Ah, you have a Mac !
Checking … there is a Mac version…
eta - ninjificated !
Attempting…
==> Next steps:
- Run these two commands in your terminal to add Homebrew to your PATH:
(echo; echo 'eval “(/usr/local/bin/brew shellenv)"') >> /Users/*myname*/.profile
eval "(/usr/local/bin/brew shellenv)”
- Run brew help to get started
- Further documentation:
\https://docs.brew.sh
MacBook-Pro-15:~ myname echo; echo 'eval "(/usr/local/bin/brew shellenv)"‘) >> /Users/myname/.profile
-bash: syntax error near unexpected token `)’
MacBook-Pro-15:~ myname eval "(/usr/local/bin/brew shellenv
> echo ‘eval “(/opt/homebrew/bin/brew shellenv)"' >> ~/.zprofile
\> echo; echo 'eval "(/usr/local/bin/brew shellenv)”’) >> /Users/myname/.profile
>
And then… nothing. (Not sure what’s up with the formatting.)
That would be one possibly correct way to go. But there aren’t set rules about which quadrant is which color’s home. (Except in a particular program or maybe a club’s rules.) Basically players settle between themselves while setting up the game which will be their home quadrants. I’ve never seen it not be one of the quads on your side of board, but it could be the quadrant to your left OR to your right. If left, then you will be going clockwise, if right, counterclockwise. You just put the men in the starting position that agrees with the route you and your opponent have settled on. (Some players are superstitious.)
Nope. You have to look at each number rolled as an individual play that has to be legal. So you’ve rolled a 3 and a 4 and want to move one piece both? Fine…but the man has to be able to legally land on at least one of three or four pts away as your first move and then you play the second move. Actually in play you’d just move the seven points, but I assure you your opponent would squawk loudly if there wasn’t one of the relevant legal landing points on the way.
Exactly! These are called ‘blots’, and killing your opponents blots is one of the pleasures of backgammon.
No. Mostly if there is no legal move for one of the numbers you roll (like you roll a 2 and your opponent has two or more men on every single point moving two would leave your man, you lose that move. But then you can still move a man whatever number was on the other die, let’s say it was a five. Note, however, that AFTER you move some man the five, it may then be in a position to move the two, and you don’t lose that play.
Right! You’re just making a move, it didn’t bear a man off. Suppose before you rolled you had just one man outside your home quadrant. You could use your first play of the turn to move that man into your home quad and then bear a man off with your second. Or chose to use the second roll to move a man from one point in the home quad to another point in the home quad. (This might seem strange, but if you are lucky enough to have a man or more of your opponents pieces ‘trapped’ in your home quad, then bearing a man off might mean creating a blot the opponent could attack, and moving the third or fourth man on one of your points to a lower point with that move instead might be a much safer move.)
Nope, that’s where the 'taking someone off the highest available point comes in. You have five points to ‘use’, and no pieces on 5 or 6? Then take a man off 4. Nobody on 4? Go with a 3 and so on. Just take from the highest occupied point you have.
Nope. Each move has to be landed on a legal point. If the opponent is blocking a point you need, too bad. Incidentally, in a situation like that you lose BOTH of the numbers you rolled, because the rules are that you HAVE to get all your pieces back on the board before you can move any other man. So if you’d rolled your snake eyes and your opponent is occupying your 1 point, you can’t bring in the man from the bar AND you can’t use the other three one-point moves elsewhere on the board. Too bad, so sad!
(This is getting awkwardly long. On to fresh message.)
Consider a roll of a 4 and a 3. It helps to not think of the roll as a 7 at all, but rather only a 4 and a 3. Instead of “I can move one piece seven spaces” it’s “I can move one piece 4 and then 3.” Seems like it’s the same but critically, it’s not. You would say the roll was a 4-3, not a 7.
Experience? 
As someone else has already said, your having a multiple consecutive points can be a great disadvantage to your opponent. So suppose you own a pair of points with one open between them. Making a move that creates a blot between them gives an immediate target (bad) but IF he doesn’t hit it, maybe then you can move another man to join in, and instant three point ‘blockage’ he’ll have to deal with. Same sort of thing if you own two consecutive points. Opening a blot on the point directly beside those two is better than a blot in some other random place. Also, some points just end up as pivotally important, like the point just before your home quad is great to own. You’ll find this sort of thing out as you play a few games.
So it did install brew successfully? I just tried it, however I have to report it does not find the gnubg cask; apparently it is no longer supported there?..
