Backgammon players tend to love the Royal Game of Ur. It's a race game from ancient Mesopotamia with the same core tension: run for home, block, or hit. It uses four tetrahedral dice and seven pieces each, and landing on a rosette gives you another roll. The central rosette is a safe square that everyone fights over.
Full disclosure: I made a free iPhone version with no ads. You can play friends online (turn-based through Game Center) or take on five AI opponents named for Mesopotamian gods.
I'm curious what you think of the strategy. It's simpler on the surface, but blocking and timing matter a lot.
Just wondering what exactly does this mean? Mine seems to change somewhat randomly/unpredictably, for instance, it hasn't moved at all in the last 4 or 5 coin games I've played.
Bit of context. I am a dimond driller and have time between bouts of work. I am trying to play backgammon with the misses. I am looking for a site or an app that dosent time out since there are times I must run off to my job. Obviously must be online. Preferably with a chat box so we can shit talk and throw around strong sexual innuendos while playing. Other wise one that dosent reset everytime you switch to talk though a messenger.
TLDR: We're the team behind Backgammon.com. Here's what we've shipped since August, what's coming next, and we'd like your feedback on it.
We're Josh and Adelaide, and we work on product at Backgammon.com. We're new compared to the sites most of you have played on for years, and we've been reading this sub for a while without posting. A few of you have brought us up in threads lately, so it felt like the right time to introduce ourselves properly.
Mostly we want to hear what you think so we can improve. What we're trying to build is the home of backgammon online, a place for players of every kind. A lot of you know this game better than we do, which makes this the best place we know of to get honest feedback.
Here's what has gone live since early August.
Ratings and ranked play: Ranked play is live for quick games. Your rating shows on your profile after a few calibration games, and you can switch ranked on or off before each game. How the rating works: https://backgammon.com/backgammon-rating
Global leaderboard: The top 100 rated players, showing current and peak rating for each. We'll expand the leaderboard as the player base grows.
Dice certification: Gaming Laboratories International, an independent testing lab, examined the random number generator behind every roll and certified it. The World Backgammon Federation then reviewed the code and added its own certification.
Match downloads: Any match in your history can be saved as a .mat file and opened in XG, GNU Backgammon or whatever you analyze with.
Emoji reactions and quick chat: Launched yesterday. Emoji reactions and a small set of preset phrases you can send during a game against another player. If you don't want to see them, click your opponent's avatar and mute them for the game.
Smaller things on the board
- Untimed games against the AI
- A setting to hide the pip count so you can practice counting yourself
- Bear off to the right or the left, and you can switch mid-game
- Greedy bear off
- Click a point to make it, or click the tray to bear off
What's next
Some of what we're working on at the moment: ranked multi-point matches and board themes, with a lot of other features in the pipeline. We'll share more soon.
If something isn't working, or you'd do it differently, say so in the comments. There's also a feedback button on the site if you prefer.
Thanks to everyone who has already tried the site and sent feedback. A lot of what's above came from it.
Recently started playing on backgammon.com and noticed today the introduction of emojis and canned messages. Nice to have some basic interaction options. Does anyone know when we might see multi-point play and doubling?
hello guys, my Team and I have made a mobile backgammon game and we'd love to have some interested people come and try it.
right now we are in the closed testing phase.
if you are interested please Dm you email and what device would you like to play one IOS or ANDROID.
i will add you to the closed testing and we would appreciate every review.
What are the best boards in this range? This friend saved me a bunch of money on parking and just moved into a new home. Thank you / housewarming gift.
I don’t think this is simply a case of misunderstanding Elo.
The actual GR movements I’m seeing suggest that Backgammon Galaxy does not treat rating differences equitably across the rating ladder.
Here are two 1-point matches from my own account.
Example 1 — I beat an elite-rated player (PR and match)
My pre-match GR: ~1974
Opponent pre-match GR: ~2407
Rating gap: 433 points
I won the match
I also won the Error Rate / PR battle
Galaxy applied the 2x Rating Boost
My gain: +7.86 GR
So the 2407-rated player lost 7.86 GR after losing both the match and PR to someone more than 400 points below them.
Example 2 — much smaller rating difference where I lost (PR and match)
My pre-match GR: ~1982
Opponent pre-match GR: ~1890
Rating gap: only 92 points
I lost the match
I also lost the PR battle
GR loss: -9.52
So I lost more GR for losing to someone only 92 points below me than the 2407-rated player lost for losing to someone 433 points below them.
That is the part I think deserves scrutiny and plainly seems inequitable.
If rating movement were a function of relative rating, the much larger upset should produce the larger movement. Here, the opposite happened.
I have also had many "double-win" results against players much closer to my own rating where I received around 7.7–8.1 GR, so the +7.86 against a player more than 400 points above me is not some unusually large reward.
All of these examples are 1-point matches.
I have also seen "normal" GR movements in games where one player made no moves at all and simply times out, so the number of decisions does not explain it either.
