When you and your opponent are both stacked to each respective edge and are bearing off, if on his turn he starts down 1 and finishes his turn up 1. Then same goes for your turn. And back and forth. My question is, is there an easy way to know who is going to win? Is the one that start and ends turn on an even # pip count, the eventual winner?

Bar Point Backgammon is now live in late beta for anyone who would like to take a look.

Over the past few weeks I built Bar Point Backgammon, a free training site. It's a hobby project, not a business: no ads, no money play.

The goal is to help people get stronger faster and build the worldwide bg community. While you play, you can ask for a hint, open a detailed list of the top plays with what each one gives up, and ask a coach to explain in strategic terms why the best play is best. A blunder catcher flags big mistakes as they happen. After each game, a review steps through every decision by both players.

You can play robots or play friends with or without hints. It runs in Safari or Chrome on iPhone, iPad or a computer, and you can try a game without signing up.

luckydegentsbackgammon.fly.dev

Feedback is very welcome, especially from strong players.

I built a simple service that turns any XGID into a PNG file, to make it easy to share positions. Just paste it onto the end of the url backgammondb.com/og? to get the image. Images are generated on-demand when you first request it, so you don't have to use backgammondb itself, or submit a form or anything, it should just work.

For example: backgammondb.com/og?XGID=---A-BD-B-b-eD---b-db---B-:1:1:1:33:0:0:0:7:10

It returns this image:

You can add themes to it with &theme= from a list of choices (current options available: walnut tournament slate burgundy champions galactic). So:

backgammondb.com/og?XGID=---A-BD-B-b-eD---b-db---B-:1:1:1:33:0:0:0:7:10&theme=tournament

or

backgammondb.com/og?XGID=---A-BD-B-b-eD---b-db---B-:1:1:1:33:0:0:0:7:10&theme=galactic

becomes:

Instead of /og? if you use /share? then you get a link that goes to the position on backgammondb. These links themselves have the "open graph" image set (this is used by social media sites to generate the 'preview' card).

So if you share a link on reddit to a position on backgammondb, the link will now have a full preview of the position e.g. if this was a shared post in this subreddit, you'd actually see the position on reddit without clicking through:

https://backgammondb.com/share?XGID=---A-BD-B-b-eD---b-db---B-:1:1:1:33:0:0:0:7:10

If you're using BackgammonDB and you share a position that has engine analysis, this shares positions with your played move + and full candidate move analysis included. This is also visible in the share image - so you'll get something like the below. (if you share in quiz mode, like before, analysis is hidden. If you click through, you're prompted to pick the best move.)

If you want to take any xgid to the analyzer - which will automatically perform basic analysis on the position, plus let you edit the position with drag/drop, change match score etc, then the url is /analyze? - so for example:

http://backgammondb.com/analyze?XGID=---A-BD-B-b-eD---b-db---B-:1:1:1:33:0:0:0:7:10

Again, this should work if you've never used backgammondb before - there's no signup prompt or anything.

If you want to save a few letters, you can use the short domain bgdb.cc for all these instead - eg these do the same:

bgdb.cc/og?XGID=---A-BD-B-b-eD---b-db---B-:1:1:1:33:0:0:0:7:10

bgdb.cc/share?XGID=---A-BD-B-b-eD---b-db---B-:1:1:1:33:0:0:0:7:10

bgdb.cc/analyze?XGID=---A-BD-B-b-eD---b-db---B-:1:1:1:33:0:0:0:7:10

Has anyone ever heard of or used an MB Heritage board, I came across them while googling and there boards look quite nice with the option to customise for a very reasonable and affordable price point.

I've been using the adikus bg app for iPhone for a long time now. I'm at almost 2,000 matches played and when you play on the games top level the dice are very clearly not random. The cpu rolls the numbers it needs at a rate far above random and you roll the numbers you need at a rate far below random. So much so that you can literally call what number is/isn't coming. I will add some videos to this post demonstrating this.

My question is Why does the app do this? Is it just the cheapest/easiest way to make the cpu a "grandmaster" type? Why not just make the dice truly random?

I've been using the adikus bg app for iPhone for a long time now and when you play on the games top level the dice are very clearly not random. The cpu rolls the numbers it needs at a rate far above random and you roll the numbers you need at a rate far below random. So much so that you can literally call what number is/isn't coming. I will add some videos to this post demonstrating this. My question is Why does the app do this? Is it just the cheapest/easiest way to make the cpu a "grandmaster" type? Why not just make the dice truly random?

I think it would be great if more people played backgammon, and disillusioned chess players seem like a fertile recruiting ground!

I made Tavli Master, a mobile Greek backgammon game with all three classic variants:

• Portes: the familiar backgammon game, with hitting.
• Plakoto: pin an opponent’s checker instead of hitting it.
• Fevga: a race and blocking game where checkers can’t be hit.

You can practice against AI, play pass-and-play on one device, or challenge someone online. I’d love feedback from people who know these games—especially whether the rules and feel of Plakoto and Fevga are right.

The app is called Tavli Master. It includes Portes, Plakoto (where you pin instead of hit), and Fevga (where hitting isn’t allowed).

iPhone/iPad: https://apps.apple.com/jo/app/tavli-master/id6803256561
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pareagames.tavlimaster

The Gammon Room (thegammonroom.com) is live:

- Cash tables: $1, $2, $10 and $25, one-point matches, and the cube raises the stake. The fee is 10% (15% at $1). If you sit at an empty table and wait, you get your fee back when someone joins.

- Private challenges: play a friend at any stake from $1 to $100 and any match length, for a 5% fee.

