Backgammon’s Modern History
Backgammon is a very historical game that was rooted from the ancient times. It has been a popular and valuable game among rulers and royalties. It has versatile names from different countries to which it became popular. It used to be an exclusive game only for individuals belonging to the upper class of the ancient society.
But the old traditional game of backgammon continues to evolve to its modern history. It came to Asia as a game called Nard. It was played using 2 dices in order to move the markers. The backgammon took its name Nard from the name of the wood product that was used to play the game. The dices used for playing Nard have inscriptions that has different ancient writing symbols.
The unique style of the dices used represents the time value of year, month, hours of the days and days of the month and week. The contrast colors of the dices also represent day and night. The Chinese version of backgammon was popularly known as T’shu-p’u which arrived in China during the Wei dynasty after it was invented in Western India. The Japanese version of backgammon was called Sugoroku.
It was believed that backgammon was widespread in the Roman Empire as Tabula and was made known throughout Asia as Nard by the Arabs. The Tabula version of backgammon uses 3 dices while the Asian version Nard uses only 2. However, Tabula gained wide popularity when it began to undergo revision from using 3 dices down to two.
The evolution of backgammon’s variety versions and the popular backgammon for beginners guides opened the opportunity for backgammon to acquire its prevalent gambling structure that it was later on banned until the reign of Elizabeth I. Backgammon became so popular among different nations taking the form of different names. Backgammon finally gets its official set of modern rules in 1973 when Edmond Hoyle codified the rules to be played for backgammon.
The modernization breakthrough of backgammon started in the 1920’s when an unknown gambler made enhancements on the skill element involved with playing backgammon to increase its marketability and at the same time retain and maintain its popularity as a past time. Further modification of backgammon rules were made in 1931 in the U.S. It reached its latent period during the resurgence in the 1940’s but regained its popularity again during the World War II.
The first official world championship tournament in backgammon history happened during 1960’s which was organized and promoted by Prince Alexis Obelensky. This took place in the Bahamas and the award retains as the highest honor for backgammon. The 1970’s marked the worldwide acceptance of backgammon with a surge of backgammon’s popularity, increased publicity and more tournaments. Backgammon’s literature crops up in books, magazines including newspaper columns.
The popularity of backgammon among the upper class of the society was extended down to the middle class and even among younger generations. The computer revolution commences in the 1990’s and marked the introduction of backgammon software that could teach an individual how the game is played through the Internet. From then on backgammon swept the Internet and gained more popularity than ever before in the modern society.