Creating your board
In this section, you can find out how to:- choose a board style
- add checkers
- remove checkers
- clear a point
- place more than 5 checkers on a point
- swap turn, colours, direction or sides
- reset the board to the empty, start or nackgammon start positions
- import a position from gnubg
- import a position from eXtreme Gammon
Adding checkers
Checkers can be added by clicking once within the grid in the position where you want the checkers placed. In order to add checkers, you have to have checkers available, ie there must be checkers in the side trays. If checkers from both sides are available, checkers will be added according to which player is on roll. You can change which player is on roll by clicking the
button. The grid helps you to position the checkers exactly where you want them. For example, if you want to place 3 checkers on the 8 point, click once on the third square in from the edge of the board where the triangle is labeled "8".
Wherever you click on the playing surface of the board, GABBI will try to place that many checkers on the point. If the point is occupied, say by white, white checkers will be used regardless of turn. If there aren't enough checkers available from the side trays, as many as possible will be used. This means that you don't have to be too careful when you're just moving one or two checkers around — clicking anywhere on the point will "fill" the point with as many checkers as are available.
Checkers on the bar.
Checkers placed on the bar behave in a slightly different way to checkers on the playing surface. This is because it is possible to have checkers from both sides on the bar at the same time. Further, checkers placed on the bar re-enter in the opponent's home board, so they are placed nearest to their point of re-entry. There is a notable exception to this; when there is only one side's checker(s) on the bar and the cube is not shown in the centre of the bar, the first checker is placed in the exact middle of the bar with subsequent checkers stacking towards the side they will re-enter.
Removing Checkers
Checkers can be removed in exactly the same way they are added. Suppose you have 5 checkers on the 13 point and you want to remove one checker, leaving 4. Click once on the fourth square away from the edge of the board on the 13 point.
If you wanted to remove 2 checkers, leaving 3 on the point, you would click once on the third square away and so on.
Clearing a point
To remove all the checkers from a point, click on the half-squares that you see just off the top and bottom edges of the board. For example, if you want to clear the 20 point, click once underneath it and any checkers on the point will be removed to the side trays.
Adding more than 5 checkers to a point
You can place any number of checkers on a point by utilising the half squares that appear in the middle of the board, between the tips of the point triangles. These squares behave differently to the others — they add up to 5 checkers to however many are already there. In the example to the right, clicking where the arrow points will add 5 checkers to red's 6 point (you will need 5 checkers available of course — remove all of red's checkers on the 13 point to follow this example).
Following the same principal, any number of checkers can be placed on a point. If you want a stack of 12 checkers for instance, first place 2 checkers then click on the half square above the point to add 5 checkers making 7. Then click the same place again to bring it to 12.
A note on how checkers stack.
GABBI applies a certain amount of intelligence to the way checkers stack. If the opposite point has less than 4 checkers, stacking will only occur after more than 8 checkers are placed on the point (as long as dice or cube display doesn't get in the way). Checkers will normally stack after 5, but the bar may start stacking checkers after as few as 3. Whenever checkers are stacked, the total number of checkers on the point is shown as a gray number on the last checker placed.
Swapping turn, colours, direction or sides
Swapping turn.
Sometimes you will want to change which player is on roll. You do this by clicking once on the button at the top right of the GABBI window. Swapping turn doesn't change the board appearance, but it does change the value of the gnubg position id and the location of the dice. This is because gnubg uses a convention whereby each side has its own board and the player on roll is by default the first board. So when the turn is swapped, although the board looks the same it is slightly different — note how the numbering of the points is changed to reflect the view of the player on roll.
Swapping colours.
Clicking on 
will do exactly as you'd expect — the colours of the checkers are exchanged. Note that swapping colours does not swap the player names associated with the colours. You may need to re-enter the player names depending on what you prefer.
Swapping direction.
will flip the board between clockwise and anti-clockwise checker movement. Point numbering is reversed to match.
Swapping sides.
gives you your opponent's board but with your colour and seen from your perspective. It is actually a combination of "Swap turn" and "Swap colours".
Defaults — all these buttons are set to "off".
Resetting the board
If you want to start from a known point, click 
to reset the board to the normal backgammon starting position. If the "Nackgammon" flag (at the bottom right of the GABBI window) is checked, the Nackgammon starting position will be used instead. See http://www.nackbg.com/nackgammon.htm for information about this popular variant to regular backgammon.
You can also clear the board completely by pressing
.
Note: Take care using these buttons as you will lose any board edits you have made. Form information is not affected — use the "reset" button at bottom right if you want to reset dice, cube and the other form items.
