Jacquet (game)

Jacquet is a tables game, a member of the backgammon family, played on a backgammon-style board by two players who each move fifteen pieces in the same direction around the board rather than in opposing directions as in standard backgammon. Its defining feature is the postillon, or courier, a single designated piece that must reach the final quadrant of the board before any of a player's other pieces are allowed to move. Unlike backgammon, Jacquet has no hitting or trapping of an opponent's pieces, making it a pure race game decided by speed rather than by blocking or capturing strategy; it is very similar or identical to the related game Fevga. Jacquet emerged around 1800 and became the standard tables game in France, and it remains popular in a band of countries around the Mediterranean, including Greece, Turkey, Lebanon, Egypt, Spain and Syria.