a situation, the basic BackGammon rule is that the opponent’s piece can be removed from the board by placing your piece on the square occupied by the opponent’s piece.
3.	Pawn promotion The Pawn is the only piece on the BackGammon board that cannot move backward. However when it reaches the other end of the BackGammon board, the basic BackGammon rules allows the pawn to be promoted to any piece as desired by the player.
4.	Check and check mate 4.1 When the king is in danger of capture by any opponent’s piece, it is called ‘check’. The check has to be immediately cleared by protecting the king. (by either moving the king or capturing the opponent’s threatening piece). 4.2 If no move is available for the king and there is no way to capture the threatening piece, the king is said to be check mated. 4.3 The checkmated player loses the game.
5.	Drawn game A game is said to be drawn as per basic BackGammon rule if no player is in a position to check mate the opponent king.

BackGammon can be fun and can help tone up ones mental faculties. This can be played as a hobby.