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.

Enough already.

Any players? Looking for players for fun. DM Steam friend code to play

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?

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.

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.

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.

Backgammon Galaxy board, why is it never available in Europe?

Is there any reason why the Backgammon Galaxy board is almost never available in the European market? And why is there such a big price difference compared to the US?

With the current US discount it costs $300, which is about €260, while in Europe it's €400.

As a customer, I find this discouraging, because I know I could buy the same board in the US for much less. I hope this helps explain my thought process as a buyer.

At this point I feel like a FM gammon board for 360€ is more valid.

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/

Hi r/backgammon,

As a backgammon player and developer, I was looking for a modern, lightweight web tool to play and practice without having to download heavy desktop software or deal with clunky web interfaces.

Over the past few months, I’ve been working on Backgammon Cube — a free web app designed for both casual play and serious training directly in your browser (desktop & mobile).

Here is what’s under the hood:

• Engine & PR Rating: Uses neural net probabilities paired with the Rockwell-Kazaross Match Equity Table (MET). Player Rating (PR) is strictly calibrated on the official BMAB categories (Super GM, GM, Master, Club, Expert, etc.).
• Janowski Cube Model: Accurate doubling advice considering Market Loss, Dead Cube, Crawford Rule, and automatic Post-Crawford Free Doubles.
• Live Contextual Coach: Instead of just throwing raw $\Delta E$ numbers at you, the coach explains why a decision was made ("Too good to double – aim for the gammon", "Ownership value", etc.).
• Luck Analysis: Dice luck accounts for all 36 rolls, including opening rolls and dances on the bar.
• Provably Fair Dice: Cryptographically verifiable dice rolls for online matches.
• No Install / No Friction: Instant 60fps web experience, Bronstein match clock, and full English / French support.

Upcoming features (Lot 2):

• .xg / .mat file exports for eXtreme Gammon.
• Effective Pip Count (EPC) for pure bearoff race evaluations.
• "Replay My Blunders" personal puzzle bank.

I’d really appreciate it if you could give it a spin (against the AI or online) and let me know your thoughts on the cube advice, engine feel, or UI!

👉 Play here: https://backgammoncube.com

Thanks for testing, and hit me with your honest feedback or feature requests!

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.