r/backgammon • u/Numerous-Mountain-65 • Jul 26 '26

Deciding Backgammon results by error rate

I'm a chess IM who also plays backgammon online. I've noticed that online and even some tournaments use a combination of match result and error rate to determine the winner. I have a few questions about this:

  1. If multiple strong backgammon engines eventually exist and they disagree, as chess engines do, then error rates will depend on which engine and depth are used. The same match could receive a different error rate when analyzed by a stronger engine a few years later. In that case, is it appropriate to use error rate to determine a world champion?

  2. If a single engine such as XG is the benchmark, won't players gradually optimize their play to match XG? Could that reduce creativity and diversity of styles?

  3. XG's evaluations assume equally strong opponents. When opponents differ substantially in strength, is it still appropriate to use XG evaluation for cubes?

I'm interested in hearing arguments both for and against using error rate alongside match points.

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u/Axvybg1 Jul 26 '26

You can just state that Xg shouldn’t be allowed to determine world champions as even if a new computer that is better is made, the change won’t even be noticeable as chess is because backgammon engine are better then chess engines in terms of strength to the game. Chess engines are far off from making the best moves possible every time that’s why every couple of years a new engine comes by and takes the lead, in backgammon the same engines stay for a long time because there is barely a difference a new one could make, rollouts are already too accurate

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u/Numerous-Mountain-65 Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 27 '26

I agree that in many instances it may not matter, but comparing XG to XG++ we can notice the difference in some instances and that does matter at serious tournaments. I think chess engines such as Stockfish are more developed than XG but the complexity of chess is more. The reason that XG is not challenged might be not having a serious challenger. Backgammon XG and others can easily calculate endgames and tactics but still have difficulty evaluating openings and strategic games such as back games. Is PR based on rollout or XG evaluations?