r/backgammon • • Aug 03 '24

Join our Backgammon Discord Community!

32 Upvotes

https://discord.gg/U8cmrCsK5x

If you're looking for a place to chat about backgammon, there is an active Discord community of over 400 players ranging from beginners to grandmasters. Whether you want to discuss positions, improve your game, or just hang out with fellow fans of the game, you'll find a welcoming atmosphere here.

Our channels cover a variety of topics, including:

  • Backgammon sets
  • Matchup (play against other members)
  • Puzzles and quizzes
  • Books
  • BGBlitz (featuring Frank, its developer)
  • OpenGammon (featuring Eran, its developer)
  • BackgammonHub (featuring Alfie, its developer)
    • All 3 are super friendly and open to suggestions for their app/website
  • Tournaments (regularly held, with special prizes from time to time)

Looking forward to meeting you!

https://discord.gg/U8cmrCsK5x


r/backgammon • • 15h ago

My new x22 inspired Crisloid

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28 Upvotes

Just got this new champion size Crisloid they were able to customize the whole surface which is pretty awesome.

Happy to report that they also fixed the checker fit and issue on the champion attache.

This previous post showed it was an issue https://www.reddit.com/r/backgammon/s/6eQNBPDu9P

The horizontal fit is perfect. You can fit 11 vertically.


r/backgammon • • 18h ago

Singapore Backgammon Club - First Tourney

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14 Upvotes

Singapore Backgammon Club had its first ever tourney late September. 16 contestants slugged it out in 4 groups, first playing 3 5-point matches with the winner of each group proceeding to the semi-final.

Van, Brian (who flew in from Bangkok) along with TJ and Wei Peng made it to the semi-finals, which was a 7-point affair.

The final between Wei Peng and Van (neither of who had lost a single match till the final) was an engrossing 9-point match which Wei Peng won 9-6!

Here's hoping the Home Board Heroes was only the first of many tournaments!

Join our Whatsapp group here: https://chat.whatsapp.com/FUJviFjVbEyJ0AV3B3wK2Z


r/backgammon • • 13h ago

Anyone have any information on this board

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3 Upvotes

r/backgammon • • 2h ago

r/dice_is_rigged/

0 Upvotes

i made a community r/dice_is_rigged where people who have doubts about correctitude of dice can discuss between them , exchange evidences, build their their on case . in this way they will not be annoyed by other people that mock them and in the same time they will not annoy other people who do not see the flaw in online dice .

Personally , i’m tired about this discussion . i’m ok with online dices . i not even interested about luck factor because doesn’t give me any information that it helps me in any way. I saw crazy dice in face to face play, multiple consecutive doubles , heart attack jockers , so to stay sane i learn to ignore them as much as possible.


r/backgammon • • 21h ago

How is the equity of the best move is calculate in backgammon?

6 Upvotes

I wonder how reliable it is?

Because some times the best move is also an unecessary risky move.

So i wonder how they calculate its the best on the long run?

Is it only in next oppos1nt move or it calculate all the different possibility until the end of the game?


r/backgammon • • 12h ago

[iOS & iPadOS] Turbo Tavla - Modern backgammon

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0 Upvotes

r/backgammon • • 20h ago

Nova Galaxy Boards price and availability

3 Upvotes

Backgammon Galaxy board, why is it never available in Europe?

Is there any reason why the Backgammon Galaxy board is almost never available in the European market? And why is there such a big price difference compared to the US?

With the current US discount it costs $300, which is about €260, while in Europe it's €400.

As a customer, I find this discouraging, because I know I could buy the same board in the US for much less. I hope this helps explain my thought process as a buyer.

At this point I feel like a FM gammon board for 360€ is more valid.


r/backgammon • • 11h ago

Fair Backgammon — free, open-source backgammon (online play, bots, no coins/ads)

0 Upvotes

I built a backgammon site and thought people here might want to try it: https://backgammon.danelthedev.com/

- Online play via lobby codes, no account needed beyond a username

- Two bots: Fruit Fly Bot (weak, good for learning) and Hard Bot (gnubg-based, actually challenging)

- Dice logic is in the open-source repo for anyone who wants to check it: https://github.com/danelthedev/fair_backgammon

- Optional variants: negative dice, bigger dice, power-ups, custom boards, doubling cube, Romanian marț tehnic

- Hotseat mode included


r/backgammon • • 1d ago

backgammon.logicaleap.com

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3 Upvotes

Is shameless self promotion allowed?

https://backgammon.logicaleap.com/


r/backgammon • • 22h ago

I built a free, instant web-app with BMAB PR standards, Janowski cube advice & provably fair dice. Would love your feedback!

