Two Ancient Games, Two Worldviews

Chess, in its modern form, took shape in fifteenth-century Europe — but its lineage runs through Persian shatranj and Indian chaturanga, back to the courts of antiquity. It was, from the beginning, a game of war: kings, knights, and generals arrayed on a battlefield of pure logic.

Backgammon’s roots are older still. The Royal Game of Ur, played in Mesopotamia some five thousand years ago, is widely considered the ancestor of the game we know today. The Romans called their version tabula. The Persians refined it. The Ottoman court adopted it as the language of unhurried conversation between men of standing.

The two games arrived at the modern table from very different starting points. Chess descends from a model of warfare. Backgammon descends from a model of life — its rhythm, its turns of fortune, its quiet negotiations.

Chess: The Game of Perfect Information

In game theory, chess is what is known as a game of perfect information. Both players see the entire state of the board. Nothing is hidden, nothing is random. In principle, every position has a correct move; in practice, the tree of possibilities is too vast for any human mind to compute, which is exactly what gives the game its grandeur.

The chess player’s task is one of pure pattern recognition and calculation. The greatest grandmasters can hold dozens of moves in their heads, sense weakness in a position long before it can be proven, and play with what looks, from the outside, like prophecy.

This is the closest a game can come to a model of pure reason. It rewards the disciplined mind, the patient mind, the mind that has done its homework. Properly understood, it is magnificent.

But it is also a closed system. The chess player never has to decide what to do when the world changes mid-game. There is no equivalent of bad weather, of a shifting market, of a counterparty’s surprise move. There is only the board.

Backgammon: The Game of Decision Under Uncertainty

Backgammon begins with a roll of dice — and so does every move that follows. The position is open, the strategy is yours, but the world keeps interrupting.

This is what makes backgammon mathematically distinct from chess. Each turn, the player faces a probability distribution: thirty-six possible outcomes from two dice, twenty-one if you count duplicates only once. The skilled player does not try to predict the next roll. He plays the position so that the largest number of possible rolls leave him better off than they leave his opponent.

This is, in formal terms, expected-value reasoning. It is the same logic that governs a hedge fund’s risk model, an insurance underwriter’s pricing, a venture capitalist’s portfolio. You cannot control the outcome of any single instance. You can only structure your decisions so that the distribution of outcomes favours you.

A strong backgammon player learns to live with a loss after a perfect game and a win after a flawed one — and to know the difference. That is not the temperament of someone who needs certainty to act. It is the temperament of someone who has made peace with the fact that the world is largely uncertain, and that the only honest response is to think clearly anyway.

The Doubling Cube: Backgammon’s Hidden Sophistication

Most people who do not play backgammon have never noticed the doubling cube. It is a single die, larger than the others, marked with the powers of two: 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64. It sits on the side of the board, often unused by the casual player, and yet it is one of the most sophisticated devices in any game ever invented.

The cube was introduced in New York in the 1920s. Its function is simple to describe. At any moment, before rolling, a player may “offer” the cube — proposing to double the stakes. The opponent must then choose: accept the new stakes, or concede the game at the current stakes. If accepted, only the accepting player may offer the next double.

This single mechanism transforms backgammon. It introduces a pricing problem on top of the playing problem. Now the player is not only deciding how to move; he is deciding when his position is worth more than his opponent believes it is. He is reading the other player’s read of the position. He is making, in miniature, the kind of judgement an investor makes when he decides whether to hold, raise, or fold.

Mathematicians who have studied the cube — and they include some of the most distinguished probability theorists of the last century — describe it as one of the most elegant decision instruments in any game. It is the reason backgammon, despite its dice, is taken seriously by people who take decisions seriously.

Why Decision-Makers Choose Backgammon

It is not an accident that backgammon has, over the past several decades, become a quiet preference among investors, traders, and founders. The game’s structure rewards the same cognitive habits their work demands: thinking in distributions rather than certainties, separating decision quality from outcome quality, and pricing risk in real time.

Hedge fund offices in New York and London keep boards in their lounges. Private members’ clubs from Mayfair to the Bosphorus list backgammon among their resident games. Backgammon has long been the game of choice on board the kind of yacht that crosses oceans rather than harbours.

The reason is not that backgammon is “harder” than chess. It is that backgammon resembles the actual texture of consequential decisions. Chess teaches you to compute. Backgammon teaches you to decide.

For someone whose professional life is spent making large judgements with incomplete information, this is not a metaphor. It is practice.

Two Aesthetics, Two Settings

The two games even live in different rooms.

A chessboard belongs in a study, a library, the quiet corner of a club where two people can sit for hours without speaking. Its aesthetic is monastic. The pieces are uniform, the colours strict, the geometry rigid.

A backgammon board belongs in a different kind of room. On the deck of a yacht, in the late afternoon. On the terrace of a villa overlooking the Aegean. In the lounge of a private club where conversation moves between hands. The board itself is a piece of design — leather, hand-stitching, the weight of the checkers, the depth of colour on the playing field. It is meant to be looked at, opened, used, and admired in equal measure.

This is why the great houses have, for the past century, chosen backgammon as the game of their salons. The Seahorse Heritage Collection — Heritage Tan, Mediterranean Teal, Imperial Light Ash, Imperial Deep Graphite — was designed within this tradition. Each set is a piece of furniture as much as it is a game.

The Choice Isn’t Either / Or

The serious collector, of course, owns both.

A fine chess set and a fine backgammon set are not competitors. They are two different ways of training the mind, and two different ways of inhabiting an evening. One asks you to think alone, in a closed system, for as long as it takes. The other asks you to think with a partner, in an open one, for the length of a conversation.

But if you find yourself drawn to the game that resembles real decisions — the game of probability, of pricing, of judgement under uncertainty, of the doubling cube — backgammon is a quiet declaration of how you prefer to think.

And the object you choose to play it on says the rest.

For a closer look at how Seahorse Backgammon approaches material, craft, and colour across the four signatures of the Heritage Collection, read our guide to choosing a luxury backgammon set, or explore why backgammon is increasingly understood as the ultimate luxury game.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between backgammon and chess?

Chess is a game of perfect information that rewards calculation and pattern recognition. Backgammon is a game of decision under uncertainty that rewards expected-value reasoning and risk pricing. They test different cognitive skills — neither is harder than the other, they are different in kind.

Why do investors and traders favour backgammon?

Backgammon’s structure mirrors the cognitive demands of finance: thinking in probability distributions, separating decision quality from outcome quality, and pricing risk under uncertainty. The doubling cube, in particular, replicates the logic of pricing decisions familiar to investors.

What is the doubling cube in backgammon?

The doubling cube is a six-sided die marked with the powers of two (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64). Either player may offer to double the stakes before rolling; the opponent must accept the new stakes or concede the game. Introduced in 1920s New York, it transforms backgammon from a playing game into a pricing game.

Why is backgammon associated with luxury?

Backgammon has been played in royal courts and aristocratic salons for over five thousand years. Its physical form — a folding board with leather exterior, hand-stitched detailing, and weighted checkers — has long been treated as a piece of decorative furniture as well as a game.

Should a beginner choose backgammon or chess?

Backgammon is generally easier to start playing because the rules are simpler and the dice provide an immediate sense of momentum. Chess has a steeper initial learning curve but offers a deeper purely-strategic ceiling. The two are best treated as complementary rather than alternative.