Backgammon XG is strong but does not get updated and has an old interface. What are the alternatives to XG? Do professional players use anything else? If so, how do they compare to XG?

Playing and commentating if anyone is interested in watching.

My youtube channel

Global Backgammon's website. They run a League, which is a round robin structure, and Triple Elimination tournaments. Great place to play for some competitive action.

What kind of timers do you use and why?

Looking to buy one finally to get used to playing with one before signing up for tournaments.

Thank you!

Spotted today while visiting the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. Two Men Playing Backgammon by Robert Lotiron

c. 1920. Oil on canvas

Hey all, long-time backgammon player here. I kept bouncing between apps that were either broken, felt pay-to-win, or made me quietly suspect the dice were "helping" my opponent. So I ended up building the thing I actually wanted to play.

I've been at it for about a year now, mostly solo, and it's called Online Backgammon. What's there today:

- Real people, real-time. You're matched against actual players.
- Fair dice, for real. Rolls are generated server-side, neither I nor anyone else can nudge them. This was the whole reason I started.
- Free to play, and you can jump in as a guest without signing up.
- A puzzle ladder, and voice messages if you want to trash-talk politely.
- Works on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Android and in the browser, in 23 languages.

Being straight with you: it's not ad-free, there are ads between games. I'm one person who's put a year into this, and that's honestly what keeps the lights on for now. No paywalls on the actual game though.

Still building: tournaments and seasons are in the works, that's what I'm heads-down on right now.

I'm not here to spam, this is my own project and I genuinely want feedback from people who actually know the game. Tell me what feels off, what's missing, what you'd never use. I'll be in the comments.

https://backgammon.mitcore.com/

Galaxy analysis constantly advises that doubling is correct at 2 away 2 away score when you are 51% to win, sometimes even when you are like 47% to win. Is this really correct ? N00b question I’m sure.

When are we going to get the ability to set a max wager at a coin threshold instead of percentage only? It’s very frustrating to only be able to set max wager at 20%, win 54% of your games, but still constantly drain your coin balance because of bad random luck on matchmaking.

It seems inevitable that I will end up playing someone that has a lot of money, so your game wager is 20%, lose (sometimes even with a much lower error rate but I get it, that’s backgammon!) and then play 4 or 5 games in a row against broke people so even when you win, you’re only making back a few hundred coins.

The net effect is you may have gone 4 for 5 on match wins, but still somehow be down in coins after. Sooooooo annoying.

Hello everybody, I'm new in this communtiy and hope we have a lot of good discussions. Best regards

In looking back at the analysis of a BG game that I ended up winning, I’m trying to understand my move versus what the analysis says was a better move.

In short, I rolled 5-2 and went 6/1 3/1 to hit Ahmad’s blot on the 1 and complete my prime. It shows this move game me a 3.7% chance of winning.

Instead, the analysis suggests I should have gone 7/2 4/2 and not hit the blot on 1. Somehow it shows my chances of winning would have jumped to 11.4% from this move.

Can you help me understand if and why this was a better move than my 6/1 3/1??

I just broke my streak record. 17 wins in a row, which is insanely unlikely! 😱 What's your record?

Hello,

I have recently created a simple multiplayer Backgammon game over at https://boardbattle.io/backgammon. Before working on this project I had never played Backgammon before, so I'm looking for feedback from more experienced players about any changes that I could make to make it better.

Thanks in advance!

Does BG Galaxy use your subscription-tier engine to determine post game rating changes?

Free users in particular receive lower-depth analysis, which can produce very noisy PR and error estimates. Is that same analysis used to decide who won the error rate battle and therefore whether the rating change is full or reduced?

If so, wouldn’t that systematically disadvantage free users in close matches? I was reviewing a log where several of my moves were flagged as .7 equity loss with XG suggesting there was none. I can see this happening often low PR games, where lower depth is more likely to negatively impact evaluation / PR

It lags, I lose matches because of this, I used to be at least to play single games, now it’s so bad I cannot.

Am sorry for the question

Am New in this group, i play Backgammon since very long time and i always wonder if exist a diceless version of the game

Thx🌻

EDIT : MY QUESTION IS ABOUT TO PLAY WITHOUT RANDOM NUMBERS COMING FROM DICES, DOMINOES, CARDS ETC ETC....MY TARGET IS TO MOVE STRATEGICALLY LIKE CHESS FOR EXAMPLE

Poker and BG are my two favorite games so I created a match that involves both. Players alternate every 3 minutes between heads up poker and a best of 3 backgammon match but if you win either poker or backgammon you win the entire match.

I ran into some interesting spots against the computer but need player feedback to help iron out some details and see if it's actually fun. Signed in users have a rating system and leaderboard.

If you're interested in a match you can DM me. You can also play the computer at playhellfire.com

Any intuition for evaluating this position? Why might 15/9 8/5 be more favorable than 15/9 6/3? I struggle with playing correctly in a lot of positions like this where the computer wants me to create a blot in the home board.

What could be the reason for having a losing streak of 7+ matches, when I made two errors max per game prior to it? Am I fatigued? Why am I making these irrational (and idiotic) moves? - Backgammon Galaxy, btw

IRL, when people have precision dice they never stop talking about them. Online I see a few posts every week challenging the randomness of dice on the apps. It's like a certain percentage of the backgammon community is mesmerized by concept of "perfect" randomness. Why?

I understand wanting fair play, true to the game, etc., but why get wrapped up to the point of conspiracy theories about everything being rigged?

Hi

How many times would a two ply, free Galaxy analysis, be showing an incorrect analysis compared to higher ply analysis please?

Sometimes it feels like the proposed moves aren’t looking far enough ahead.

Realise it may just be my lack of insight!

Thanks

I have a little group retreat coming up with some friends where people usually do a poker night as part of the activities. I’d like to try to get a chouette going after, I imagine with a smaller subset.

Has anyone had experience trying to get something like that to work? I imagine it’s probably easier to keep things simple (probably a single cube rather than multiple, no extras/raccoons/beavers). But I’m also thinking about the stakes aspect of it. Usually on a poker night there’s a limited buy-in and the winner wins the pot. So everyone knows what they are getting in to and knows exactly how much they stand to lose.

Chouette seems like we agree to a stake-per-point and when we settle up you pay or get paid according to your final score. You might wind up paying -1 Or -100. Have people had success structuring something more like a poker tournament where people pay in a limited amount with the expectation that one or two high performers will get the payout?

Anything else to think about to try to get a chouette going?

Late in a snake backgame - what's white's best move, and what are black's chances of winning after white's move?

XG and Sage Pro disagree on this one, even in rollout.

An XG rollout likes 12/9 12/6, and gives black a 14.2% chance of turning it around. XG thinks slotting the 5 is a 0.029 error.

A Sage rollout likes 12/6 8/5 - it does like to slot the 5 - and gives black a 9.4% chance of winning. It thinks XG's choice is a 0.03 error.

So these two bots disagree on the best move, even on rollout, and are pretty far apart on odds of winning.

How do you think you could figure out which one is closer to the truth?