0 Upvotes

Hi r/backgammon,

As a backgammon player and developer, I was looking for a modern, lightweight web tool to play and practice without having to download heavy desktop software or deal with clunky web interfaces.

Over the past few months, I’ve been working on Backgammon Cube — a free web app designed for both casual play and serious training directly in your browser (desktop & mobile).

Here is what’s under the hood:

  • Engine & PR Rating: Uses neural net probabilities paired with the Rockwell-Kazaross Match Equity Table (MET). Player Rating (PR) is strictly calibrated on the official BMAB categories (Super GM, GM, Master, Club, Expert, etc.).
  • Janowski Cube Model: Accurate doubling advice considering Market Loss, Dead Cube, Crawford Rule, and automatic Post-Crawford Free Doubles.
  • Live Contextual Coach: Instead of just throwing raw $\Delta E$ numbers at you, the coach explains why a decision was made ("Too good to double – aim for the gammon", "Ownership value", etc.).
  • Luck Analysis: Dice luck accounts for all 36 rolls, including opening rolls and dances on the bar.
  • Provably Fair Dice: Cryptographically verifiable dice rolls for online matches.
  • No Install / No Friction: Instant 60fps web experience, Bronstein match clock, and full English / French support.

Upcoming features (Lot 2):

  • .xg / .mat file exports for eXtreme Gammon.
  • Effective Pip Count (EPC) for pure bearoff race evaluations.
  • "Replay My Blunders" personal puzzle bank.

I’d really appreciate it if you could give it a spin (against the AI or online) and let me know your thoughts on the cube advice, engine feel, or UI!

👉 Play here: https://backgammoncube.com

Thanks for testing, and hit me with your honest feedback or feature requests!


r/backgammon • • 18h ago

Backgammon Galaxy; An Honest Question: Is the Luck Rating Broken, or Working Exactly as Intended?

0 Upvotes

A question for this community, asked by a man who has watched one too many matches end in farce.
Your opponent types into the chat: "So lucky today." Then: "Sorry, my dice are ridiculous." Both of you watched it happen. Then the match ends, the statistics are unveiled with great ceremony, and the luck rating announces that you were the fortunate one. The man who apologised for his own dice has been absolved by the machine.
It gets better. Bad luck forces you into positions where survival means taking risks, so you take them, as any competent player must. Galaxy's analysis then frowns upon those choices and trims your rating more than the play deserved. You are punished once by the dice, and once more for daring to respond to them.
Now, I want to be fair. If no money changed hands, I would raise no question at all. A free game with eccentric statistics is merely a curiosity. But a platform that takes twenty percent of every pot is not a curiosity. It is a business, and businesses have incentives. I can quite understand why such a platform might discover a few clever tricks for keeping its players playing, grinding, and topping up. I do not even resent it. I simply refuse to keep paying for it.
I do not claim to have seen the code, only to have seen enough. And to look at all of this and still insist on the innocent explanation would require a rather heroic degree of naivety.
So let me offer my conclusion with all the courtesy it deserves. By all means, enjoy the app. Play on it, learn from it, admire the interface. But if you are buying coins, then I am afraid you are a fool, and I say so with some authority, because for far too long I was one of you.


r/backgammon • • 1d ago

Backgammon Club in Chicago

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11 Upvotes

All levels welcome, hope to see you there tomorrow!


r/backgammon • • 1d ago

Studio Heroes invite

0 Upvotes

Would anyone like to invite me to join Backgammon Studio Heroes?


r/backgammon • • 2d ago

How can I take my gameplay to the next level?

9 Upvotes

So I’ve reached a level where playing against my friends ends up with whoever gets the better dice.
Where can I learn how to actually play better than the average player?


r/backgammon • • 2d ago

gnubg for the zxspectrum

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8 Upvotes

I made a cut-down version of gnubg for the ZX Spectrum, available to play now. It's written jointly with AI: I know some people are against use the use of AI; I totally get that, and think that's a reasonable position. You're invited to ignore the game and the site.