Try this, perhaps:
https://xenon.stanford.edu/~hwatheod/gnubg_web/gnubg_web.html
The user interface is clunky in that you have to type all of your commands manually in the form eg 8/5 6/5 Backgammon notation - Wikipedia
If you type “hint” in the command window you get hints
I don’t know. I pasted what’s in the window.
That looks too clunky to be fun. I think I’ll just have to try the advice so helpfully provided in this thread, and see what works on the game I have.
Here’s the board in its starting configuration.
Apparently I’m the cat on the blue background. So… How do I start, and which way do I go?
Are you white? If so, then you start on the upper right and go counter-clockwise around to the bottom right.
I don’t see any cats? But your earlier post was right: you are supposed to be white, and you’ll be moving counterclockwise. For convenience, let’s number the whole board in the ‘usual’ way. The point at the upper right, where you have two pieces, is 24. You have five men on each of 13 and 6 and three men on 8.
Let’s assume the 5-2 roll is YOUR first role. (In a game vs. a person, you each roll one die and the higher number plays first.)
So how to play the 5-2? You could take a man from 13 to 8 and then on to 6. This would be a super safe move – no blots left. It also doesn’t improve your position much (no added points.)
Or maybe one man from 13 to 8 (again, safe) but use the two to A) 13-11 B) 24-22 or C) 5-3. A and C both create blots, B creates two blots. On the other hand, having a blot hit on 24 or 22, especially this early in game doesn’t cost you that much. Not much ‘ground’ lost, and with his inner court pretty open you have great odds on coming right out and maybe nailing him in return. If he rolled 55 or 33 he could hit one of your blots AND make the point. Not wonderful, but there’s still four open points you can come back out on. If he rolls 23 (ouch!) he gets both your blots, but still, five points will be open for you to come back out on, and if you manage to roll a 1, you’ve killed a blot that he will have to run around the whole board while you lost only a short distance.
C is an aggressive move. If the opponent hits your blot you’ve taken a man from safe in your home quad to having to run him around the whole board. OTOH, if he DOESN’T hit the blot, you have a chance to start closing down your home quad and maybe trapping his men inside it.
A is middling ground. If hit, you lose about a half the boards space. If not hit you’re starting to build something in your outer quad if rolls work out.
Personally, I’d got with A.
Or not, depending on how aggressive I’m feeling just then. 
You need to click on the image to open it in imgur so that you can see the whole thing. There are two player icons, one in the top right corner and the other in the bottom right corner. The bottom right icon is the cat silhouette on a dark blue background.
Yes. And I have the white die that says ‘click me.’
If you click on the image, you can see the cat in the lower-right corner.
The computer game appears to do the same.
I can have more than five men on a point?
I don’t have any men on 5.
Sure, why not? You could play 13/6. But a move like 13/8 24/22 or 13/8 13/11 might be better.
The former is considered the “best” opening for 5-2. The second is considered a very close second best.
One of the things you learn as you play is that it pays to leave some blots in order to solidify your position and give yourself more options. When I was first starting out, I had a tendency to avoid blots as much as possible and always go for “safe” moves, and I kept getting my ass kicked.
There are times in a backgammon game when you have your pieces in good positions, and are forced to move them. If it’s your turn, and you roll a number that creates a blot, you can’t just say “I’d rather not do that” and pass. When you roll the dice, if there’s a legal way for you to use the numbers that you rolled, you have to do it, even if it puts you in a worse position.
So, some of the rules define not just what you can do, but what you have to do. Learning those rules, and learning where to move your pieces so you won’t be forced into a bad position, is part of getting good at the game.
Lots of good stuff above, but I didn’t see anyone point out that if you can move a man, you have to move it, even if it’s a bad move for you.
Robot_Arm did.
I believe the roller with the higher number then plays the numbers that were rolled by each player. They don’t start the game with a normal roll with two dice.
Say you and your opponent were starting a game. You roll a 4 and they roll a 3. So you go first and play that 4-3.
That’s right. It’s a bit of an offset advantage/disadvantage: you get the first move, but you don’t get the chance of starting with a double-whatever move.
I think the standard rule says if the two of you do roll matching numbers, you roll again until you don’t match…and each time you match, the doubling die gets bumped to the next level. So the game you thought you were playing for a buck, could start out at $2 or even more. I wonder what the highest number of starting double rolls has ever been?
That is a rule, but only if agreed by both players beforehand, in a money game. Most backgammon is played in tournaments, where that rule definitely doesn’t apply.