Its name notwithstanding, Irish was one of the most international forms of tables games, the equivalent of French toutes tables, Italian tavole reale and Spanish todas tablas,[1] the latter name first being used in the 1283 El Libro de los Juegos, a translation of Arabic manuscripts by the Toledo School of Translators.

Irish gamyne[a] is mentioned as early as 1507 being played by the Scottish king, James IV,[2] and was a game at which he was apparently a "great hand".

[3] In 1586, the English Courtier and Country Gentleman says that "In fowle weather, we send for some honest neighbours, if happely wee bee without wives, alone at home (as seldome we are) and with them we play at Dice and Cards, sorting our selves according to the number of Players, and their skill, some in Ticktacke, some Lurche, some to Irish game, or Dublets.

[9] The earliest rules go back to Francis Willughby's manuscript of English games written c. 1660-1677, and a less detailed account in Charles Cotton's The Compleat Gamester which was published in 1674 and reprinted until 1750.

"[6] After that, the game of Irish fell into obscurity apart from the term aftergame which was used figuratively to refer to measures taken after an initial plan had misfired.

Willughby describes a typical board of two halves, hinged in the middle and divided into four 'tables' each of six points upon which the pieces, known as men, move.

[f] In Irish, the fore game or foregame was the preferred tactic whereby the player, aided by rolling high numbers, played his or her men off the board without having had any of them removed by the opponent.

[8] Backgammon, in its earliest version, introduced a number of changes to Irish and subsequently ousted it in popularity during the 18th century.

[10] Compared with early backgammon, the modern game has added the doubling cube and introduced further rule changes.

Winning double is now called a gammon and is achieved if a player bears all pieces off the board before the opponent has borne any.

Double-hand Irish was a four-player, partnership game in which the two players of each side threw the dice in succession and the better throw was played.

Irish has been equated to the Spanish game of Todas Tablas,[1] the rules for which appeared in El Libro de los Juegos published in 1283 by King Alfonso X of Castile.

[12] The games uses a standard tables board, albeit with semi-circular cut-outs in the border at the base of each point to hold a circular piece.

Alfonso's rules may be summarised as follows:[11] We are told that Todas Tablas ("all tablemen") is so named because in the setup the men are spread across all four tables of the board.

Some historical sources have equated Todas Tablas with Backgammon,[j] but Alfonso's rules describe a much more basic game and the illustrated setup is different.