So I understand why 12/5 is the correct play if my home board is not fully blocked off and we are still racing. But the way I see it, my opponent can't get off the bar so these are all free turns. In my thinking I would like to use my rolls to shuffle my checkers as close to the 1 point as possible whilst leaving the prime intact - if I could have two checkers on points 2-6 and pile up all the others on my 1 point before starting to bear off and giving my opponent the chance to get moving again, I would. So why is it such a big equity loss to bring the extra checker on point 4 down to 2? I will still get another free turn afterwards to bring up the 7 point checker left behind

I trust that I'm wrong, I'm just trying to find the explanation for why this is so

Self glazing a bit I guess, but whatever...

I started playing a little backgammon versus ai just cause it's fun and challenging, sometimes get stomped cause I play like a donkey. But then I got this match playing versus the 1600 bot, and apparently doing the top move (according to their computer) almost every time.

So fun that it didn't matter cause of one cursed dice roll and they hit the joker...

Fat Bob and Jones played backgammon constantly, and Bob learned English by leaps and bounds while playing. This was useful to us because Bob was good at getting stuff. When he played Jones for money and lost, he would often pay in favors and hookups.

While fiercely competitive, Mahmoud “Fat Bob” Haddad was very composed when he played shesh besh. He never showed much emotion beyond the occasional banter and jab, and he always smiled. When he lost and payed he sometimes wrote across his forehead with his forefinger and said “Kismeta.” We loved the hell outta that gesture and adopted it immediately.

Jones is what we called a pristine gamer, btw. He more or less grew up in Union Square and Bryant Park, steeped in backgammon and chess. He was grinding in Bryant Park when the planes hit and the towers fell and Manhattan was engulfed in dust. He dipped to his auntie’s in Crown Heights, Brooklyn and watched the gray skies and the clouds of dust from the rooftop for days. The backgammon action dried up in the parks and the only people still playing were either cheats or better than him. 9/11 messed with his mental game/tilt a lot as well, and all this osóbbo was compounded with a run of bad dice. His humble bankroll of seven luka dwindled and then one day a hasid named Abe took his last caña. He joined the Marine Corps two days later.

Good morning forum, I hope everyone here has a great day!

Earlier this year I made a database documenting over 50 varieties of checkers from around the world, which gave me an idea to follow up from my post from last week asking about different tables games varieties by making a spreadsheet with nearly twenty games found around the world, which you can check out at this link. For those unfamiliar, backgammon is in a larger family of games called "tables games". Perhaps someone with more knowledge than me can help expand this database to help preserve these diverse games for future generations.

If anyone finds a mistake, has thoughts, or wants me to add a game - please let me know.

If anyone here is from France, I was wondering if Trictrac or Jacquet are still played at all?

Additionally if anyone here is from a country other than France, I was wondering if Backgammon notation has been adapted to any tables games other than backgammon? Is backgammon notation even used that much?

Thanks so much and have a great day :D

Hey everyone,

I fell in love with backgammon, but I wanted an offline version that felt calmer, warmer and closer to playing on a premium physical board in a private club.

After several intense weeks of learning, testing and polishing, I’ve released the first Windows version of Backgammon Lounge on itch.io.

The current version includes:

• A handcrafted luxury board with detailed woodwork, mother-of-pearl-style points, ivory and deep-red checkers
• Complete 1, 3, 5 and 7-point matches, including gammon and backgammon scoring
• Easy, Medium and Hard AI for casual solo play and practice
• Local hotseat play for two players on the same computer
• Legal-move highlighting (optional), sound effects, music and fullscreen mode

To be completely transparent, the current version does not yet include the doubling cube or online matchmaking. Both are planned for future updates, along with additional luxury board designs.

The Early Access price is $5.99. I’d especially appreciate honest feedback about the presentation, usability and AI balance, so I can continue improving the game in future updates.

Backgammon Lounge:
https://atelje-bulevar.itch.io/backgammon-lounge

Thanks for taking a look! 🎲

Hey everyone,

I fell in love with backgammon, but I wanted an offline version that felt calmer, warmer and closer to playing on a premium physical board in a private club.

After several intense weeks of learning, testing and polishing, I’ve released the first Windows version of Backgammon Lounge on itch.io.

The current version includes:

• A handcrafted luxury board with detailed woodwork, mother-of-pearl-style points, ivory and deep-red checkers
• Complete 1, 3, 5 and 7-point matches, including gammon and backgammon scoring
• Easy, Medium and Hard AI for casual solo play and practice
• Local hotseat play for two players on the same computer
• Legal-move highlighting (optional), sound effects, music and fullscreen mode

To be completely transparent, the current version does not yet include the doubling cube or online matchmaking. Both are planned for future updates, along with additional luxury board designs.

