I'm Carmen Carothers. I spent thirty-one years in banking, the last fourteen managing a branch here in Tampa, and I retired in 1997. Two weeks after my retirement party my nephew put a modem in my computer and showed me the First Internet Backgammon Server, and I have been going to bed at two in the morning ever since.

I learned backgammon from my father, Julius, at our kitchen table in Baltimore, in the 1950s. He drove a bread truck and got up at four, and every night after supper he'd set up the board and play my uncle for a nickel a point while my mother did the crossword and pretended not to watch. I was allowed to sit on the step stool and move the checkers for whoever was winning. When I was ten he started playing me instead. He never once let me win. The first game I won from him honestly, I was thirteen, and he got up and shook my hand.

The board was a walnut case with inlaid points, red and cream, bought in 1946 with his first paycheck after the Army. When he passed in 1994 it came to me, and I drove it down to Florida on the passenger seat with the seat belt around it. It sits on my desk next to the computer. When I'm stuck on a position on FIBS, I set it up on Daddy's board. It helps. I can't tell you why.

What it is. FIBS, the First Internet Backgammon Server, has been running since 1992. It's free. At any hour of the day or night there are a couple of hundred people logged on from all over the world, playing matches, watching matches, and talking. I've played people in Denmark, Japan, Brazil, Israel, and Ocala.

Getting on. FIBS is a text-based server. The plain way to reach it is with telnet, the program that comes with Windows: connect to fibs.com, port 4321. The first time, log in as guest and it will walk you through choosing a name and a password. You can play like that, typing your moves, with the board drawn in letters. People do. I did, for a month.

Then my nephew put a client program on my computer, and I recommend you get one right away. A client connects to FIBS for you and draws a real board, with checkers you move with the mouse and dice that roll on the screen. There are free ones for Windows and the Mac. Ask on FIBS and someone will tell you where to find one; ask three people and you'll get three opinions.

A few commands you'll use, if you're typing:

Ratings. Everyone starts at 1500. When you win a match your rating goes up and your opponent's goes down, by more if you beat someone rated above you, and by more for longer matches. Most regulars are somewhere between 1400 and 1800. The best are well above that.

Experience. Next to your rating, FIBS keeps your experience: the total number of match points you've ever played. New players' ratings move faster until they have a few hundred points of experience, so don't panic about your first week. Mine went to 1390 and back to 1550 before I'd figured out the cube. Today I'm at 1688, with about 7,900 points of experience.

Saved matches. If your connection drops in the middle of a match, and with a modem it will, FIBS saves the match exactly where it was. When you and your opponent are both logged on again, you can pick up where you left off. This is wonderful, and it's also abused. See manners.

My father taught me three things about backgammon: make points, count, and don't fall in love with your back checkers. I've since read books by people who play much better than either of us did. They say the same three things, in more words.

Opening moves. The first roll can't be doubles, because each player rolls one die and the higher one moves first with both numbers. So there are fifteen possible opening rolls, and the good moves for most of them are settled. The ones to memorize first:

The others (2-1, 4-1, 6-2, 6-4 and the rest) are argued about, and the arguments have gotten livelier since the computer programs started playing them their own way. Pick something reasonable and spend your time on the middle game instead.

The pip count. Every checker has to travel to your home board and off. The pip count is the total number of points all of your checkers still have to travel. At the start of the game each side has 167. Whoever has the lower count is ahead in the race. Counting is boring and slow and you have to do it, every time you're thinking of doubling, every time you're deciding whether to run or hold. Most clients will count for you. Learn to do it yourself anyway. Daddy counted out loud under his breath, and I still do.

Priming. A prime is a wall of consecutive points. Six in a row is a full prime, and a checker trapped behind it cannot get past, period. Build your points next to each other, from your 8-point down into your home board, and an opponent's checker behind them is in prison.

The holding game. If you fall behind in the race, keep an anchor (two or more checkers on one point) in your opponent's home board or on his bar point, usually your 20-point or 18-point. You sit there, safe, and wait for a shot as he brings his checkers home past you. It's patient. It wins more often than you'd think.

The back game. The desperate cousin of the holding game. You're far behind, so you hold two anchors deep in his home board and wait for a late shot. When it works, it's glorious. The trouble is timing: while you wait, you have to keep moving, and if your other checkers run out of useful moves before the shot comes, your own position crumbles. Most back games I've played I've lost, many of them by gammon. I play them anyway, once in a while, for Daddy, who loved them.

And the most important part of the game isn't on this page. It's the cube. See the doubling cube.