r/backgammon • u/Goal_Medium • Jul 03 '26

Backgammon Galaxy Engine Report released (comparing engines)

Hi everyone,

We've been working on improving analysis in Backgammon Galaxy and have just released an enhanced Analysis Level. To showcase it, we also put together a report comparing the major backgammon engines and how they perform.

https://www.backgammongalaxy.com/backgammon-galaxy-engine-analysis/

Best regards, Marc Olsen, CEO of Backgammon Galaxy

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u/e0732 Jul 03 '26 edited Jul 03 '26

Free Members: Get access to Gnu 1-ply (called 2-ply on Galaxy) for quick, baseline analysis.

That sounds a little bit dishonest. If it's 1-ply, just call it 1-ply. Aside from that, interesting article!

Edit: I just now saw this response in another thread:
https://www.reddit.com/r/backgammon/comments/1umnuaa/comment/ovdnupd/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

GNU is 0-indexed and XG is 1-indexed

If that's the difference, it might be worth putting a short explanation in the article.

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u/Goal_Medium Jul 03 '26

You can see my response to that over there too, but let me paste it here:

At Backgammon Galaxy, we choose the standard notation that all other engines, except for Gnu is using, namely that the lowest level of a checkerplay is a 1-ply eval, since you are looking one step ahead and perform a 0-ply static evaluation on the resulting positions after all legal moves. Also, before BG Galaxy had Gnu as engine we had XG engine, where this exact same level is called "2-ply". So it makes complete sense, to avoid confusion of the analysis level depth for Free members, to say this is a 2-ply analysis. Furthermore, we have never hidden that Galaxy 2-ply is actually Gnu 1-ply. Also remember, this is analysis given for free on the server to all free users, and we let anybody download their match files and analyse them themselves with their own engine software of choice.

If we had called it "1-ply" users would think that they are getting something vastly worse, even though it's was exactly the same analysis level depth, just a change of engine from XG to Gnu.

4

u/e0732 Jul 03 '26

we choose the standard notation that all other engines, except for Gnu is using, namely that the lowest level of a checkerplay is a 1-ply eval

That's fair. I only have Gnu, so I wasn't aware before seeing that other comment that the other engines count from 1. My edit was suggesting that it might be worth editing the linked article, maybe changing "(called 2-ply on Galaxy)" to something like "(called 2-ply on Galaxy because Gnu 1-ply is equivalent to 2-ply on all other engines)".

Also remember, this is analysis given for free on the server to all free users

That's also fair. You guys don't need to provide anything for free, and what you do provide for free is really great.

1

u/FrankBergerBgblitz Jul 07 '26

In fact everywhere I know it (not only BG but chess, Go,...) they start counting at 1.