Backgammon is played with a board, two sets of dice a cube and 30 checkers (15 for each player). The section the player is trying to move all his or her checkers into is called the home board.  The rest of the backgammon board is known as the outer board. A player must first get all his checkers into his home (inner) board before he can start taking the pieces out (called bearing off).

The board setup is based around the long spike triangles seen on the board, which are called spikes. The players must start by arranging their checkers on the spikes according to the following numbering system: your first point in your home board is point # 1, and moving clockwise your last point which appears in your opponents home board is #24. Set up the backgammon pieces as follows:

Two checkers on point # 24,
Five checkers on point # 13,
Three checkers on point # 8,
Five checkers on point # 6.

Your opponent's checkers are set up as a mirror image of your own backgammon checkers. One the backgammon board has been set up it’s time to begin. Each player rolls one die that must land to the right of the bar in the middle of the board and the highest number gets to make the start. Backgammon then moves counter clockwise from # 24 to point # 1 basically the furthest away to your home board. Have a look at the actual board using backgammon software to get a better visualization.