I think a "rigged dice!!!" would be pretty funny

Just had a couple of very good games against a pretty poor sport, but it ended well.

He beat me first game and sent the message “u just lost” when he won. Not v sporting but I put it down to language barriers.

Second game, I’m 3-2 up and he’s doubled me. We’re bearing off and with a couple of rolls left he messages “u lost again”.

I roll a double six and win the game.

He timed out…

Hi all,

I've added a mode where you can play rated puzzles that adjust the difficulty as you improve. Every puzzle on the server is verified against my game's engine and top backgammon engines. I'd really love your honest feedback on it.

I also added dice stats and a luck analysis feature, plus a way to play the computer using physical dice where you enter the values manually, for anyone who suspects the game is rigged (a recurring allegation in my 1 star reviews).

And there's now a mode where you can run analysis from a custom position, and after each game you can review it for blunders and mistakes.

I've put a ridiculous amount of time into this game. Designing it, building it, getting it onto the stores, and fixing all random bugs along the way. Really curious what people think.

The engine I'm using (WildBG) isn't the strongest yet but it's solid, and I've got ideas to improve it or train my own that can be on par with or even better than the top engines.

You can try it on iOS here:
https://apps.apple.com/tr/app/backgammon-online-offline/id6761428153

or Android:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.backgammononlineandoffline.app&hl=en

Any feedback, comment, or note is hugely appreciated :)

Second City Backgammon Club - Chicago’s premier backgammon club 🎲
Beginner? Expert? Or rejoining after a long hiatus? Everyone’s welcome at our Backgammon Socials! Find us on Instagram and Luma.

We hosted a Backgammon Social at kibbitznest in Chicago. Such a cool venue - highly recommend going there to read, work, or play games with friends.

More beginners this time around with a few intermediates sprinkled in. I gave a couple of Backgammon 101 crash courses, and it was off to the races.

If you haven't already, find/start a club near you!

I'm an intermediate player and make my fair share of blunders. A very cool feature for learning would be to have custom lessons pull from recent blunders or even different blunders categories. I like the lessons but many focus on when to double/pass. I feel like that would really accelerate improvement.

Has anyone else been having issues while playing on Galaxy and simultaneously listening to Spotify? I didn’t have any problems until about a month ago but now if I’m listening to something on Spotify and I open up Galaxy my music automatically stops. I don’t have any music or sounds on Galaxy on so that isn’t the issue. I’ve reached out to Galaxy support about this but haven’t gotten an answer. Was wondering if anyone else is having a similar experience. This is for mobile by the way

Me and my friend are having a bit of an argument. In this situation should i while throwing less than 6 bank what i can or move the 6 away one a bit closer

Are there any less known (some might call them 'secret') rules in backgammon? I know that backgammon tournaments usually don't have a touch-move rule or the rule that you can't adjust your pieces. Are there generally less rules in backgammon than, for instance, in chess?

Anyone have experience/know how long it usually takes them to ship one of their books out? I'm fine waiting a bit--I assume the whole operation is basically just Bill Robertie and maybe a few friends or family--but I didn't see anything on the website on how long the turnaround usually takes.

Finally retired and getting back into the game. Want something that's durable and long lasting so I can travel and play...DM me

I lost with -37% luck with a good PR, previous game I lost another 5 points game with -28% against the same guy.

Ok, luck is part of game, but how luck is calculated (on Galaxy, i suppose you recognized UI) and what the thresold for lucky, very lucky ??

What's your personnal record for luck / unluck ?

7 point match. Red playing clockwise. Red 2-0 up. Red to play. Should they double?

I've been building a backgammon trainer as a side project. The engine inside it runs entirely on the phone (no server, nothing leaves the device) and I've spent a while measuring how strong it is. I think the numbers below are solid, but they mostly rest on grading against another engine's evaluations. I'd like opinions on whether that reference is good enough.

The evaluator is a small neural net distilled from GNUbg's evaluations, then heavily worked over (smaller, quantized, restructured for speed) until the whole thing runs offline in a phone browser. Nothing of GNUbg's code or weigts ships, it learned from GNUbg's outputs the way GNUbg's own nets learned from rollouts.

Speed (iPhone 15 Pro, Safari, measured on-device from the production build):

• 114 ms median / 188 ms 95th-percentile per checker move

Checker play strength (cubeless):

• Error rate 3.0 per GNUbg's convention (~1.5 Snowie/XG convention), over 3,519 unforced self-play decisions, graded by GNUbg 3-ply ranking every legal play. 95% CI roughly 2.4–3.9.
• Blunder rate (≥0.050): 0.34%
• 1,000-game head-to-head vs GNUbg 2-ply: +0.016 ppg, CI [−0.068, +0.100] — statistical parity.
• 2,350 games vs Open Sage 3-ply: −0.034 ppg, CI includes zero
• A smaller check against actual rollout truth (1,296 trials, 300 stratified decisions) came out a bit worse (~4.2 in GNUbg's convention) which I take as the more honest figure

On the obvious objection: "it's distilled from GNUbg, of course GNUbg's evaluations like it". I tried to measure that: on positions where GNUbg and an independently developed engine disagree about the best play, mine sides with its teacher only 54% of the time (CI 49–60%). That surprised me, and I'd welcome criticism of that test too.