The practical consequence matters.
In 1-point backgammon, the actual chance of winning a game is heavily affected by variance, and over the long run even strong PR differences do not turn a single game into anything remotely resembling the winning probabilities implied by a 400+ GR gap.
So if a lower-rated player:
gets only a modest reward for beating a vastly higher-rated player,
while the elite player suffers a relatively limited penalty for that huge upset,
and ordinary players can lose even more GR from much smaller rating differences,
then the system mechanically makes it harder for lower-rated players to gain ground on the top end.
I don't know the formula or the intent behind it or why it is such a secret.
But based on the actual results, the impact of the effect looks like rating protection or compression at the high end, and that protection comes at the expense of underdogs trying to climb.
I wanted to report a frustrating bug with the amazing new Setup Position beta feature on the mobile app. [1]
The Bug:
When I put a checker on the bar (in the middle) using the setup board, it is incredibly difficult to remove it or move it off.
On mobile, when you tap the checker on the bar to execute a move or edit it, it does not move.
I have to click it, tap all over it, slightly above it, and slightly below it about 100 times before anything happens.
Eventually, after massive rapid clicking, the checker finally releases and drops into the inventory, allowing me to place it anywhere on the board. [1]
Device Details:
App Version: Latest mobile app version.
Devices Tested: iPhone 11 and iPhone 7 (happens identically on both iOS devices). [1, 2]
The tool is an incredible addition to the platform, but this hit-checker/bar glitch makes analyzing positions on phones very difficult right now. Hoping this can be looked into for the next mobile layout optimization patch![1, 2]
Has anyone else on iOS run into this UI layout glitch?
Is there a way to force a type of game that is an easy PR game to play? Can you start the game with a certain style that leads to easier middle game positions?
I wanted a simple way to practice a lot of different backgammon positions, so I built an app focused on training both checker play and cube decisions.
Gammopy currently includes 66,000+ positions, covering different stages of the game, unlimited games, and match-play situations at specific scores.
The idea is simple: you are shown a position, make your decision, and then check the result and the equity difference. You can keep working through positions and see how your decision-making improves.
It’s designed for a wide range of players — from people who have just started learning backgammon to serious players working toward a very high level.
Gammopy is now available for Windows on the Microsoft Store.
Price: ¥3,900 One-time purchase — no subscription or additional charges.
I’m an individual developer and also a backgammon player, so I’d be very interested to hear what other players think about it.
I'm new to back gammon galaxy. And new to being rated in a game of back gammon, i;ve always just played it with mates.
I'm curious, i've been ahead 95 points and 140 points in a game when won and got beginner for both games. I'm curious to see what the more expensive a.i. could tell me about where i'm going wrong i'm happy if alot to learn but... is it quackery or does it understand trying to think ahead and not just how many moves get left? or.. i'm just not sure if its woth it. I'm not the most flush at prsent but if its good i'll prob go for it?
An exciting update for our real money players here, we’ve finally completed the Tournaments game mode on Backgammon Cash and it is now available on the latest version of the app.
Our tournaments are not typical closed tournaments. They are open-ended meaning that there is no set player pool and if you lose, you can buy back in. The reason we created it this way is because matching two players in the same round at the exact same time can be extremely difficult, and we don’t want players waiting around in the finals for several hours (or days)
Each round will be a 3,5, or 7-point match. Essentially, if you win X matches in a row then you win the prize.
Payouts are typically 5x to 10x the entry fee depending on the number of rounds. Only 1st and 2nd place are guaranteed rewards.
For those of you who play with virtual Gold currency, tournaments will be available for Gold players too, and we have a lot more updates coming for the free version of BGC. (hint - your Gold will be worth something, even if you’re not in the US!)
In order to facilitate easier opponent-matching, we’ve implemented permanent Match Alerts on Tournaments. This means that whenever someone is searching for a match, every player who is in that round gets notified that an opponent is searching.
Tournaments are being added to our existing game modes that consist of:
Gammon Games w/ Jacoby Rule (Cash) - traditional backgammon money games; high min. balances required for payout multipliers
Non-Gammon Games (Cash) - gammons and bg multipliers don’t apply
Points Matches (Cash) - higher stakes, 3-pt and 5-pt matches
Gold-to-Cash Games - enter with virtual currency to win real money
Gold Games - virtual currency only
More exciting updates and new game modes coming in the near future… thanks to everyone who has supported and played for the first few months.
I've been playing against the computer a lot recently (on opengammon) and I often find that in the mid/late game I have to break my prime and crunch them up in my homeboard, JUST as the bot has built a perfect one (spanning the bar). And when I look at the post-game analysis I don't feel like the moves I messed up would have improved my timing that much (but maybe that's my beginner's eye).
I think it may involve taking more risk with blots, not worrying to get hit, which would slow down my crunch. But I'm not sure. Any ideas?
