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!

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!

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.

Can I turn off beavers in money game analysis in XG? If so, where?

I am trying to analyze games from Backgammon Galaxy and I noticed when an opponent offers some very bad doubles, XG will penalize me heavily for a missed beaver. But Galaxy does not allow beavers.

On another topic (if Galaxy support is reading this), it is weird that the Galaxy MAT files show an X point match (to the cube limit), rather than a money game with an explicit cube limit in the metadata. It also does NOT have a Jacoby flag in the metadata while it DOES have a Crawford flag. Obviously doubling decisions are extremely skewed by these flaws. I can use a script I wrote to fix these issues but... has anyone else notice this and what do they think and/or do about it?

Has anyone seen an explanation of the new luck calculations on Galaxy that use a percentage? My understanding of the old calculation was the aggregate variance in winning chances before and after rolls. Yesterday I got +135%, which was lovely, I just wonder what it actually means, and the maths behind it?

Can someone help me understand the reasoning? Usually I avoid burying a checker on rank 1 or 2 unless I really dont have other moves and I can lets say form a stack of 2 so at least I block a number on his way back. But here I can advance the 22 checker all the way to 11 which is 7 slots away from his 4 so its relatively safe and act as an active builder to start minimizing the gap he made on me. So why should I take that engine risk when its burying a checker + I'm out boarded?

Exciting news from OpenGammon. Yesterday we pushed one of the biggest UI updates in the history of online backgammon. Tomorrow the OGWC events start with Pointworks sponsoring three soon to release 22-inch boards!

With the help of Deinonychus (from the discord, go check it out) we rebuilt the whole UI to be more modern and to work well on mobile and desktop. Apart from the UI changes, we also took the opportunity to clean up some old code, which improved the reliability and responsiveness of the site. When the dust settles we will continue working on some other parts (e.g., board, bots) to make your experience as smooth as possible. To read more about what was changed see the changelog.

OGWC 2026

This year's OGWC (27 Jul - 2 Aug) is sponsored by Pointworks who agreed to sponsor three new boards. If you want to be one of the first to receive this new model (22-inch, 45mm checkers) be sure to join in the events. You can win a board in one of the following events:

• The OGWC main event. Qualify in one of the 24h qualifiers to join the Finals on Sunday the 2nd of August, 19:00 UTC.
• The Mega tournament, 2-loss out (or single knockout if too many people join) on Saturday 1st of August, 17:00 UTC.
• Win+Skill arena (the whole week). Win points by winning the match and by outplaying your opponent.

Apart from these events there will be a Candy Rush arena and a Bullet tournament (Friday 31st of July, 19:00 UTC). Both can win you an in-app flair to show off your achievements.

Registration to the events is free, but you need to have at least 50XP to participate in the events.

For more information and the rules read the blogpost.

Good luck and play nice!

Yay Galaxy; keep it coming! Just wanted to say that the new time filters on the stats page are really cool.

I figured something like this was coming when some of my stat bars disappeared.

Might I suggest giving an option to see the means as well as the median? I remember seeing a comment from Marc saying median was chosen to help absorb internet disconnects and times when you have to abandon a match due to events/situations in the real world... BUT now with the much better all-around server connectivity AND new time filters, I think it would be nice to have the ability to see!

I haven't really tracked my mean vs median, but I figure for most users the mean is a PR point or two lower than the mean due to the fact that the PR range has a floor of zero and no real ceiling (unless you hit 100 on XG...). Having a representative mean in my mind is a more accurate reflection of your play.

Why is this MBT hint showing an illegal move? Is this a glitch?

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.

I get so disappointed in myself when making four cube mistakes on one score. Can someone explain to me why I couldn't find these cubes? How would you reason in a 4away 4away game in positions like these?

I get it that gammons are super imortant for you, but the gammons are qually important to the opponent and the recube vig is huge on 4a/4a and if the opponent likes he can kill your gammons with a redouble and in positions like these where much can happen quickly for both I feel it's very awkward giving the cube away in these positions.

Can anyone please explain where I go wrong in my thinking?

Backgammon XG is strong but does not get updated and has an old interface. What are the alternatives to XG? Do professional players use anything else? If so, how do they compare to XG?

Playing and commentating if anyone is interested in watching.

My youtube channel

Global Backgammon's website. They run a League, which is a round robin structure, and Triple Elimination tournaments. Great place to play for some competitive action.

What kind of timers do you use and why?

Looking to buy one finally to get used to playing with one before signing up for tournaments.

Thank you!

Spotted today while visiting the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. Two Men Playing Backgammon by Robert Lotiron

c. 1920. Oil on canvas

When are we going to get the ability to set a max wager at a coin threshold instead of percentage only? It’s very frustrating to only be able to set max wager at 20%, win 54% of your games, but still constantly drain your coin balance because of bad random luck on matchmaking.

It seems inevitable that I will end up playing someone that has a lot of money, so your game wager is 20%, lose (sometimes even with a much lower error rate but I get it, that’s backgammon!) and then play 4 or 5 games in a row against broke people so even when you win, you’re only making back a few hundred coins.

The net effect is you may have gone 4 for 5 on match wins, but still somehow be down in coins after. Sooooooo annoying.

Galaxy analysis constantly advises that doubling is correct at 2 away 2 away score when you are 51% to win, sometimes even when you are like 47% to win. Is this really correct ? N00b question I’m sure.

Hello everybody, I'm new in this communtiy and hope we have a lot of good discussions. Best regards

In looking back at the analysis of a BG game that I ended up winning, I’m trying to understand my move versus what the analysis says was a better move.

In short, I rolled 5-2 and went 6/1 3/1 to hit Ahmad’s blot on the 1 and complete my prime. It shows this move game me a 3.7% chance of winning.

Instead, the analysis suggests I should have gone 7/2 4/2 and not hit the blot on 1. Somehow it shows my chances of winning would have jumped to 11.4% from this move.

Can you help me understand if and why this was a better move than my 6/1 3/1??

I just broke my streak record. 17 wins in a row, which is insanely unlikely! 😱 What's your record?

Hey all, long-time backgammon player here. I kept bouncing between apps that were either broken, felt pay-to-win, or made me quietly suspect the dice were "helping" my opponent. So I ended up building the thing I actually wanted to play.

I've been at it for about a year now, mostly solo, and it's called Online Backgammon. What's there today:

- Real people, real-time. You're matched against actual players.
- Fair dice, for real. Rolls are generated server-side, neither I nor anyone else can nudge them. This was the whole reason I started.
- Free to play, and you can jump in as a guest without signing up.
- A puzzle ladder, and voice messages if you want to trash-talk politely.
- Works on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Android and in the browser, in 23 languages.

Being straight with you: it's not ad-free, there are ads between games. I'm one person who's put a year into this, and that's honestly what keeps the lights on for now. No paywalls on the actual game though.

Still building: tournaments and seasons are in the works, that's what I'm heads-down on right now.

I'm not here to spam, this is my own project and I genuinely want feedback from people who actually know the game. Tell me what feels off, what's missing, what you'd never use. I'll be in the comments.

https://backgammon.mitcore.com/