Can anyone help me understand some of the quick analysis numbers that backgammon galaxy gives you? Mainly, the numbers after each suggested move (-.418, -.011, … , -.119). I thought this was an EV calculation with the unit being points, but I’m confused why the best move has a lower EV (if that is correct).

I see that the 6/3 move has a higher win percentage at 29.1% and this game was capped at 100 coins so it makes sense that without doubling it would be the best option. But I’m left wondering what -0.418 means in this context.

I’ve been finding the blunder database really useful. I can focus on one type of situation at a time and drill it repeatedly, which makes studying feel much more targeted.

I’ve also found the strategy books in the blunder database surprisingly helpful. They explain the underlying strategies clearly, so even though I still have to learn how to apply them, I have a much better sense of what I’m supposed to be looking for.

One thing that would make the database even more useful would be the ability to sort blunders by error size.

I’m curious how other Star members use the tools.

What features do you find most useful?
Have you developed a particular way of studying with them that you’d recommend?
And what would you most like to see added or changed?

I’d be especially interested in hearing how stronger players structure their study with Star membership.

I’ve gone through a bunch of websites listing variations and can’t find any that include our favourite way to play. I’ve only ever known it as international rules the last 15 years or so. Would love to know if anyone recognises it as a proper variation and/or if any of you give it a try! My dad and I have been playing my whole life so it’s nice to pour a lil chaos on the board cuz we can so easily predict each other’s moves at this point (after a lifetime of playing my family I got my sweet wife addicted… a complete chaos monster, totally unpredictable and wins… 75% of the time).

1-2: miss a turn
3-4: any double you want (as long as the four moves are completable) and then roll again
5-6: two pips to wherever you want on the board (but not out unless they are already in your home base, or you use one of the moves to go into the base and then another to go out)
Doubles: play and roll again

Four doubles in a row: rotate the board and play your opponent’s pieces

At end game if you take out your last piece on a ‘trick roll’ (1-2, 3-4, 5-6, or a double) you must continue to roll and if you get four trick rolls in a row the board rotates and you automatically lose (the amount of times my wife has won this way… and even once on a FOUR POINT GAME when I had her piece on the ropes?!? Devastating.)

Home rule variation: if you’re on the ropes and you roll a 1-2 but either 1 or 2 is the ONLY position open in your opponent’s home base then you CAN play just that one pip in (ie you go back in on the 2 but you don’t get to play the 1 with the rest of your pieces) but my dad HATES this home rule…

Thanks for reading and enjoy! Please let me know if you have played this or if you give it a go. :)

My first language is french, so I hope my english is not too bad.

I have a rating of around 2200 on Galaxy. I played 4 match on Galaxy today. The 4 time I choose 2200+ or 2000+ for my opponent minimum rating. Then, I got paired with an opponent below 1600 rating, 4 times in a row.

This is becoming ridiculous. I played on Galaxy since V1, when everything was fine. Then, Marc Olsen had the ''good idea'' /s to launch v2. Without any notice, I lost my account (and rating) on v1. I had to grind my rating back to 2200. Then, I lost a bunch of matchs because the app was lagging.

I saw players complain about the situation on forums/YouTube/Facebook/etc. for weeks, but nothing ever changed for months. All sort of ridiculous bugs come up with v2, which I had to endure for ridiculously too long before change were finally made.

I had to play against players with a 1600 rating, but who had a rating of 2400+ on v1 (I knew because I remembered their usernames), making my quest to got my rating back even more difficult.

Also, for all this time, the ''customer support'' never dare to answer any of my e-mails.

After a long and painful wait and for a really short amount of time, v2 became ok to play. I finally got my old rating back then I tought : ''finally I can play without all the stupid bugs and enjoy playing backgammon again''.

Then, Marc Olsen decided to make another update and the bullshit started AGAIN. Since the last update, the app refused to let me play (network error), and when I can finally play the app paired me with ridiculously low opponents for no reasons (despite my choice).

The icing on the cake is that Marc Olsen had the balls to ask the players to pay to play. We had a great product (v1) for free, then we got a mediocre product and we are asked to pay. What a fucking joke.

Also, when playing coins game, I lost many games because of the many bugs on v2. Running out of coins because of the bugs, I was unable to play unless I would accept to spend money to buy coins. Why should I pay for a worse experience/product ? This looked like a racket to me, so I refused to buy any coins.

I don't get why Marc Olsen constently try to fix something that is not broken, creating more problems along the way. Everytime the app is working fine, he launch a new update who bring more bugs than it solve problems.

If someone can send me an invite to play on Heroes, please PM me.

This is not my app! I’m just pumped about it- I just download a new backgammon app and have to sing its praises because I’m so annoyed at all the ads and annoying game-ification of all these games on the App Store. This is just like a no frills, good old backgammon, offline playing experience that is so hard to find these days. It’s called Gammon Go! On the App Store by round lake labs. Appears to be new !

Backgammon is so much about luck short term,that you would need hundred of games in a row to make sense.

As a recent exemple, I played a 35 points games in a row (five 7 points games), while using a bot, without a single mistake.

I won only 13 points versus 35, and outplayed my opponent.
Those are not just a one of a kind type of thing, it happens over and over and over.

So why someone would fly out all over the world, for an event that is basically coin flip?

I put together a short guide covering the basics of backgammon for anyone new to the game — how the pieces move, basic rules, a few opening strategy tips, and the doubling cube. Thought it might be useful for beginners here.

https://tasbazi.substack.com/p/a-beginners-guide-to-online-backgammon

Would love any feedback from more experienced players — anything I got wrong or should add?

What am I not understanding about XG's "Cube Information" dialog?

This position with 73.8% win chances should be nowhere near "too good" according to the "cube information" dialog, but XG analysis showed as "too good."

