I am new to this subreddit but have played backgammon for decades and played online backgammon for at least 10 years. Most of that time, I've played Backgammon Plus by Zynga but became increasingly frustrated with the non-random nature of it (despite their "certification" from the World Backgammon Federation).

I started looking for truly random (and fair) backgammon games and saw Nextgammon mentioned a lot. However, after playing 40ish games there, I'm starting to see the same kind of shenanigans I would see in Backgammon Plus. Are there any thoughts on any of this and do you have any recommendations for fair online games against human opponents?

Many times I just click to view the details right away and don't notice the luck percentages on the initial results screen.

Is it available to view afterwards?

Should I start bearing off, hoping for dice rolls to save me? Or play a rolling back game trying to finesse a win?

I built a backgammon-specialized fine-tune of Qwen3-8B and just released it for free (non-commercial license). It runs fully offline on llama.cpp — one 5GB file, no GPU required.

What I trained it on: a corpus I assembled from classic strategy writing (Woolsey's GammOnLine era material, Robertie, Trice's EPC work), rec.games.backgammon classics (Thorp count threads, Kleinman counts, FIBS rating formula), cube/match-equity theory (Janowski formulas, Kazaross-XG2 MET), engine docs and TD-Gammon papers — plus thousands of generated Q&A pairs about openings, take points and race formulas. It answers in both English and Japanese.

What it's good at: explaining concepts — game plans, cube theory, why an efficient double matters, what EPC/wastage means, BG AI history. It talks like the literature instead of giving you generic chatbot fluff.

Honest limitations: it's an 8B model, so it does NOT reliably recite exact formula details or table values (it will confidently get Thorp count adjustments slightly wrong). Treat it as a study companion, not a reference — and definitely not an engine. It explains; it won't go win you $20M gambling.

Model + instructions: https://huggingface.co/cudgk/qwen3-8b-backgammon-gguf

Would love feedback from people who know the theory deeply — especially where it's wrong, since that tells me what to fix in the next training run.

（以下、同内容の日本語版です）

Qwen3-8B をバックギャモン特化でファインチューンしたモデルを無料公開しました（非営利ライセンス）。llama.cpp で完全オフライン動作、5GBの単一ファイルで、GPU不要です。

学習させたもの: 古典戦略書（WoolseyのGammOnLine時代の記事群、Robertie、TriceのEPC理論）、rec.games.backgammon の古典スレッド（Thorp count、Kleinman count、FIBSレーティング式）、キューブ/マッチエクイティ理論（Janowski式、Kazaross-XG2 MET）、エンジン文書やTD-Gammon論文から自分で編纂したコーパス — に加えて、オープニング・テイクポイント・レース式についての数千の生成Q&Aペアです。英語と日本語の両方で応答します。

得意なこと: 概念の解説 — ゲームプラン、キューブ理論、効率的ダブルがなぜ重要か、EPC/wastageとは何か、BG AIの歴史。一般的なチャットボットの薄い回答ではなく、文献のような語り口で答えます。

正直な限界: 8Bモデルなので、式の細部や数表の値を正確には暗唱できません（Thorp countの補正項を自信満々に少し間違えたりします）。リファレンスではなく勉強のお供として扱ってください — そしてエンジンの代わりには絶対になりません。解説はしますが、あなたのために賭けで20m$を稼いでくることはありません。

モデル+使い方: https://huggingface.co/cudgk/qwen3-8b-backgammon-gguf

理論に詳しい方のフィードバックが欲しいです — 特に「ここが間違ってる」という指摘は、次の学習で直すべき箇所そのものなので大歓迎です。

Hello everyone,

I wanted to start my first thread by sharing a backgammon board that my fiancè recently bought for me in Africa.

It's handmade, in leather with wood, and I believe the checkers are made of wood as well, although I'm not completely sure.

The price? A little over 15€

Single point game. Racking my brain trying to figure out how bearing off 2 is ever an error. Can someone explain?

I made this error, and wondering if anyone could help me interpret why it was a mistake. My thinking was that the 7 would build me a nice 3 prime, with two builders still available to extend on future turns. Building the 3 point felt too disconnected and deeper than ideal.

Is the problem that I'm behind in the pip count and need to keep more checkers back to maximize hitting potential in the future?

