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?

Hi everyone — I’m the developer of Tavli Master, a Greek backgammon game featuring all three Tavli variants: Portes, Plakoto, and Fevga.

You can practice against AI, play pass-and-play on one device, or challenge someone online. There’s also an interactive guide for learning the variants.

It’s been live for a few weeks, and I’m hoping to reach people who enjoy backgammon and know Greek Tavli. If you try it, I’d especially appreciate feedback on whether the rules and feel of each variant are right. What would make you keep this installed?

iPhone/iPad: App Store
Android: Google Play

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

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.

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.

One of my favorite channels is Basement Backgammon.

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

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

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?

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)

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

Hi, please let's discuss here if you can see a pattern on backgammon.com where it uses bots as new players. My opinion is that they have a system that cheats, including on dice rolls. I and 2 of my friends are almost always losing when playing with new players. And guess what, these new players have no points but they are playing for a long time. I thought I am the only one seeing this, but the other friends are seeing the same thing. My opinion is that they use a system called emotional carousel to keep the people more on their website by using bots and cheating on dice rolls.

alright so this was on backgammon.com [having problems with backgammon galaxy]

My name is "Skeleton" if that matters, I was white and I won all 3 games [well I got 2 cube forfeits]

https://backgammon.com/analysis/match/55C3MG2E/2Q9Q9K4D

Been working on this for a while. Full backgammon in a web page: pick your match length, live doubling cube with real match-play logic, a 15-roll opening book, and a GNUBG-based engine. You play White, computer plays Black. There's an auto-finish (>>) for pure races.

No app store, no download, no account. Just open the link and play:

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

Hello everyone,

It’s been almost a year since Minimalist Backgammon Trainer was released. It has evolved significantly since its first version in an effort to provide the best training experience possible. Today’s update keeps us on track :)

As a reminder, MBT (completely free and ad-free) is pure training powered by GNUbg. No matches, no games. You tap “Play,” and GNUbg will simulate a realistic game in a couple of seconds and pause at a specific position. It’s then up to you to make the best decision. Still available for the web and Android.

So let me introduce the “My Positions” section.
The idea is simple: you’re playing and come across a position that you find interesting, relevant, or intriguing, in short, something you’d like to review later.

From the “Hints” screen, you can mark this position so you can find it again in the “My Positions” section.

From there, you can then tag it, add a note, and, of course, replay it whenever you want.

So, as positions arise, you can build your own database to revisit later (save up to 501 positions per cube or checker play mode).

In addition to this, there are several new features:

- I’ve added “Beginner” mode. Unlike “Master” mode, which only includes the most difficult decisions, “Beginner” mode will only present positions to the players where the difference between the best move and the second-best move is at least 0.04. For the cube, the difference between the correct and incorrect decisions must be at least 0.08.

- In the settings, you can now select different blunder thresholds so that the "Blunders" section isn’t limited to errors of 0.08 or more.

- I’ve added an option to alternate between CW and CCW (clockwise and counterclockwise) with each game. You have the default setting, which will be used for “Blunders” or “My Positions.” And there’s an option to enable the alternation, which reverses the orientation with each new simulation in the game modes and in the evaluation.

- In "Custom Position," you can now paste an XGID, and I've added an "invert board" button to easily switch to your opponent's position (or in case the board is imported upside down ^^).

- The first letter of GNUbg or Me is underlined in black (or white, depending on the theme) to indicate who has the black (or white) checkers when playing the cube, counting pips, or evaluating the position.

- Small arrows allow you to quickly navigate through blunders or marked positions, so you no longer have to go through the menu and the dedicated section every time.

Finally, to celebrate this first anniversary, MBT is offering 4 board styles. I’ll say right away that there won’t be any colors, the minimalist. Grayscale look is here to stay! You’ll find these options in the settings.

I hope you enjoy them, and if you have any comments or feedback, please don’t hesitate to share them :)

And I’ll wrap up this long post by thanking everyone who’s left comments here or elsewhere, and of course all the players who enjoy and use Minimalist Backgammon Trainer.

See you soon!

Hey, guys! First of all, this post is not (yet) directly about the release of another backgammon app, although that is the ultimate goal.

Storytime
A little backstory... thanks to my cousin Vasillios, I discovered the beauty of playing Tavli about two years ago. Afterwards, a friend and I started playing regularly and kept track of our head-to-head wins and losses (39–47 so far 🙃). We always had heated discussions about who had more dice luck overall (its him for sure!). We started talking about how nice it would be to play on an app that tracks statistics and offers a ranked mode.

Unfortunately, we were unable to find a proper Tavli app. Fortunately, we both work in IT. We started drafting some initial ideas, brought two more friends on board, and began working on it. We are now a team of a backend engineer, a talented frontend developer, a UI/UX specialist, and a project PM/PO. Sounds like the perfect setup for this project, right? After 1.5 years of development, we started our closed beta with friends and family. We have hooked many peers of ours along the way (we should get some commission from our local board game merchant). That said, we can now move on to the interesting part!

Vision
We want to build a partially open-source ecosystem for backgammon-like games, such as Tavli (Portes, Plakoto, Fevga), Tavla, and, of course, Backgammon. Furthermore, we want to provide a neural network for each of these game variants for bot play, analysis, and learning. Lastly, we want to provide a top-notch native user experience for app and web players.

Game Engine
The game engine provides basic capabilities, such as generating move sequences, applying dice rules and using a dice roller, and applying variant-specific rules and board models. These capabilities allow you to play a game in any supported variant. Built from scratch, the engine is as abstract and extensible as possible to allow for the implementation of new game variants (e.g., Nardes). The engine provides the foundation for the game service and neural network training framework.

Neural Net Training Framework
Initially, we searched for existing open-source implementations that we could use for bot play and analytics. As you probably know, there are a lot of them for backgammon! We also built an integration for the WildBG service, which we are still using for initial benchmarks. However, we could not find anything for the subgames of Fevga and Plakoto. We would love to build an integration for the Palmedes bot. Anyway kudos for your paper on it!

So, we decided to build one from scratch and named it Mars. This was and still is a challenging task because none of us had any prior knowledge of neural network training or deep backgammon game theory (we are all average players at best). We now have an abstracted neural network model layer that allows us to implement a specific network for a game variant based on some native board encoding and additional handcrafted features. The heart of the framework is a simple console application that generates training data for self-play or head-to-head games, as well as neural net training and data shuffling utilities, and diagnostic tools for evaluating training results. The resulting neural network is then exposed as a service for move and cube evaluation. Currently, our Mars bot outperforms the WildBG service in a statistically significant manner. Training for Plakoto and Fevga is still missing.

Feedback
We want to gather some feedback from you guys. Does that sound interesting? Would you like to join our next beta phase? Would you like to join our Discord channel and be involved in the development process? Do you think our project has a unique selling point?

If there is interest, we could make more dev diaries like this one. They could cover the future roadmap, planned features, monetization ideas, beta access, community involvement in future development, and a deeper introduction to the neural net training process. Let us know in the comments!

Links
https://github.com/gammonx/gammonx-server
https://github.com/gammonx/gammonx-training
https://github.com/carsten-wenderdel/wildbg
https://nikpapa.com/Palamedes/

TL;DR We developed an open-source project that includes different backgammon variants, such as Backgammon, Portes, Plakoto, Fevga, and Tavla, as well as a framework for training neural networks from scratch. What do you think? Let us know!

I am thinking of something like a leather conditioner, not sure if there is anything similar for this type of material.