Tavla: Turkish Backgammon

1. What Is Tavla?

Tavla is the Turkish family of tables games and, by common consent, the national game of Turkey. It is the dominant board game of the Turkish café (kahvehane) culture: sets are kept behind the counter of tea houses across the country, games are played rapidly and loudly, and the rules are transmitted almost entirely orally rather than through rulebooks. The word covers both the equipment — the hinged wooden board itself — and a family of distinct games played on it.

The standard, everyday form is kısa tavla ("short tavla"), a game essentially identical to Western backgammon with a handful of rule differences described below. It is the form meant when Turks simply say "tavla", and it is by far the dominant café game. Alongside it sit uzun tavla ("long tavla", a no-hitting race in the Moultezim and long-nardy family), gül bara (the ascending-doubles game shared with Bulgaria) and hapis or esir tavla (the pinning game equivalent to Greek Plakoto). A separate historic game called Tawula, recorded in older sources, is a different and older game and should not be confused with modern tavla.

For the general framework of tables games — board layout, dice, bearing off — see the backgammon rules page and the glossary.

2. Equipment and Turkish Vocabulary

Turkish play has its own settled vocabulary, useful both at the board and when reading Turkish-language material. The single most-searched Turkish query on the subject is "tavla nasıl kurulur" — "how is tavla set up" — which for kısa tavla is answered by the standard backgammon setup shown in section 3 (see also the backgammon setup page).

Dice rolls are traditionally announced aloud in a mixed Persian/Turkish set of number words, a legacy of the game's transmission through Persian-speaking culture. The doubles have fixed names that every café player knows:

The mixture is visible inside the words themselves: dü ("two") and şeş ("six") are Persian, while beş ("five") is Turkish — so dübeş, double fives, is literally a Persian–Turkish compound. The same bilingual habit gives the region the name shesh besh, from the call for a 6-5 roll.

3. Kısa Tavla: The Standard Game

Kısa tavla uses exactly the same starting position and direction of movement as standard backgammon. Each player begins with two checkers on the 24-point, five on the 13-point, three on the 8-point and five on the 6-point, for a starting pip count of $2 \times 24 + 5 \times 13 + 3 \times 8 + 5 \times 6 = 167$.

Movement, hitting (kırmak), entering from the bar and bearing off all follow standard backgammon practice. The differences are few but characteristic:

Scoring is therefore simply $1$ point for a normal win and $2$ points for a mars. Games are played in informal series rather than cube-driven matches. Opening theory carries over largely intact from standard backgammon — see the opening strategy page — with adjustments for the hit-and-run ban and the absence of the cube.

4. Uzun Tavla: The Long Game

Uzun tavla ("long tavla") is the Turkish member of the long-game family that also includes Moultezim and the Russian game long nardy. It is not — despite what some English-language summaries have claimed — the standard Turkish form; that position belongs firmly to kısa tavla.

In uzun tavla all fifteen checkers begin stacked in a single corner of the board, and both players move in the same direction around all four quadrants. There is no hitting at any stage: a single checker controls its point, and the game is a pure contest of racing and blocking rather than of blots and the bar. This places uzun tavla in the same structural family as gül bara, Greek Fevga and long nardy, all of which are documented on their own pages.

5. Gül Bara: The Ascending-Doubles Game

Gül bara (also written gülbahar, and known in English sources as "crazy narde") is played in Turkey and Bulgaria. All fifteen checkers begin on the rightmost point of the far side of the board, with the two players' stacks at diagonally opposite corners; both players move anticlockwise (counterclockwise) in the same direction. There is no hitting, and a single checker controls a point.

Its signature is the ascending-doubles rule: from the fourth roll of the game onwards, a player who rolls a double first plays that double, then plays every higher double in sequence up to 6-6, as far as the position allows. A player who rolls 3-3 after the rule activates thus plays 3-3, 4-4, 5-5 and 6-6 — up to $4 \times (3 + 4 + 5 + 6) = 72$ pips in a single turn if every move is legal. This makes gül bara famously volatile: a single mid-game double can transform a losing race.

Scoring follows the tavla pattern — $1$ point for a plain win, $2$ points when the loser has borne off nothing — and there is no doubling cube.

6. Hapis (Esir) Tavla: The Prison Game

Hapis tavla or esir tavla ("prison" or "captive" tavla) is the Turkish equivalent of Greek Plakoto and Bulgarian Tapa — the pinning branch of the tables family. All fifteen checkers begin on the opponent's one-point, giving each side a starting pip count of $15 \times 24 = 360$. There is no hitting; instead, landing on a lone opposing checker pins it, trapping it beneath your own checker until you choose to move on.

The starting stack's final checker is the vulnerable one: losing your anchor ("mother") checker to a pin loses the game double. If both mother checkers are pinned, the game is a draw. Scoring is otherwise $1$ point for a plain win and $2$ points for a win when the loser has borne off nothing, with no doubling cube. The Greek treatment of the same game, including its fuller mother-rule formulations, is on the tavli page.

7. Kırık Tavla and Regional Variation

The name kırık tavla is attested in Turkish lists of tavla variants, but written documentation of its rules is thin, and the rules attached to the name vary by region. This page therefore records the name without attempting a rules description; oral transmission means that many Turkish households and cafés maintain local house rules across all the variants above.

8. Tavla Among Its Neighbours

Tavla sits inside a continuous belt of tables traditions. The Persian game takhteh is its closest sibling — the two share the mixed Persian number vocabulary for dice calls — while Greek tavli, the Russian and Caucasian nardi family and the Levantine naming tradition of shesh besh each pair a backgammon-like short game with no-contact long games, exactly as Turkey pairs kısa and uzun tavla. The shared ancestry of all of these is traced on the backgammon history page.

9. Tavla on GamesGrid

Tavla is a supported offering on the GamesGrid platform launching in 2026, with kısa tavla — the standard Turkish form — as the playable game. Support for further variants will be announced with the launch. This encyclopedia page documents the wider tavla family, including forms not tied to any platform offering.

Frequently asked questions about tavla

What is the difference between tavla and backgammon?

Kısa tavla uses the identical setup and movement, but the winner of the opening roll re-rolls both dice (so opening doubles are possible), hit-and-run is forbidden inside your own home board, there is traditionally no doubling cube, and there is no triple win — only a plain win ($1$ point) and a mars ($2$ points).

How do you set up tavla (tavla nasıl kurulur)?

For kısa tavla, exactly as in standard backgammon: two checkers on the 24-point, five on the 13-point, three on the 8-point and five on the 6-point per player. Uzun tavla, gül bara and hapis tavla use different, non-standard setups described above.

What is mars in tavla?

A mars is a doubled win, worth $2$ points, awarded when the loser has not borne off a single checker. It corresponds to the gammon in Western backgammon; tavla has no equivalent of the triple-value backgammon win.

Does tavla use a doubling cube?

Traditionally, no. None of the Turkish forms — kısa tavla, uzun tavla, gül bara or hapis tavla — uses the cube; games are worth $1$ or $2$ points on their own merits.

What is uzun tavla?

Uzun tavla ("long tavla") is the Turkish long game: all fifteen checkers start in one corner, both players move the same way around the board, and there is no hitting. It belongs to the Moultezim/long-nardy family and is a secondary form beside the dominant kısa tavla.

See Also

• Backgammon rules and setup
• Takhteh — Persian backgammon
• Tavli — Greek backgammon
• Nardi — long nardy
• Shesh besh
• Opening strategy
• Backgammon history
• Glossary

Footnotes