Hammacher Schlemmer Inlaid Backgammon/Checker Chest Set. Checkerboard on the outside, backgammon board on the inside. Contains thirty pieces, two dice, and instruction sheet. 

Condition: Commensurate with age. 

Size: 15 5/8 x 8 x 3 in. 

#3401 #8 . 

Backgammon is a two-player board game played with counters and dice. It is the most widespread Western member of the large family of tables games, whose ancestors date back nearly 5,000 years to the regions of Mesopotamia and Persia. The earliest record of backgammon itself dates to 17th Century England, being descended from the 16th Century game of Irish. Backgammon utilizes contrary movement in which each player has fifteen pieces known traditionally as men (short for “tablemen”), but increasingly known as “checkers” in the United States in recent decades, analogous to the pieces used by that game. The backgammon table pieces move along twenty-four “points” according to the roll of two dice. The objective of the game is to move the fifteen pieces around the board and be first to bear off (remove them from the board). The achievement of this while the opponent is still a long way behind results in a triple win known as a backgammon, hence the name of the game. Whereas checkers is similar to chess in that it relies almost exclusively on strategy, backgammon adds an element of luck from the rolling dice into the game. With each roll of the dice, players must choose from numerous options for moving their pieces and anticipate possible counter-moves by the opponent. This has led backgammon to be banned in some places as it was associated with gambling at times due to the inclusion of this random element, while chess and checkers are seen as more “proper” games due to the supposed intellectual superiority of simple memorization rather than knowing how to react in the moment, but it has also been a favorite of military strategists throughout history for this exact same reason.

Commensurate with age.