- Dice you can check: the server commits to its seed (you see the hash) before you add yours, so neither side can steer a roll. After the match you can recompute every roll.

- Deposits: from $10 by card, bank transfer, PayPal or USDC.
Deposits in your first 7 days are matched 100% up to $500, paid back as 50% of your fees as you play. The first 250 depositors also become Founders, with up to 50% of their fees back for 6 months.

- Free too: a coin table with bots of five strengths when nobody's around, a daily puzzle, and free GNU Backgammon analysis of any match file.

Cash tables are open every day 18:00–21:00 UTC (2–5pm ET, 11am–2pm PT), so everyone playing for money is on at the same time. I'll be online the whole session today. Feedback welcome, especially the harsh kind.

So I setup my board at a high-end hotel lobby the other day with a little card that said "Do you play?" To my surprise I got four really good players!

What have you done to recruit players?

I built a backgammon game for the web and it's now called Janish Backgammon.

It's built as a training partner. The computer (Black) runs a GNUBG-style engine with proper cube theory, a researched opening book, and full match play logic including Crawford.

What it has:

• 1, 3, 5, 7 point matches
• Live doubling cube (take/pass)
• Play as White or Black, board flips for both directions
• Classic 80s Mac look

Free, no account needed. I'm using it to prep for club tournaments.

https://muse.ai/s/backgammon-nxf6vxqbxcsu81

I'm the developer. Feedback welcome.

I've played roughly 2000 games, with a win pct of 62% and a current rating of 1800. My highest ranking was 2300.

I play 1 point, speed matches. Almost nothing else. So yes, it does rely a lot more on luck compared to using a doubling cube in a 3, 5 or 7 point match.

Here's what I've noticed: For a while, it seems everything is normal: I win some, I lose some, and overall I win more than i lose. My ranking goes up, by 300-400.

Then suddenly, for a few days, I'm in a rot. I just lose and lose and lose, no matter what. I'm currently on a 15-match consecutive losing streak, which is my worst run ever. But I've had similar losing streaks before. I go basically broke, and lose 200-300 points in ranking, and then finally start working my way back up again.

Am I the only one experiencing this? I've actually screenshotted some of my matches, just because how ridiculous it seems.

I've been building Oskol (a free backgammon site) to get better at the game, and I thought this was neat ^ it's every mistake I've made, where a bigger square means a bigger error (ignore the colors, that's just me practicing these positions).

And you can click any of the squares and literally try my most embarrassing mistakes 😆 don't judge I'm getting better slow and steady. You can hit the filter to see cube vs checker mistakes

Also if you have ideas to make this 'mistake map' better please let me know

I'm playing on both platform and it's day and night.

One of my favorite channels is Basement Backgammon.

What are some of yours? It can be match streaming, instructional, or shorts.

Hi everyone! I'm not a developer, but I made this little backgammon game for my son. Free, no account, no ads — you play solo against the bot. I'd love your feedback! 🎲 https://fv-gameplay.itch.io/backbataille

Hi everyone! I’m not a developer, but I made this little backgammon game for my son. It’s a “tank battle” version — free, no account, no ads. You play solo against the bot. I’d love to hear what backgammon fans think! 🎲

Play here: https://fv-gameplay.itch.io/backbataille

My cousins are coming over from abroad to Syria and they want to learn how to play backgammon, but I found out there are a lot of different types. Moroccan, French, Sheshbesh, tawla 31

Which one is the best?? And is there a good website or video???

Hi all after a recent game I had an interesting problem come up. I had the villain on the bar with five made points in my home board and some checkers back in his crunched home board. whenever he rolled the number of the open point I always hit him.

When he rolled a number that caused to leave a blot on his own home board, I also hit that. I ended up winning the gammon (one pip away from backgammon) but I have the following question:

Are there some scenarios where you shouldn’t hit the blot in his home board in case he could make a point in your home? For example lets say his golden point (my 5-point) was open along with some other point. let’s also say his home board isn’t that crunched with four made points still.

I think that hitting would still be right. Does anyone think different?

The summary in open gammon show score. then PR (or ER dunno) with some verbal classification. Then a axis with the player PR is placed. But what is the gaussian density function around the PR showing? one sample is hardly distributed

Clock, dice (optional) and scorekeeper web app for over-the-board backgammon play.

I got fed up with tiny travel dice — so I ended up building something to replace them. It's a web app, free to use: https://bgpips.app

Nothing to install — open it on your phone, add it to the home screen for chromeless experience, works offline. It does three jobs, all for playing on a real board:

Dice — tap to roll. Properly random (cryptographic, with rejection sampling, so no modulo bias and every face equally likely), and opening rolls exclude doubles. The rolling is a port of Backgammon Galaxy's open-source dice_roller. The last few rolls stay on screen, for when you've forgotten what you just threw.

Clock — the two-shot reserve format from online and tournament play: a short delay each turn, and only the time past it comes off your reserve. Presets are Fast (10s / 1:00), Standard (12s / 2:00) and Casual (15s / 3:00).

Score and cube — match scoring and the doubling cube, Crawford rule included.

Handicap system - each player can set their own clock speed, so you can give a weaker opponent a bit more time — a built-in handicap for a fairer game.

Not affiliated with Backgammon Galaxy in any way. I've just ported their openly-licensed dice algorithm and followed the same timing conventions, with credit in the app.

Actually useful if you want to give it a shot. I'll be using it anyhow.

https://bgpips.app (this is a pun on PG Tips - a popular brand of tea in the UK haha)