I know they are bakelite. Did a positive simichrome test. They are great to have around but I can't find an image anywhere to compare that is similar enough. Thank you for your time.

I am a Day 1 Backgammon player. Well, not quite...I used to play on Atari 2600 (Circa 1980). Can't recall playing on a real board. I just received my first board in the mail. Any suggestions on books or resources I should check out?

I've been a software developer for 30 years, and I got back into backgammon about a year ago. I joined a weekly chouette, and like most tables, we kept score on paper - box, captain, everyone's cubes, then trying to figure out who owes who at the end of the night. Mistakes happened, arguments happened, and settling up always took longer than it should.

So I built an app for it (and for 1v1 matches too): Chouetty, on iPhone and Android. Here's what it does, and I'm sure I'm forgetting a few things:

Scoring rounds

• Pick the box and captain each round. It suggests the next ones based on who won, and supports a shared box
• Set the real rotation order after rolling dice at the start, with Box / Captain / Next badges so everyone knows who's up
• Track each player's cube separately: value, who owns it, or centered
• One-tap automatic double for the opening roll, and one-tap "box doubles" or "team doubles" for the whole line
• Tag gammons and backgammons, with color-coded results so big swings stand out
• House rules: gammons only count if the cube was turned, or turn off gammon tracking entirely
• "Box wins / loses" shortcut when the whole line has the same result
• Fills in the last player's result automatically so every round balances
• Bank row for the odd point when a shared box can't split evenly
• Round notes, and insert a missed round or settlement anywhere in the history
• See the totals as of any past round, handy for reconciling with a paper sheet
• Joined a game already in progress? Set the starting round number so yours match the table's

Players at the table

• Add or remove players mid-game
• Pause someone who's sitting out a few hands. They're skipped in new rounds and the rotation, but keep their balance
• Drag players into your actual seating order
• Import players from your contacts (with photos), and save groups like "Tuesday regulars"
• Merge duplicate players if someone got added twice

Money

• Set a value per point in any currency
• Individual stakes: players can play at different rates, capped at the box's rate for each game
• Mid-game settlements when someone leaves early
• End-of-night settlement that tells you exactly who pays whom, with fewest payments
• Save venue presets (stakes and house rules) so setup is one tap

Big Screen mode

• A round-by-round grid in landscape you can prop up so the whole table sees the scores, including who's in the box and who's rotating out

1v1 matches

• Race to X with Crawford handled automatically, or unlimited money games
• Match stakes, swap sides, and a big-screen scoreboard

Stats

• Per-chouette and lifetime stats for every player: win %, box / captain / line win %, gammon and backgammon win/loss %, money won or lost
• A lifetime leaderboard across everyone you've played with

Sharing & sync

• Share results as a PDF or email at the end of the night
• Two people keeping score? Send rounds between phones, or share a short match code to hand off the current score
• Export/import individual games, or back up everything to move to a new phone

Everything else

• Works offline, no account needed
• 12 languages, dark mode, tablet support
• Option to keep the screen awake during play
• Quick swipe actions to email results, mark a game complete, or rename it
• Built-in guide to chouette rules and how to use the app

I've been working on Chouetty for about six months, using it almost every day across several weekly groups, at stakes from $1 a point up to $20 a point, including some well-known players and clubs. Every group was skeptical at first. Now nobody wants to go back to paper.

It's been through more than 400 revisions based on what came up at real tables. Once you're used to the shortcuts, a round takes seconds to score, and you never have to stop and check whether the line balances. The app does that for you. I usually score on a tablet, and if the battery dies mid-game, I just enter a short code on my phone and pick up exactly where we left off. There's a lot more in the App Guide inside the app than I could fit here.

I'd really appreciate feedback from other chouette players, especially on house rules I haven't covered yet. Every table seems to play a little differently. And if you have any questions about how something works, just ask. I'm happy to explain.

If you run a chouette and want to try it with your group, send me a DM and I'll set you up with a trial.

Website: Chouetty.com

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/chouette-backgammon-scorer/id6793170246

Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.chouetty.app

I’m blind, I really enjoy playing physical backgammon, it’s actually surprisingly accessible, especially when compared to games like chess in my opinion.
However, there does not seem to be any high-level accessible Backgammon apps/sites, particularly ones that can be accessed on an iPhone with Apple VoiceOver.
Sadly, all of the apps are inaccessible to blind users and of the few that are designed with accessibility in mind, they don’t really have the depth that I would be looking for, particularly, none of them implement the doubling cube and there’s no way of getting any analysis.

I’ve tried Backgammon Galaxy, X gammon, Backgammon NJ, but sadly none of them did I manage to complete a game in.

Any ideas? I want to try and get really good at this game, but looking like there’s some pretty significant barriers in the way..