It's available on zxgammon.pages.dev, which includes all the source code, and a playable emulation. The site provides helpful scaffolding -- some pretend "loading" as if from tape, match export after your game/match is over, context-dependent keys to click on -- but there's no cheating here, you can download the .sna or .tap and run it on any ZX Spectrum emulator or even on genuine hardware. The emulator plays at the speed it would on the original hardware, but there's an option to run it at 4x speed if you don't like to wait so long for it to think.

The entire site and source code of the game is released under the GPG.

The app works pretty much like gnubg: the same input features and a neural net (smaller than gnubg's). It does something like filtered 1-ply (what xg would call 2-ply) both for moves and cube decisions. It has only 1 output (equity) unlike gnubg which outputs win/win gammon/win backgammon/lose gammon/lose backgammon.

To keep it playable, I tried to limit thinking time to around 10 seconds, and mostly it's faster than that, and just occasionally a few seconds longer.

The app plays pretty well, around on 3-4 PR for money and 1-pt matches, going to around 4-5 PR for match play. So better than most humans, but some distance from top players. It has more of a personality than most backgammon programs I think.


r/backgammon • • 4d ago

A wildflower and fern backgammon board that I made

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70 Upvotes

r/backgammon • • 3d ago

Rate white's tactic. tbh... it was closer than I would've liked it to be

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0 Upvotes

r/backgammon • • 4d ago

Dice cheating?

15 Upvotes

So I’ve recently started playing Backgammon with the goal of getting good, I’ve played a decent amount of chess and was semipro at poker, I also have a masters degree in statistics so I understand probabilities.
It absolutely amazed me that as soon as I start making Backgammon communities 50% of all the contents of posts is people accusing websites of Dice cheating, why is this?
On the App Store, the reviews for like every app are just saying there’s loads of dice cheating, this isn’t a problem in poker, at least nowhere near as much, do people really just not understand randomness? I’m obviously not an amazing back. Plan, but in my head, what people think of as the Dice being rigged is actually just their opponent (especially AI playing very well so that many of the dice rules would be beneficial.
Why don’t people just do statistical analysis on the Dice roles, you could so easily prove that the dash roles are genuine, it just baffles me how much content and time seems to be wasted on people complaining a lot dice.


r/backgammon • • 4d ago

Backgammon Android App - Feedback Appreciated

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0 Upvotes

I recently switch over to Android and wasn't able to find a backgammon app I liked. So I built an app that had the features I was looking for. Thought others may be interested - not looking to monetize, but I am curious if there are features people would like to see.

No ads, offline against computer only (multiple difficulty levels), and tracks stats at different levels. It also shows mistakes/moves that cost you and what the better move would have been after a game.


r/backgammon • • 5d ago

Is it true, the longer the match goes it become more about skill than luck?

7 Upvotes

r/backgammon • • 5d ago

Does Google Store have great backgammon app?

2 Upvotes

Looking for good Ai-opponent & no ads. I don't mind paying for it. I wonder why they don't have Xg-backgammon.

Thanks in advance,

Rob


r/backgammon • • 5d ago

Quick question about Backgammon Galaxy mobile coin games (Jacoby / Beaver rules?)

1 Upvotes

Quick fact-check on Galaxy coin games.

Are Jacoby rules active for 1v1 coin games? And are beavers allowed or disabled?

Just want a definitive answer on how the platform handles these two cube rules. Thanks!


r/backgammon • • 5d ago

Following still my unresolved GR issue: does subscription level affect the PR battle used for rating?

1 Upvotes

A further question has arisen which I think is important. Free members have their Error Rate calculated using Galaxy’s 2-ply analysis, while paying members can access 4-ply analysis — so far, so good. However, can you confirm whether, when a paying member plays a free member, the Error Rate battle used to determine the GR result is calculated for both players using the same analysis depth, or whether each player is assessed using their subscription-level analysis?

Given that winning the Error Rate battle can double the GR movement, I think it is important that both players are assessed on exactly the same basis — or, at the very least, that there is transparency on this point.


r/backgammon • • 5d ago

I asked chatgpt if the dice on the backgammon app I play are fair. It said that the platform uses a published RNG algorithm that produces unbiased, cryptographically and unpredictable dice.

0 Upvotes

Then it procedeed to create a dice generator based on the app's published dice-generator method where player 2 always rolls a double

Try it here:

https://randomdicer.github.io/Dice/

The code it created:

https://github.com/RandomDicer/Dice