The Ancient Backgammon Variant
One of the known ancient variants in the game of backgammon is a game known as Tabula. This game is said to have come to existence during the times of the ancient Greeks many centuries before the birth of Christ and the founding of Christianity.
Such a game was also very popular in the times of ancient, medieval England. It is said that Zeno, the Greek emperor, was the man that had taken responsibility for a number of historical evidences and information that pertain to the ancient Tabula game, as various records of such have been dated back to about four hundred eighty years after Christ. As you can see, it is one very old and ancient game indeed! However, if one knows or is familiar with the backgammon game as we know it today, therefore, one will not have any problems in being able to play the Tabula game.
On an original backgammon board is where the Tabula game is commonly played. However, the big difference is that this ancient game variation of backgammon makes use of three dice instead of using two dice. Two players would begin the game play by having their checkers played out of the backgammon board, wherein each player only enters the board upon starting at the same place and then advancing in a similar direction with the other. Although some rules such as these are different, the final and ultimate objective of this game is still just the same as original backgammon, where every player must reach home and lose or bear off all his pieces or checkers.
Like in Crazy Narde rules, the game of Tabula also starts with every player rolling one die in order to figure out who will be the first to make a move of his checkers. The player that rolls the higher number, naturally, gets to go first. In the Tabula game, every player must move his checker or checkers only to the respective numbers or numerals that are shown on the dice that he has rolled. Similar to Crazy Narde yet again, is the fact that in Tabula, a player may not place a checker on a point already occupied by two checkers or more of the other player.
Like in the backgammon game, Tabula also makes use of hitting. If one's checkers hits that of his opponent's, it is then taken to the bar, in which the entering from a bar in the Tabula game is also just like that of traditional backgammon.
Tabula is very similar in a lot of ways to original backgammon as we now know it as it uses the same bearing off principles as well.