Backgammon
Backgammon is one of the oldest known board games. Its history can be traced back nearly 5,000 years to archeological discoveries in the Middle East, originally in Iran. It is a two player game where each player has fifteen pieces ("checkers") which move between twenty-four triangles ("points") according to the roll of two dice. The objective of the game is to be first to "bear off", i.e. move all fifteen checkers off the board. Backgammon is a member of the tables family, one of the oldest classes of board games.
Courier chess
Courier chess (or The Courier Game or simply courier) is a strategy board game in the chess family. The original form probably originated in the 12th century and is known to have been played for at least six hundred years. The game was subsequently replaced by a more modern form. It pioneered the modern chess bishop (called the "courier"), and probably played a part in evolving modern chess out of Medieval Chess.
Courier Chess is played on a board of eight by twelve . Literary and artistic evidence indicate that the board was checkered from the beginning, but that there was no consistency as to which squares were dark. The more frequent practice seems to be that the square at each player's lower-right is white.