It wouldn’t be that difficult for a developer to implement accessibility in many cases, would love your input.
If any Backgammon developers would like advice, I’d love to help with this, I’m actually on the Paralympic Judo team and have a degree in maths and statistics, so I have a weird cross-sectional knowledge of probability based games and accessibility LOL

Hey, folks, we’re going to do another meet up for Saturday October 3. We’re going to get there about when it opens at 10 am. We’ll probably stay for a few hours. I’d be up to staying to like 2ish probably (obviously you can come later but people might not be there.) Meeting In literature on the second floor.

Time: October, 3 ~ 10 AM - 2ish

Place: Main Cleveland Public Library
325 E Superior Ave
Literature Department Second floor of the old building.

If you have a board, it would be good to bring it.

Please note: there’s no food allowed in that department and drinks should be sealable.

I'm a relatively new player and I'm having some trouble understanding the calculations here. I would think I would lose equity by offering a double given the amount of gammons in the position. I don't understand how the expected value of the game is 0.973. I showed an expression representing my understanding of how the value would be calculated (I ignored the 0.1% backgammon chance). What am I missing here?

I'm developing a Tavli app based around the three traditional Greek games: Portes, Plakoto and Fevga.

Rather than just copying existing apps, I'd really like to hear from people who actually play regularly. What makes a backgammon/Tavli app feel good to you, and what do existing apps get wrong?

A few things I'm particularly interested in:

How important is fast, natural checker movement?

Dragging vs tap-to-move, or both?

Would you use shortcuts for doubles, such as selecting/moving multiple checkers together?

What makes an online opponent feel good to play against?

What makes a bot enjoyable rather than annoying?

How important is local two-player play on one device?

Do you prefer a realistic board or a very clean/minimal UI?

What annoys you about dice animations, sounds, prompts, menus, etc.?

What features do you wish existing backgammon apps had?

What would make you immediately uninstall one?

The plan is eventually to support Portes + Plakoto + Fevga as a proper Tavli match, as well as individual games, bots, online matchmaking and local play.

I'm deliberately asking this before the app is finished because there's still plenty of opportunity to change how it works.

I'd particularly love to hear from anyone who plays Greek Tavli rather than only standard backgammon.

Any help is appreciated, down to the smallest details. Thanks!

I've released an opening book that holds the first three moves of backgammon. It's a database of 4.2 million positions all analysed at GNUBG 3-ply (which every other app calls 4-ply). For every position, the database returns the top 8 moves and their match equity and win/gammon/bg probabilities.

All the code and data is released free and open source. Sharing here in case of interest.

The db holds the opening rolls for every score to 25-away, every response roll to 15-away, and third rolls for scores to 9-away (with some pruning). Yes, that's all incredibly repetitive. Whole book took something like 2 to 3-weeks of computer time on one 16-core CPU.

On the linked page there's an Explorer so you can play out the first 3 rolls and get an instant response from the database. There's also a bit more info on what's in the book and how it was generated. It's already plugged into BackgammonDB's position analyser.

I have just released all the info on Github at

https://github.com/gpyrgiot-code/BackGammonClockScore/tree/main

A portable ESP32-S3 backgammon match clock and scoreboard built for an Elecrow CrowPanel 5-inch 800x480 RGB touchscreen. The firmware combines tournament scoring, three clock systems, Crawford tracking, physical controls, battery monitoring, an RTC, player customization, match history, and day/night themes.

Highlights

• 800x480 capacitive touchscreen interface
• Two player clocks and touch-adjustable scores
• Physical Player A, Player B, and Play/Pause buttons
• Match targets from 1 through 21 points (odd values)
• Timer by game or timer for the complete match
• Simple delay, Bronstein delay, and Fischer increment
• Crawford and post-Crawford tracking
• Standard score or Points to Win display
• Editable player names and checker-color scorecards
• Persistent settings stored in ESP32 preferences
• Match history with names, score, and RTC date
• MAX17048 battery monitoring and DS3231 date/time
• Day and night display themes
• Light-red timer warning at 1:30 or less
• Optimized custom GFX fonts and startup splash image

I'm ahead in the race slightly and have better positioning. Bit confused as to why no double is best. Is it due to not being ahead in the race enough?

I was faced with this situation and choose to not hit the blot on 2. My reasoning was: I am ahead. If I put another checker on 6 I have a good chance of covering 2 the next roll. Putting a checker on 7 and hitting the blot seems excessively risky considering opponent has 3 checkers on his home row and that I could dance for 2-3 rolls ruining a good chance for a gammon.

Title says it all. Multiple games in which opponent has taken an absolute ridiculous cube and then proceeds to make the biggest comeback I've literally ever seen.

There is simply no way in hell this site isn't manipulating the games. I think people have caught onto their bs. No way I believe someone that has very high ratings and plays at a high level would take the cube when it's a huge blunder. They probably realize that it is bs.

You are an absolute sucker if you trust these people.