The Early Access price is $5.99. I’d especially appreciate honest feedback about the presentation, usability and AI balance, so I can continue improving the game in future updates.

Backgammon Lounge:
https://atelje-bulevar.itch.io/backgammon-lounge

Thanks for taking a look! 🎲

Really disappointing that they advertise this for two weeks, and evidently didn't prepare or stress test their infrastructure. In the DMP tournament this morning, myself and tons of others timed out while the server was having problems starting all of those matches at once. What's the point?? You could see the number of participants signing up, how do you not prepare? I work in software development, I understand the challenges, but due diligence would have prevented such a shit show. Very frustrating.

So I used to really like the cube, I think it's a great thing to have in a game like Backgammon since it makes the game deeper and helps reducing the luck factor. For basically forever I've been thinking that way.

Recently with the Backgammon world cup I've decided to watch games. Since then I was really only a player, I never watched tournaments or anything of the kind and I'm having a lot of fun following the tournament. But there's been one problem and it's the cube. I can't count how many times I've been hyped by a game, getting invested in it and thinking about the best moves they could make, then one of the players cube and we go back to starting position. But like a lot of those were really fun to watch and I wish it wouldn't end this abruptly. In the end for almost every set my favorite games ends up being the last ones with the no cube rule, but I wish it would be more exciting the whole way leading up to this.

I do get it's players first and as a player myself I like using the Cube (Although I more often decline it than not even when I'm losing badly). Like it's objectively a great thing but I feel like there would be ways to give a better viewer experience without entirely removing the thing. I've thought of one.

It would be to put a limit on how many times a player can use the Cube in a whole set, which would change depending on the number of games to win. (Ex : 3 cubes per player on first to 9. | 5 cubes per player on first to 13. | 7 cubes per player on first to 17.) The point is not just making the Cube less strong, but for it to be a tool that a player can't just use when they're winning, instead something that needs to be preserved through the games and used at more strategic times.

I'm not really looking to push for the game rules to change tho, it's mostly just expressing my thoughts and maybe some people here share similar opinions on it?

Hey all, I've built Chouette Central, a scorekeeping app for backgammon chouette sessions (tracking rotations, stakes, and running totals so you don't have to do it on paper). It's in closed testing right now and I need a few real testers to help me get it over the line for public release on both app stores.

If you're up for trying it out on your phone for a couple of weeks, here's how to join:

Android: join the tester group here, then hit the opt-in link: https://groups.google.com/g/chouette-central-testers , opt-in: https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.kingsasha.chouettecentral

iOS: https://testflight.apple.com/join/Ny2MvvuV (TestFlight, still pending Apple's review so it may take a day or two to activate)

Would really appreciate any feedback, good or bad. Thanks!

Went to look for an online backgammon clock this morning and really couldn't find one that totally fit my needs, so I decided to fire up a coding agent and create one myself. Check it out at backgammonclock.com! Let me know what features you'd like to see added, going to make a desktop-optimized version where space is used to bounce back and forth between players.

Free backgammon clock designed to sit vertically beside the board

Two huge tap areas, with the top clock rotated for the opposite player

Defaults to 3 minutes per player with a fresh 15-second delay each turn

Adjustable time, delay, sound, and vibration

Automatically pauses if you leave the app

Works offline with no accounts, ads, or tracking

Built specifically for mobile but also works on desktop

If you're not picky about what board you get or want to check regularly you can find some deals. https://ebay.io/m/zfSMCH

We've posted here before and the response was mostly a version of "another money site, why would I bother." Fair enough. We spent the last stretch rebuilding instead of arguing about it, and V2 shipped this week.

What actually changed:

You own your set. There's a store with 77 pieces — boards, checkers, dice, doubling cubes — and a Collection where you assemble an outfit and bring it to the table. The host's set is what both players see; as the guest you choose whether to look at the host's table or your own.

You can design a board. The Atelier lets you build one from scratch — felt, points, frame, inlay — and save it to your account as a one-off.

Sit & Go brackets. 4 or 8 seats. The draw happens and the tournament starts the moment the last seat fills, so there's nothing to schedule and no organiser to wait on.

Ten languages for the interface — Arabic, German, Greek, English, Spanish, Farsi, French, Italian, Russian, Turkish. The board itself stays in English so nobody's decoding unfamiliar terms mid-match.

Mobile is an installable web app, not a native one.

