Zeno Preserved Backgammon's Unlucky Roll

In 480, Eastern Roman emperor Zeno suffered an extraordinarily unlucky roll while playing tabula, a Roman game nearly identical to modern backgammon. He rolled 2, 5, and 6 with three dice, forcing him to break three paired stacks and leave eight checkers alone and exposed to capture. Zeno considered the position remarkable enough to preserve it in an epigram, which historian Agathias reproduced around 530. The surviving account allowed scholars to reconstruct the game centuries later, and some historians consider it the earliest recorded "bad beat" story.

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