You can only start bearing off after you have moved all 15 of your checkers into your home board, the final quadrant. If even one checker is still outside your home board, you must bring it home before removing any. Once all are home, you begin taking checkers off using your dice rolls. If one of your checkers gets hit during the bear-off and sent to the bar, you must re-enter it and bring it all the way home again before you can continue bearing off. This is why players try to clear the opponent's checkers out of their home board before starting the bear-off.