Backgammon vs Turkish Tavla vs Plakoto: What's Actually Different?

Walk into a London club, an Istanbul coffeehouse and an Athens taverna and you will find the same board on every table — twenty-four points, thirty checkers, two dice — hosting three noticeably different games. Here is what actually separates international backgammon, Turkish tavla and Greek plakoto, beyond the accents.

The Shared Skeleton

All three are members of the tables family, one of the oldest gaming lineages on earth. The equipment is identical, and so is the goal: race your fifteen checkers around the board, bring them home, and bear them off before your opponent does. Doubles play twice over in all three games, and in all three the loser of a race can still win through contact — hitting or trapping enemy checkers to buy time. If you know one game, you are perhaps twenty minutes from playing either of the others badly but legally.

International Backgammon: The Cube Changes Everything

Modern international backgammon — the version played in tournaments and in our app — starts from the familiar layout (two checkers back, five on the midpoint, three on the 8-point, five on the 6-point) and layers competitive machinery on top:

• The opening roll is split. Each player rolls one die; the higher starts and must play those two different numbers. Doubles are re-rolled, which is why there are exactly 15 opening rolls to learn — all covered in our opening guide.
• The doubling cube. The single biggest divider. Either player may offer to double the stakes; the opponent takes (and owns the cube) or drops (and concedes immediately). Skilled cube play is worth more rating points than any checker technique — the cube rules guide covers takes, drops, redoubles, Crawford and Jacoby.
• Graded wins. A gammon (opponent bore off nothing) scores double, a backgammon (opponent still in your home board or on the bar) triple — multiplied by the cube. Details in the scoring guide.

The result is a game where risk itself is a resource: every checker decision echoes into a future cube decision.

Turkish Tavla: The Same Board at Double Speed

Tavla uses the same starting position and the same movement rules as backgammon — a Turkish player can sit at an international table and play legal moves immediately. The differences are competitive culture turned into rules:

• No doubling cube. Games are worth one point, or two for a mars (the Turkish name for a gammon, when the loser has borne off nothing). The triple backgammon win is generally not counted in traditional play.
• The opening works differently. As commonly played, the players roll one die each for the start, and the winner then rolls both dice fresh for the first move — unlike the international rule, where the two opening dice are the ones already showing. (House rules vary here; some circles play it the international way.)
• Matches, not money games. Tavla is played to a fixed score — five points is the coffeehouse classic — and the banter is, culturally speaking, mandatory. The dice have their own Persian-derived names (hepyek for double ones, dübeş for double fives, düşeş for double sixes), called out as they land.

Strategically, removing the cube changes value calculations more than beginners expect: without the option to cash a strong position by doubling, tavla rewards playing on for the mars far more often, which makes attacking, board-closing styles more profitable than they are in cube backgammon. The vocabulary maps one-to-one — a made point is a kapı (door), hitting is vurmak, the checkers are pul — and our glossary covers the international terms on the other side of the bridge.

Plakoto: No Hitting — Trapping

Plakoto, one of the three games in the Greek tavli trio (alongside portes, which is essentially backgammon without the cube, and the no-hitting race fevga), makes the boldest rule change of the family. Each player starts all fifteen checkers on their own far corner point, and there is no hitting at all. Instead, landing on an opposing blot pins it: the trapped checker lies underneath yours, unable to move until every checker on top of it leaves. A pinned checker isn't sent back to restart — it is frozen mid-journey, often at catastrophic cost.

Two consequences define the game. First, blots are radically more dangerous than in backgammon: a hit checker re-enters and resumes, but a pinned checker can be held hostage for the entire game. Second, the mother checker rule: the last checker on your starting point carries special weight — if it gets pinned on that starting point before it ever leaves, the game is immediately lost as a double. Guarding the mother while racing everything else is plakoto's signature tension. Like tavla, plakoto is played without a doubling cube, and winning before the opponent bears off a single checker scores double.

One Table, Side by Side

Which Should You Play?

Honestly: the one your family taught you, plus international backgammon. The international rules are the lingua franca — the version with a world of opponents, a rating ladder, tournaments and a century of theory to steal from. Everything transfers: a tavla player's attacking instincts and a plakoto player's paranoia about loose blots are both genuine advantages at a backgammon table, once the cube is added to the toolkit.

Our app plays international rules on certified fair dice, in 23 languages — Turkish very much included, mars counted and celebrated. Start with the how-to-play guide if the international details are new, raid the strategy guides when you're ready to compete, and bring the coffeehouse energy with you: the table is free, right in your browser.