Give Backgammon a chance

Among my friends and acquaintances, there are two main groupings as far as games: the poker people and the chess people (and a very, very small group of people who enjoy the game of Go). Now, a great many of my friends don't really like games all that much to begin with (and I'm talking about real games, not time-wasting computer games), but the vast majority of them that do like board games don't generally enjoy backgammon. I've often wondered why this is, since poker and chess both involve a great deal of strategy and poker has a fairly major element of chance. Yet, they still talk crap on my favorite game and I really don't know why.

Whenever I'm somewhere being social (family gathering, hanging out with friends, etc.) and I ask if anybody wants to play backgammon, any taker will sit down and say almost exactly the same thing: "I played when I was a kid, but I don't remember how". Now, I can understand not "getting" backgammon right away, because it's not like Uno or something where you can sit down and have mastered the rules inside of a few minutes. But pretty much any game I played with any regularity when I was a kid would come back to me very quickly if I were to play it now. Anyway, I'll usually get a game or two out of these folks before they get bored, but rarely any more than that.

The bottom line is this: backgammon is fun, people - get with the freakin' program! :)