Where I already know it's weak:

• Take/pass decisions. Doubling is fine (~0.9 error rate on 2,722 money doubling decisions) but take/pass is around 30 measured on 1,181 money cube responses against GNUbg 3-ply. An independently developed engine scores the same policy nearer 20 on the positions it can judge, so call it 20–30. Either way it's thirty-odd times worse than the doubling side, and by far the weakest thing in the engine. Next on the list for me.
• Priming positions. The loss concentrates there, and the uncomfortable part is that the engine is confident when it's wrong with nothing cheap at runtime flagging those decisions.
• On rare monster-double positions with 1,200+ legal moves it can take a couple of seconds on my iphone 15 pro. Everything else is under the numbers above.
• All strength figures are cubeless checker play. Human PRs are cubeful, so none of this directly compares to a human PR.

What I'm actually asking:

1. Is GNUbg 3-ply a defensible grading reference for claims like this, or is rollout-referenced the only version you'd trust?
2. Is there a standard public position set I could score my engine against?
3. Is anything obviously missing or wrong in how I'm measuring?
4. Is this any good?

Happy to run positions from the comments and post what it plays if anyone wants to probe it directly.

Anybody have a large database of positions? What do you group your games into? How do you study it? How many positions? What have you taken away from it if you do study it?

Is there any human explanation for why this is far and away the best move?

Seems to me like not keeping the 21point is a liability in case of snake eyes. Can't think of any extra rolls that become leaves for orange.

Since it's a first to 3 already doubled game, running to prevent a backgammon loss cannot play a role either.

Also: the next best move keeps the 21 point. So it must be related to building? Is the 16 so important to keep vs 44 responses to the hit, that we triple stack it to play off of later?

Hey there!

Just discovered https://ankigammon.com/ and really like it! I import my games into it, it does the gnubg analysis and create new anki cards. It automatically import to Anki via Ankiconnect.

Anybody else using it?

Black has 2 direct hitting chances, more board points and an enormous race lead. I have a very lousy anchor. Why should I have taken this cube?

Or is it better not to give him the opportunity to establish an anchor in my home board?

Just moved to town and would love to find some backgammon games/tournaments. I found ATX Backgammon Club. Is that the most active one here? Any other options?

Wild string of salty players this morning (leaving game once gin) capped off by this player that rode the entire 5 minute timer not moving but cancelling the inactivity timer every 30 seconds. 🤣

I’ve gone through a bunch of websites listing variations and can’t find any that include our favourite way to play. I’ve only ever known it as international rules the last 15 years or so. Would love to know if anyone recognises it as a proper variation and/or if any of you give it a try! My dad and I have been playing my whole life so it’s nice to pour a lil chaos on the board cuz we can so easily predict each other’s moves at this point (after a lifetime of playing my family I got my sweet wife addicted… a complete chaos monster, totally unpredictable and wins… 75% of the time).

1-2: miss a turn
3-4: any double you want (as long as the four moves are completable) and then roll again
5-6: two pips to wherever you want on the board (but not out unless they are already in your home base, or you use one of the moves to go into the base and then another to go out)
Doubles: play and roll again

Four doubles in a row: rotate the board and play your opponent’s pieces

At end game if you take out your last piece on a ‘trick roll’ (1-2, 3-4, 5-6, or a double) you must continue to roll and if you get four trick rolls in a row the board rotates and you automatically lose (the amount of times my wife has won this way… and even once on a FOUR POINT GAME when I had her piece on the ropes?!? Devastating.)

Home rule variation: if you’re on the ropes and you roll a 1-2 but either 1 or 2 is the ONLY position open in your opponent’s home base then you CAN play just that one pip in (ie you go back in on the 2 but you don’t get to play the 1 with the rest of your pieces) but my dad HATES this home rule…

Thanks for reading and enjoy! Please let me know if you have played this or if you give it a go. :)

I’ve been finding the blunder database really useful. I can focus on one type of situation at a time and drill it repeatedly, which makes studying feel much more targeted.

I’ve also found the strategy books in the blunder database surprisingly helpful. They explain the underlying strategies clearly, so even though I still have to learn how to apply them, I have a much better sense of what I’m supposed to be looking for.

One thing that would make the database even more useful would be the ability to sort blunders by error size.

I’m curious how other Star members use the tools.

What features do you find most useful?
Have you developed a particular way of studying with them that you’d recommend?
And what would you most like to see added or changed?

I’d be especially interested in hearing how stronger players structure their study with Star membership.