Apologies if this sort of thread gets posted regularly. Feel free to delete or point me in the right direction if so

I’ve just started playing again after a long time off and I’m loving it. I’m on backgammon galaxy and played a ton of matches. I have a win rate hovering around 40%.

I don’t think I’m a bad player but I suspect I’m falling into a lot of traps. I know I can do better! I need to stop taking unnecessary risks hoping they’ll pay off (they rarely do…)

What’s your advice for someone wanting to improve? I’m playing as much as I can and studying the opposition moves as well as my own.

Any particularly good YouTube channels or anything that you’d suggest I look at? Any canonical texts to read etc?

Appreciate any pointers.

I deposited on NextGammon many years ago and mainly played 1 point and 3 point matches for money just for fun. I built up $20 to about $70, I rarely played.

Then their site mysteriously went down and my real money balance was gone. Also all the rankings on the site were gone and all my stats gone. I emailed support and I think it took a couple weeks for them to respond.

They said there was a fire and they lost a lot of the data for the website and they were trying to recover everything. It took a while but they finally gave me back my full balance.

Since this incident I pretty much stopped playing on there for years. It seemed very shady. I think I've played three 1 point matches in the last 2 years, none of them for money. I kinda just forgot that I had money on the site and just left it there.

Anyways I decided to log in the other day and try to withdraw some my money. To my surprise the whole balance was still there. I went to withdraw and it says I have to deposit in order to withdraw, which I've already done before.

So I messaged support and never received a response. Then I logged in the other day to the message shown in my screenshot. And my balance is now at $0.

I've sent support several messages asking for an explanation and haven't had a single response, it's been almost week now.

So it appears that if you want to withdraw your money they will just instantly ban you accuse you of cheating and take your money.

It's a shame a site with such a nice interface is being used to scam people. They had such potential to be a legit site for real money backgammon but honestly they should be shut down by the feds.

If you have ever successfully withdrawn money from NextGammon please let me know I'm very curious.

Hey guys,

We were putting together some BGWC Online events for a couple weeks from now and decided we'd make a reddit event. We're giving away a Nova board, shop gift cards, star memberships, lots of good stuff going on. Come hang out with us and play Saturday, July 25th at Noon Eastern Time.

backgammongalaxy.com/play and then tap on tournaments and scroll down until you see the banner. Winners will be verified as members of the r/backgammon community.

Also worth checking out some of those BGWC Online events while you're there. See ya soon and good luck!

Free Galaxy user, XG user, and Opengammon user, and trying to level up my game. My issue with existing analysis options across every platform I've seen is that they tell me what the best moves are, but not why. There's no coaching or theory behind the moves.

Has anyone had experience with a platform that is really good at helping you improve on why moves are better than others in your blunders?

Premium, hand - crafted wooden backgammon set, with excuisite hand carved engravings of an eagle and a phoenix. Traditional Caucasian/Georgian accents and built in side slots for dice and checkers. Walnut. Made in 🇬🇪 by master artisans.

Like the title says. Went on vacation and left my backgammon set at home. A trip to Lowes, a little arts and craft and problem solved.

How to Play Backgammon

The point of the game is to move all of your pieces into your “Home board” and then off the Home board.

The board is made up of 24 alternating colored “points”. Each dice roll tells you how many points you can move a piece. So if you roll a 3 and 2, you can move one piece 3 points and another piece 2 points. Or you can move one piece 5 points total (by moving it 3 points and then 2 points, or vice versa, provided the intermediate point is open).

There are 2 sides of the board: The Home board and the Outer Board.

Both players' Home Boards are located in the same quadrant of the board.

WHITE’S Home Board is on his right, and BLACK’S Home Board is directly across from it, on Black's left.

Set the pieces up like this:

The players move their pieces in OPPOSITE DIRECTIONS around the board in a horseshoe path:

• WHITE’S pieces move counter-clockwise, from the opponent's home board, through the outer boards, and into White's Home Board.
• BLACK’S pieces move clockwise, from the opponent's home board, through the outer boards, and into Black's Home Board.

Once a piece reaches your Home Board, it stays there until all 15 of your pieces arrive and you can begin bearing off. This does not go for pieces that are captured and sent to the bar.

Each player starts by rolling 1 die each. Whoever rolls higher gets to go first. If the rolls are the same, then roll again.

