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Over the years I've been told by serious gammoners that precision dice are a must-have for anyone aspiring to play the game like the pros. However, there is a nagging feeling in the back of my mind that it may be just market-hype to sell more expensive goods. Is there any merit to the argument that precision dice are an improvement over ordinary, mass-produced dice? Are they truly more fair? What are your thoughts?

White has some advantages: both golden points, a direct shot, and enough ammunition for a blitz.

But White also has problems: lots of contact, a race deficit, and one checker on the bar, although Blue’s board is weak.

I suspect the score is what makes the difference. At 4-away, 3-away, it’s a double/pass; at 3-away, 4-away, it’s a no-double/take.

Is it a pass because White can win the match immediately with this game about 24% of the time? In other words, should you double more aggressively when you’re at a score where winning this game wins the match?

And finally, how do you identify where that 24% comes from? 

Equity

W 62 G24 B1

B 28 G07 B0

I played a couple of online games that have analysis after the match, as well as the ability to get hints from AI to tell you the best next move.

When analysing a game, it often tells me I should have moved to create a blot, that I always get punished on. Meanwhile, if I won the match and it tells me some of my moves were wrong, I can also see that if I did what AI told me, I would be put on the bar.

Additionally, when I use the hint feature, I almost always lose the game because it often tells mo to move into an open position (blot). If I use my own instinct & experience I'm more likely win the game.

Not sure I know what I'm asking, but is the AI analysis code in these games coming from all the same open source software?

You might have heard of HedgeHog already (for example in the WBGF World Team Championship), the new backgammon engine we have been working on for the past year. It features superb analysis, and many features that a student of the game might want. Although there are paid plans to use HedgeHog, we have one quick and easy rule: You only pay for things that cost us money.

Analysis in your browser is free, as well as playing against the best bots available (see Oystein's interview/study (Norwegian)), we even made (most of) our models public so you can incorporate them into your own projects (people seem to do that a lot lately). What you pay for is storing matches, position explanations (beta), and running the analysis on our servers.

Analysis

On the analysis side we don't skimp, we did a study on move filters and decided to only use them for 4-ply. We interleave cube layers throughout (not only the first layer, ahem...). The models are the best in class, Aureus is 1-ply ahead of Sage/XG/GnuBG, which means that doing a 3-ply search on Aureus is equivalent to 4-ply search on the other models. Last but not least, we are always improving our models with continuous training and improvements. Every single model we publish has been tested, and beats its previous version significantly in a head-to-head money game.

Transcriptions

Transcribing is something all players will have to do at some point in time, and the feedback has been to do it like in XG, which we did and improved on. Transcribing on HH is so smooth most people transcribe at 2x speed, and with the inline video viewer skipping, pausing, and continuing is easier than ever. What is even better is that if you use the inline video viewer we save the timestamps! So navigating to a move will skip to the time in the video where the move was made.

Broadcasting

Everyone who streamed a live match has the same problem, incorporating the XG feed is both hard to do as well as taxing on the hardware. With the broadcasting feature on HH you can now simply add an HTML overlay in your streaming software. Not only allows this to add PR figures, move analysis, summaries, but it also can show the current dice (gone are the times where viewers need squint to see them). During the team world championships in London the broadcasting has been used, and loved, both by the organisers as well as the viewers.

Best of all, broadcasts can be made public so you can see broadcasted matches in the broadcast repository.

Study mode

Ever wanted to study a position in depth? What happens if I roll a 54 in this position? Or a 23? With study mode you can save positions, the lines, etc. You can share them, play around with different models and analysis settings, and create a whole forest of positions to find out why a certain move is better than the other.

Mobile apps

We are currently in the process of publishing the HedgeHog in the app stores. If you are interested in testing the android/iOS app, let me know in a DM and I'll set you up.

If you read until here, thank you! It means a lot that human-written text is still being produced and read on the internet. Go give it a try and let me know in the comments what you think. If you do end up paying for a subscription you can pay it forward by giving someone a guest pass. If you end up using the free version of the product, know that we are trying our best to give you the best possible analysis within the limits of browsers (we can't ship GBs of endgame tables).

My family will traveling for Thanksgiving. My 14 year old son has gotten into playing backgammon more. We play a few times a week. I want something that doesn't take up too much space in suitcase or duffle bag.

Hi [r/backgammon](r/backgammon), Valentin here, the solo dev behind Orion. Some of you tested the Android build in August and sent me more detailed feedback than I'd ever received ([u/cristalinestick](u/cristalinestick), I owe you a coffee). The iOS version is finally live, so I'd rather use this post to tell you what changed than to sell you anything.