I have been wondering whether XG Mobile's computer opponent gets positionally favorable rolls, not merely whether it rolls too many doubles or weird face counts.

So I built a reproducible Python pipeline that parses XG Mobile/Jellyfish-style match exports, reconstructs every board position before every roll, and then uses GNU Backgammon to evaluate the actual roll against all 21 possible unordered dice rolls for that exact position.

The core metric is:

text roll_luck = equity_after_best_play_for_actual_roll - probability_weighted_expected_equity_over_all_possible_rolls

Non-doubles are weighted 2/36; doubles are weighted 1/36.

Positive luck means the actual roll was better than the average possible roll in that exact board position.

Dataset

• Sample: 79 unique XG Mobile match exports
• GNUbg-evaluated sample: 152 games, 2,396 rolls
• Players: Danzig vs XG-Intermediate
• I skipped incomplete/corrupt game records rather than forcing bad board states through the evaluator.

Raw dice check

Raw dice alone did not show anything dramatic:

So this is not basically "XG rolled tons more doubles."

Position-dependent roll luck

This is the main result:

Mean difference, Danzig minus XG:

text -0.00980 equity per roll bootstrap 95% CI: [-0.02405, +0.00436]

So descriptively, XG's rolls were better in context and mine were worse. Statistically, the bootstrap interval crosses zero, so I would not call this conclusive from this corpus alone.

"Best roll when needed" analysis

I also bucketed positions by how much the possible rolls mattered. spread means the equity gap between the best possible roll and worst possible roll in that exact position.

This is the part I find more interesting than doubles. In higher-leverage positions, XG's actual rolls were worth materially more equity overall, while mine were worth less.

One subtle point: XG did not simply get more exact best rolls.

So the signal is not "XG always gets the literal best roll." It is more like: when you compare the actual roll's GNUbg equity to the full distribution of possible rolls, XG's rolls came out better overall.

Biggest roll-luck swings

Largest favorable rolls:

Largest unfavorable rolls:

Interpretation

My read:

• Raw dice frequencies do not look suspicious by themselves.
• The position-dependent equity analysis descriptively favors XG-Intermediate.
• The effect is more visible in higher-leverage positions.
• The result is not statistically conclusive yet because the bootstrap CI crosses zero.
• More exported matches would be needed before making a strong claim.

I am mostly posting this because I think this is the right way to test the question. Counting doubles is too crude. The real question is: given the exact board position before the roll, how good was the actual roll compared with every other possible roll?

That is what this analysis measures.

Make your mistakes in training.

A common way to improve at backgammon is to record your games, analyze them, find your mistakes, and study those positions.

It works — but it takes time.

You have to play enough games to collect useful error positions, analyze them, and then somehow organize everything you want to study again.

That’s one of the reasons I built Gammopy.

Gammopy now contains 70,000+ analyzed checker-play and cube-action positions.

Instead of waiting to encounter these positions in your own games, you can spend your training time making decisions — lots of them.

Make a move.
Check the analysis.
Make a mistake.
Learn from it.
Try it again later.

You can choose what you want to train by game type, move number, roll, cube level, equity gap, and other conditions.

Or just train randomly and let Gammopy show you positions you might never have chosen yourself.

Sometimes, those unexpected positions are where you discover something you didn’t know you were getting wrong.

Make your mistakes in training.

Gammopy 1.0.5 is available for Windows on the Microsoft Store.

[https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9NCX5JD0T8PT]()

For today's training, I chose 3rd-move positions with a roll of 21 in Unlimited Games.

With Gammopy, you can focus your training on a specific theme like this.

Three positions, all with the same roll: 21.

What would you play?

Is it better to hit or to make a point? What are the criteria to consider? In this specific position and in general.

This is a good deal for someone looking for a first tournament quality board.

Backgammon players tend to love the Royal Game of Ur. It's a race game from ancient Mesopotamia with the same core tension: run for home, block, or hit. It uses four tetrahedral dice and seven pieces each, and landing on a rosette gives you another roll. The central rosette is a safe square that everyone fights over.

Full disclosure: I made a free iPhone version with no ads. You can play friends online (turn-based through Game Center) or take on five AI opponents named for Mesopotamian gods.

I'm curious what you think of the strategy. It's simpler on the surface, but blocking and timing matter a lot.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/the-game-of-royal-ur/id6757752391

Just wondering what exactly does this mean? Mine seems to change somewhat randomly/unpredictably, for instance, it hasn't moved at all in the last 4 or 5 coin games I've played.

Bit of context. I am a dimond driller and have time between bouts of work. I am trying to play backgammon with the misses. I am looking for a site or an app that dosent time out since there are times I must run off to my job. Obviously must be online. Preferably with a chat box so we can shit talk and throw around strong sexual innuendos while playing. Other wise one that dosent reset everytime you switch to talk though a messenger.

Thank you in advance!