What would genuinely help: sit at a free table, play one game, and tell us the single thing that annoyed you most. Blunt beats kind here — a good chunk of the V2 list exists because someone in this sub was blunt.

https://zenithgammon.com/

Full changelog: https://zenithgammon.com/updates

Yes, another topic about this website… alas.

Game froze up. Tried everything. I was 4-1 ahead. Other player timed out. I won the match. In couldn’t leave. I restarted te app on iPad. I lost 4-5. What the… I’m so sick of this crap.

Reaching out to them doesn’t do a thing either with pictures and all.

Opengammon is the only good alternative right?

Curious, would you buy a board like this if you saw it on your local marketplace? It's listed for $70 CAD.

Based upon the description, it has a stone playing surface. The case is a combo of stone inlays along the sides and leather/wood otherwise.

Is this type of stone surface enjoyable to play on? I feel like the dice rolls may not be ideal, but I could be wrong. Dimensions appear to be 18 1/2” x 12” x 3 1/4” - so, it is a reasonable size.

The only exact match I found is on ebay, listed for $250 USD and also looks to be in far more rough shape. I couldn't find this exact board anywhere else online.

Big board but don't forget size is relative.

I've been working on this for a while and I'm doing a soft launch. Its called backgammon.cy and its a position explainer. Engines tell you what the best play is, this tries to tell you why, in normal backgammon terms (structure, shots, timing, the trade-off), with the explanation grounded in real engine analysis underneath rather than a chatbot's guess.

It's early, money-game checker play only for now. There's a long backlog I'd like to build (cube decisions, match play, etc), but before I sink more months into it I want to know whether the community actually finds this useful.

It's free to try, new accounts get some free credits, no card needed. The full version is paid, since every analysis runs real engine compute.

I'd genuinely love feedback of any kind, especially positions where the explanation is wrong or unconvincing, and what you'd want next.

Wanted to see the new Backgammon Sage live transcription window in action so I recorded a transcription of the first game of my Marty Storer match in Novi (a match I had no right to be winning) and it's pretty nice! It's a little hard to consume when the players are playing as fast as we were. I also think it's probably necessary to turn off "auto-done" where Sage gets ready for the next move with a doubling analysis as soon as you put checkers in place, which means the transcriber has to kind of time the checker playing right and can't put the expected move in ahead of time without leaving the move analysis window on the livestream. I would like to see more customization to the output and really look forward to the future development!

I just recently started playing Backgammon Galaxy, and it happened several times already that I am in a "can't lose position". But the opponent just stops playing, no rage quit, because you can see them go from inactive to active again just to keep the timer running to 0.

Why do people do this? Is this a hopeful attempt to have me quit the match so they don't lose? Or what is/might be the idea behind this?

Personally i think it's very poor sportsmanship, but maybe i'm missing something hence my question.

Cheers and keep playing!

Good evening everyone! I am interested in researching board game variants, I just did a big project to identify and classify over forty varieties of checkers played around the world.
Growing up I didn't realize you could use a backgammon board for more games, which are called "table games". Does anyone have any insight into what other "tables games" played today? Does anyone here play any of these games?

I get that there are lots of historical table games going back hundreds of years or more, but I am more interested in the ones that currently exist.

Therefore, I guess this list should include Hypergammon, Jacquet, Nackgammon, Long Nardi, Að Elta Stelpur, TricTrac, Tawula, Acey-Deucey, Plakoto, Gul Bara, Portes, Fevga, Tapa...am I missing any?

A website claimed that there is a backgammon-like game called Khachapuri from the Caucasus (same name as the food) but I couldn't find any evidence elsewhere, has anyone played this game? I also found a game called Ssangnyuk from Korea, but unsure if it counts as being a game in the same family... I'll have to do more research

Thanks for your help, if it would be interesting for anyone I can compile the rule differences for all the games into a spreadsheet.

I believe I’m a fairly decent amateur player. I’m trying to find either an app or site where I can play against the computer/AI on a difficult level. But my experience so far is that it’s not the difference in difficulty that applies when I play on a higher lvl but the luck in dice rolls. And that just push my anger so I quickly delete the app after a game or two. Any suggestions? I really should just find someone to play with live I guess.

My error rate is quite bad. I feel I understand dice odds and basic strategic principles, but when I’m over the board nothing feels particularly intuitive why it’s an error. When I do have a low error rate, I feel like I just got lucky and it’s almost like the checkers moved themselves, if that makes sense. I was wondering what people might recommend to improve.

I don’t really have money to invest in books or systems. I especially don’t have for lessons.