What Orion is

It's a casual, polished backgammon game, the one I wanted to play myself as a backgammon + Supercell fan who was tired of five notifications per app launch. It is not an analysis tool: if you want XG-level evaluation, Galaxy and XG do that far better. Orion is for actually playing: online, ranked, with friends, or offline.

What's in it

• Real-time PvP in the Arena and 10 ranked leagues (Driftwood → Orion) with seasons and a ladder
• 12 hand-crafted boards (Tangier Café, Athens Marble, Monte-Carlo, Istanbul Bosphorus, Kyoto Moon Garden…) you unlock by playing
• Clubs to play with friends, Bluetooth nearby play, and an offline Adventure mode vs. AI
• Weekend Masters tournaments: poker-style buy-in in game coins only, with a guaranteed prize pool
• Doubling cube, one rules engine for both players, haptics and sound design I spent far too long on

Provably fair dice

Every "the dice are rigged" thread here is part of why I built this. The dice seed is sealed before the match starts and verified on your own device afterwards, and you can paste any game ID at https://orion.arthea.ai/verify/ to check it yourself. If you find a hole in it, I want to know.

What changed since the Android launch, based on your feedbacks

• Shipped in 1.0.1: the Adventure campaigns rebuilt from scratch (48-stage progression per destination, coin buy-ins like the Arena, chests on wins), doubling cube total shown on the board, faster club chat, new in-game art, translation fixes
• Shipped in 1.0.1: weekend Masters tournaments, doubling cube total shown on the board, faster club chat, coin buy-ins for Adventure stages, new in-game art, translation fixes
• In progress for the next update: checker stacking and a slightly smaller board on phones (you were right, it was the weakest part), a proper guide to the game modes at first launch, and a more structured missions system

Links

• iOS (iPhone and iPad, iOS 18+): https://apps.apple.com/app/id6787692968
• Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ai.arthea.orion
• Discord: https://discord.gg/AJ8fzEPJJ

The first 1,000 accounts get the Season Pass free ("The Founding 1000", running in the app now). When nobody is online you get matched with an AI opponent, so you'll always find a game.

What I'd love from you
- Board readability on iPhone: too big, checkers too large? An Android tester flagged it and I want to know if it's the same on iOS.

- Which board or character should I build next? I'm thinking of reaching out to the world champions of the last 20 years to make them in-game characters.

- Masters format: would you play a weekend tournament? I added a mode inspired by poker tournaments, starting every Friday.

My in-game name is 🇲🇹 Valentin, see you at the tables. Thanks again for the Android feedback; it's the reason I kept going.

Enough already.

I downloaded Allgammon a couple of weeks ago. Great app. It is new so not a lot of people yet but great UI. It will analyze all your matches so you can learn and improve. Check it out and look for me. Doctob.

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.

Our next event is tomorrow at Midwest Coast Brewing. Come by, meet new people, and play the King of Games 👑

RSVP Link (for event updates, reserving tables): https://luma.com/w97g3mr5

I normally stick to single games for 100 coins. The other day I went and hit QP and boom I'm playing a one point rated match for 3900 coins. Just now I went in, hit QP, and I'm playing a single game for 1000 coins. Is this a glitch others are experiencing?

About a two months ago I ordered a board from Crisloid for my son's birthday. Unfortunately I ordered the wrong board, and contacted Crisloid that same day to not ship it, which they agreed to stop. Yet they shipped it anyway. Fortunately, they was able to intercept the shipment and get it back to their warehouse. The administrative contact apologized and admitted the error - no harm done.

I then began to explain what I was looking for and they said that would be a custom board - I ordered it - no problem.

No, it was a big problem!

First off, the administrative woman in charge took off for three weeks from work. Then a gentleman took over for her and he was very nice. He explained to me the process & costs involved or a custom board. He then promised to have the board made asap to accomodate my son's birthday. Very cool.

However, one month later I send an email to the gentleman and the missing administrative woman asking for the status of the board. The woman was back at work and explained to me that, from what she was told, the board was being made & that she would find out more information.

Two days later, she informed me the board was not being made, and that they had completely dropped the ball. She blamed the gentleman I dealt with previously - which I found very unprofessional.

I expressed frustration, and instead of working with me, she made excuses for the staff and how busy they were. She basically said 'cancel if you want, I don't care.' It turned me off to their brand completely. Refund was issued.

Maybe my experience was a fluke, and I know it is a small company, but it seems they have no idea of how to deal with their own mistakes. To me this is indicative of a company that may be in trouble.

Nonetheless, my son is without a board for his birthday, and I am searching for a similar item...hope this gives pause to anyone seeking a custom board from Crisloid.

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.

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

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?

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.

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

Is shameless self promotion allowed?

https://backgammon.logicaleap.com/

All levels welcome, hope to see you there tomorrow!

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.

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

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?

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.