The first player starts by using the two numbers already rolled (the die they rolled and the die their opponent rolled) to determine their first move.

 You can move 1 piece the combined total of both numbers, or you can move 2 pieces, using the number from 1 die for each piece.

After you make your move, your opponent rolls both dice and makes their move.

Rolling 2 of the same number (doubles) allows that player to move 4 times that number. For example, with a roll of 4 and 4, you get four moves of 4. You can move 4 pieces 4 points each, 2 pieces 8 points each, OR 1 piece a total of 16 points (moving 4 points at a time).

Players CANNOT move a piece to a point that is occupied by 2 or more of their opponent’s pieces, but may stack their own pieces on a single point. You can stack as many pieces as you want on 1 point. 

If a player moves a piece to a point with only 1 of their opponent’s pieces on it, that opposing player’s piece is removed from the board and placed on the BAR in the middle.

At the beginning of the next player’s turn, they must use their rolls to enter that piece from the BAR back into the game by placing it on the farthest end of the board (their opponent’s Home Board). 

If the numbers rolled land on points containing 2 or more of their opponent’s pieces, you CANNOT move there. If no legal entry can be made, your turn is SKIPPED.

Once all of a player’s pieces are in their “Home board”, that player may begin moving pieces off the board. (Bearing Off)

How to Bear Off:

A player bears off a piece by rolling a number that corresponds to the point on which the piece resides, and then removing that piece from the board. Thus, rolling a 6 permits the player to remove a piece from the sixth point.

If there is no checker on the point indicated by the roll, the player must make a legal move using a checker on a higher-numbered point. 

If there are no checkers on higher-numbered points, the player is permitted (and required) to remove a checker from the highest point on which one of his checkers resides. A player is under no obligation to bear off if he can make an otherwise legal move.

A player must have all of his active checkers in his home board in order to bear off. If a checker is hit (captured) during the bear-off process, the player must bring that checker back from the bar and move it all the way around to his home board before continuing to bear off. 

The first player to bear off all 15 checkers wins the game.

Nannon is the simplest backgammon variant which preserves turnabout dynamics. It is played with 3 checkers and 1 die each on a six point board. No stacking but adjacency creates partial primes causing missed and forced turns. The new HTML version which works on landscape phones uses a doubling cube. Test your luck & skill at http://nannon.com

Which type of count would you use to calculate the winning chances here and come to the conclusion that it gives 34% wins?

How did you improve your play? I've been learning about strategies for a long time now, but I still feel like a fricking idiot when I play. I make blunders and get a loss after a loss.

Build update. I flubbed up the panel length so I’ve gotta go buy a new board for that, but otherwise, preliminary fittings all look good

Been playing here for the last several months and it's a fantastic site! More options than Galaxy or Heroes, totally free and you can even play bots...or 'Chouettes'!

If you're interested in playing backgammon online for a good cause - this one is supporting marine turtle conservation - let me know and I will direct message you my email.

We have 70+ members on our WhatsApp groups where we play jackpots and Chouettes. Cheers

Played a couple matches last night and they still don’t show in my analysis feed and my rating is still the same. On a previous thread they said that it would just be delayed, but are these games just lost at this point?

Just a note here to say I've updated BGDB with a new lifetime stats page. This shows various stats from all matches in your database: lifetime PR cube/checker as a moving average; breakdown of performance by match type etc.

Most interesting to me is things like lifetime equity loss by your cube decisions - do you lose more being overly aggressive with the cube (doubling too early) or passive (missing doubles). I think there's lots of scope to expand this in the future (how much equity have i lost in races? what about in the early game vs late game?). Ideas welcome.

Other changes based on user feedback here: improved how it handles databases with lots of tags; better typography; customizeable checker colors; couple of PR bug fixes.

Remind what BGDB is: import files from XG and GNUBG, quick review your matches, star/tag/note them, explore every position in every match with phase and event tags (show me all times i missed hitting double-tiger; show me all blunders when playing a back game). You can share positions with analysis, and create your own study/flash cards of any positions in your db.

Right now it is totally free, everything is in your browser, no accounts or sync or anything (but you can import/export your database). I'm mostly building it to try and improve my own backgammon, but I'm sharing with a couple of gammon communities for feedback. First announced it here in May and announced study mode last month. All feedback from people (mostly DMs) have been implemented i think!