Variants › Acey-Deucey
Acey-Deucey
A lively variant long associated with the United States Navy and merchant marine, Acey-Deucey starts with an empty board and a special roll that can send checkers flying.
Setup
All fifteen checkers begin off the board. Each player enters them into the opponent's home board — a number rolled brings a checker in on the matching point — and then races around the board and bears off, exactly as in the standard game.
Because everyone starts from nothing on the board, the opening is all about entering and developing quickly.
The acey-deucey roll
The variant is named for a roll of 1-2. Roll one and you play the 1 and the 2, then name any double you like and play that (four of the chosen number), then roll again and play that roll too — a single turn that can move a great many pips.
An ordinary double is still played four times, but without the bonus re-roll. If you cannot use part of a roll, you forfeit the remainder of the turn.
How to play it well
Because all fifteen checkers start off the board, the opening is about entering and developing quickly rather than fighting over points. Get checkers into play, spread them sensibly, and don't leave lone blots where an opponent's entering checker can pick them off.
The turn to plan around is the 1-2. Roll it and you play the 1 and 2, then name any double you like and play it, then roll again — a single turn that can move an enormous number of pips. Keep your position flexible so that when an acey-deucey comes, the bonus double and extra roll do the most good.
Once everyone is developed, ordinary backgammon principles take over: make home-board points to punish loose checkers, hit when it gains ground, and race when you are ahead. The extra rolls make Acey-Deucey swingier than the standard game, so a lead is never quite safe until the checkers are off.
A swingy game
Acey-Deucey is more of a gambler's game than standard backgammon, and that is by design. The extra rolls from every double — and especially the bonus double and re-roll from a 1-2 — mean a position can swing hard in a single turn, so a player who looks well behind can catch up in one big sequence. A lead is never as safe as the pip count suggests, and it rarely pays to play too cautiously.
Two habits help. Keep your checkers flexible and spread rather than buried, so that whatever double you roll, or name after a 1-2, has somewhere useful to go. And build your home board early: because loose checkers are common in the scramble to develop, a strong board lets you hit and contain, turning the variant's chaos to your advantage. Above all, enjoy the swings — Acey-Deucey rewards nerve as much as technique.
Scoring, Navy style
In its traditional Navy and merchant-marine setting, Acey-Deucey is usually played for stakes, and the size of a win depends on how much of the loser's race is left unfinished. When one player bears off their last checker, the other counts what they still have on the board — commonly every checker not yet borne off — and the result scales with that total, so finishing while the opponent is badly behind is worth far more than a bare victory.
That makes the bonus rolls cut both ways: a late acey-deucey or a timely double can rescue you from a heavy loss as easily as it can seal a large win. Exact scoring differs from crew to crew and port to port, so it is worth agreeing the count before you start — but in every version the incentive is the same, which is not just to win but to win by as much as the dice allow.
Common questions
Where do the checkers start in Acey-Deucey?
All fifteen begin off the board and are entered into the opponent's home board on the matching points before racing home.
What does rolling a 1-2 do?
You play the 1 and the 2, then choose any double and play it, then roll again and play that roll — the signature bonus of the American/Navy version. Some regional rule-sets grant the chosen double without the extra roll.