The important questions: Should I quit my job, go off the grid and become a backgammon gambler?

The vinyl case cost less than $50, but it makes me feel like a million bucks. I hold it in my right hand as I walk the short distance from my house to a local pub. With each step I feel more in character. I become the type of charming rapscallion romanticized by literature. The case lends me a certain air, I feel; somewhat sophisticated with a dash of vagabond. 

Upon arrival at the watering hole, I open it up, putting the contents on full display: two cups, 30 stones and four dies – five if you count the doubling cube. My case is no mere accessory. It houses a backgammon set.

Backgammon, I’ve learned, belongs to the “tables” family of board games. It is one of the oldest in the world with roots going as far back as Ancient Babylon. A game called tabula – with rules almost identical to backgammon – was played in the Byzantine Empire during the fifth century.

The backgammon case lends me a certain air, I feel; somewhat sophisticated with a dash of vagabond

A good 1500 years or so later, I’m meeting my friend Mustafa to learn how to play; or rather, to learn how to play better. Born in Istanbul (in Turkey, backgammon is as common a sight in coffeehouses as actual coffee), Mustafa is the baby of his family. He used to watch his father and older brother play for hours until one day mustering up the gall to challenge them. He beat both of them in such embarrassing fashions that they eventually refused to play him.

Or so he tells me. Mustafa is a storyteller, but not one prone to self-aggrandizing, so I trust every word. And besides, I want to believe it. Stories, it seems, are as much a part of backgammon as the schadenfreude that comes from hitting an opponent’s blot (the name for an unprotected stone that when landed upon is made to travel to a horrible purgatory in the middle of the board). 

Another origin story I heard was from a woman named Marilyn who moved to Dawson City years ago to find locals enraptured by the game. Wanting to involve herself in her new community, she asked around, but couldn’t find anyone willing to teach her how to play … without her first agreeing to play for money. After unwittingly and indirectly investing several hundred dollars in the local economy, she walked away with a new hobby and a razor sharp calculation for multiples of six.

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As for me, any romanticism I attached to my future off the grid as a derelict backgammon gambler was quickly severed by my first game with Mustafa. Despite his undying mercy and nurturing counsel throughout, I was thoroughly walloped. After a few more rounds Mustafa advised me to only play him gratis for the time being because once any other player caught sight of my unsullied backgammon case, I’d be targeted and exploited.

The case that I thought had lent me a heretofore unattainable level of worldly refinement turned out to be nothing more than a blot of a different sort. Still, I’m already looking forward to rolling again, and with a little luck, gaining a scuff or two.