No one argues backgammon is a game that requires skills. However, this game is a dice involved as well, so it’s impossible to eliminate an element of luck. One is unable to predict, what numbers will bring the next roll, so we can say dices add randomness to this game. The only thing a player can do is to get some knowledge concerning probabilities and try to think of several moves beforehand.

When you play backgammon in casino or with your friends, you roll dices yourself and there’s no way you can tell what numbers will be shown. If you play backgammon online, you don’t roll dices as system makes it for you. All you see is the result of the throw, so make sure you play in a respective casino there results of dice throws are based on complex mathematic algorithms and thus are fair. You can play backgammon online safely in case the site has own random number generator that is monitored by independent auditor.

This randomness of dices should make you understand the game better as you understand the chance of throwing a particular combination in case of making a risky decision. Each dice throw (throwing two dices at the same time) can give you one of 36 possible combinations. Using a theory of probability you can choose, what move will be less risky for you while thinking of moves that can, for example, leave a blot and 1 or 9 points away from your opponent.

Let’s imagine your opponent gets any combination containing 1 to hit a blot. We can count the probability for that. Except the 1-1 combination, 1 can appear 10 more times (1-2, 1-3, 1-4, 1-5, 1-6 for the first dice and 2-1, 3-1, 4-1, 5-1, 6-1 for the second). It means in 11 of 36 possible rolls your opponent can get 1.

At the same time there are not so many dice rolls that can give you 9 points in sum. These are just 3-6, 6-3 and 5-4, 4-5. Easy calculation shows you can get 9 points only in 4 rolls from 36 and that is not much at all, so you can make decisions based on such roll probabilities and choose the most reasonable and less risky one.

Also you might have noticed from the previous example that the probability of hitting a particular number under 6 is much higher than hitting a combination above six. By the way, hitting six is not difficult as in addition to single six dice (already 11 rolls out of 36) you can hit 6 with 3-3, 4-2, 2-4, 5-1 and 1-5! That is just another 5 rolls, so you can hit six in 16 rolls from 36 (that’s more than 1/3 of rolls).