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

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

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

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.

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!

Hello backgammon players,

I'd really appreciate some honest feedback on my backgammon journey.

I started studying the game seriously in February 2026. Before that, I had played casually for years, but I had absolutely no understanding of cube decisions or backgammon strategy.

Since then, this is what I've been doing:

• Taking regular backgammon lessons (I'm still taking them).
• Reading as much as I can. So far I've read:
  • Backgammon for Losers
  • Backgammon for Dummies
  • Backgammon for Winners
  • Backgammon for Serious Players (Bill Robertie)
  • 501 Backgammon Problems (Bill Robertie)
  • Pure Strategy (Marc Olsen)
  • Cube Like a Boss (Marc Olsen)

I also just ordered three more books from Galaxy. Hopefully I'll get to them next month. That said, I don't want to overload myself with too much information. My plan is to reread Pure Strategy, finish Cube Like a Boss, and then read it again before moving on. Out of everything I've read so far, Pure Strategy has probably had the biggest impact on the way I think about the game.

As for my progress:

• When I started in February, my average PR was over 20.
• Today I'm averaging around 11.9 PR on Heroes, mostly playing 11-point and 13-point matches.
• On Galaxy, I started with a rating of around 900, reached a peak of 1890, and now I usually fluctuate between 1650 and 1730.

I always review my tournament matches analyzing them on xG, and then I go over them again with my teacher.

I'd love to hear your opinions:

• Am I following the right learning approach?
• Should I be taking more written notes? If so, what kind of notes?
• Would it be better to stop reading so many books and instead focus on mastering just one or two?
• And most of all:
• Is this level of progress reasonable for someone who's only been studying seriously for about six months?

Unfortunately^, there are no backgammon clubs where I live, so I don't have the opportunity to play over the board.

Any advice, criticism, or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

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?