The dice-and-checkers classic loved from Moscow to the Caucasus. In Long Nardy nobody gets hit: you win by blocking your opponent's path and racing home first. Switch to Short Nardy for classic backgammon, where a lone checker can be hit and sent back.
Goal: Bring all 15 of your checkers into your home board (the last quarter of your route) and bear them off before your opponent does.
The board has 24 points (triangles) in four quarters of six. Each player has 15 checkers of their colour and always moves them forward along their own route, by the numbers rolled on two dice. White moves first.
Each player's home board is the last quarter of their route: once all their checkers have arrived there, they can start bearing them off.
Roll both dice, then move: each die is a separate move of that many points. You may move two different checkers or the same one twice (the intermediate point must then be open too). A double (both dice showing the same number) is played four times.
You must use as many dice as you legally can, even when it hurts. If only one die can be played, it must be the higher one when possible; if no move is possible at all, your turn passes.
White always opens the game and White's first roll is never a double: it works like the official opening roll-off, where each player throws one die and the winner moves first using those two numbers. Colours swap for the rematch.
At the start all 15 checkers of each player sit on a single point, the “head”, in opposite corners of the board. Both players move in the same direction (anticlockwise) and travel all the way round the board to their home.
Only one checker may leave the head per turn. The one exception is Black's first roll: with 6-6, 4-4 or 3-3 Black may take two checkers off the head (and must, if that lets more of the roll be played), because White's head blocks the way.
Checkers are never hit. A single checker is enough to hold a point: your opponent cannot land there, although they may jump over it.
You may hold several points in a row to slow your opponent down, but you may not form a block of six consecutive points unless at least one opposing checker is already beyond it. This applies at every moment of the turn, even if a later move would break the block.
Starting position: 2 checkers on the 24-point, 5 on the 13-point, 3 on the 8-point and 5 on the 6-point, counting from your bearing-off side. The two players move in opposite directions.
A point holding two or more opposing checkers is closed. A lone checker (a “blot”) is hit when an opposing checker lands on it: it goes to the bar and must re-enter in the opponent's home board, on the point shown by a die, before any other move. If the entry points are closed, the turn is lost.
There is no doubling cube.
When all your remaining checkers are in your home board you may bear them off: a die removes a checker from the matching point (a 6 from the point farthest from the edge, a 1 from the nearest). If that point is empty you must move a checker from a farther point; if there is none, the die bears off your farthest checker.
Instead of bearing off you may also move within your home board. In backgammon, a checker hit during the bear-off must re-enter and come back home before you continue.
The first player to bear off all 15 checkers wins.
In Long Nardy a win is worth 1 point (oin), or 2 (mars) if the loser has not borne off a single checker.
In backgammon it is worth 1 point, 2 (gammon) if the loser has borne off nothing, and 3 (backgammon) if, in addition, the loser still has checkers on the bar or in the winner's home board.
In Long Nardy take a checker off the head almost every turn and occupy the points just past your opponent's head early: they will waste dice. In backgammon avoid leaving blots within reach and build consecutive points in your home board.