Wil: Thanks for the link. Lolol - it's the one I gave in my reply to you earlier. ;-)) It's good but it's not quite as rigourous as I'd like - it's geared towards explaining how to play rather than enumerating and defining the rules (something that would tend to frighten beginners away, lol).

That bear-'em-all-off-first move breaks the rule about moving one man for each of the dice values and moving by the exact number of pips on the dice except when bearing off, when the pips may be more than required. Allowing one "illegal" move in a special circumstance where it makes no material difference to the outcome of the game doesn't mean that any illegal move is okay at any time.