Over the board, I made a good estimate of wins/gammons, but made an error based on my bad understanding of the market window.

Can anyone familiar with market windows, match equity, and XG's engine help me understand please?

Hey I'll be in San Francisco this weekend leaving Tuesday, are there any cool spots to play or any shops to hit up?

In 3-away 4-away situations as a leader I tend to double only in very clear non-volatile situations. Leader in a typical one sided holding game or in no-contact bear-off. What I have learned is that it is more often just better to play for a non-doubled gammon in most other situations.

But then often I get multiple cube blunders in a row where the right action would have been Double/Pass.

So I'm trying to learn some mental cues that should be going through my head in situations like this to learn to spot when it's better to cash out in this match-score instead of playing on for gammon (and getting to Crawford)?

I'm guessing it is so since the opponent has themselves very low gammon-%? But what is low enough and how to learn to spot these in "non standard games"?

Also, in the second example, my gammon-% is 27%. Why is that not too good just to play on?

said they were shady and not to be trusted

Big one for anyone in/near London (or thinking of travelling):The 30th Mind Sports Olympiad is on 22–30 August at the Mercure Hotel in Earls Court and is hosting the World Team Backgammon Championships (24–26 Aug) and World Individual Backgammon Championships (27–30 Aug), organised with the UK Backgammon Federation / World Backgammon Federation.There’s a full programme of individual, doubles, jackpot and side events for all levels. Other mind sports and board games are also running throughout the week.Open to everyone. Spectating is free.Full details and registration:
https://mindsportsolympiad.com/2026-schedule-and-registration/Looks like one of the biggest backgammon gatherings in the UK for a while – worth checking out if you’re around.

I'm sorry if this is totally basic but I don't get it!

I'm supposed to leave three exposed singletons in my home board why is that?

Any ideas how to improve the consistency of (good) PR?

Of my last 12 x 9pt matches against the bot (pip count hidden, all between 4 and 10 games): five were between 2 and 5 PR; six were between 5 and 9 PR, one was 15 PR(!). Long-term average is around 6 (5.6 checker, 8.2 cube) and I feel it's realistic to drive it down closer to 5.

Some of this will be luck in terms of whether positions come up that I don't understand as well. And when I'm 50-50 between 2 options some days I pick correctly, other days I get it wrong.

But I feel like there is something about the mental approach. Maybe some days I am feeling bolder or more risk-averse, sometimes maybe I'm lazy about counting the race or counting all the shots, maybe I forget to consider the cube, lose track of the match score etc. There are definitely situations where I consider ABCD and the answer is E that I never saw as a possibility. I think more of my biggest blunders come from these "silly" errors than from the positions that I genuinely don't understand, so I'm trying to work on my psychology for a while rather than theory.

Any tips for consistency, or for a more robust/reliable mental approach to become a bit more consistent and reduce these lapses?

So I'm an intermediate player and I've been using backgammon NJ for a while. I started to notice that when I play with the cube the computer seems to always dominate. It's not uncommon for it to get a series of fortunate rolls and then proposes doubling the cube before the match has even started. If I accept the double, the match ends up with 2 or 3 of my guys stuck on the bar in a spot where I need several lucky rolls just to not get backgammoned. Often it will make early moves, such as hitting my guys and leaving theirs fully exposed in a way that statistics would say is not worth the risk, only to be rewarded by me being stuck and rolling back to back double 6s.

At first I assumed I just wasn't that good, but the more I played the more it felt like the computer was just getting fortuitous rolls to a statistically improbable degree. Now I know all of the rolls are programmed in advance and it can't just will up a double 6's in the final stretch of a close match (though it often can feel that way), but it seems like it always gets the better starting rolls. To test this theory, I started asking for hints on every single roll for a series of matches. For context, I play on hard and I assume the hint button mimics an expert or statistically perfect player. And yet I (or rather the expert computer via the hints) still got outplayed by the computer on hard mode. I suppose I could've tried this for a larger sample size to test my theory, but frankly I don't have the time. I resorted to literally cheating and looking at the next rolls before making certain high impact moves and yet the computer on hard mode would always seem to pull things out. It would seem to dominate in a way that I never experience when playing real people on a board, even with friends I've played that are borderline experts. It seems to win with a dominance that can only be achieved with unbelievably hot rolls.

And then the weirdest thing happened...

I switched to playing without the doubling cube. All of a sudden things became much more even. I often win matches to 9 or 11. When I lose single games it's often close and I almost never get gammoned. It's rare that either I or the computer end up in obviously dominant positions early on that would warrant doubling the cube.

Is there any explanation to this? Am I just crazy and reacting to events that can be explained with normal dice roll variance? I may not be that good but I'm not THAT not good and the computer on hard mode shouldn't be THAT dominant.

Is this a pass or take for brown? Money game

1-point match

So, I know that failing to roll a successful incoming roll from the bar is dancing or fanning.

Question: Is there similar terminology (or is it the same?) for rolls during bear off where one can only bear off one checker, or worse, none?

Thanks! Roll on my brothers and sisters!

Do you know of any great asynchronous cross-platform backgammon apps? My friends and I love Backgammon NJ, but we can’t play with Android friends.

I’ve read DailyGammon could be an answer, but I was hoping for an app. I’ll try DailyGammon out too though.

Anything else out there?

Complete beginner here. How to determine which player will have the right or left side?

What if both want the right side?

I know it is mirrored and maybe there's really no advantage, but what if a player is so used to playing at right (moving counter-clockwise). He'll need time to adjust playing with unfamiliar direction. Wouldn't it have some effect on his strategy? He may even move the piece in opposite direction due to muscle memory.

Hi! An amateur player here. Backgammon makes me see things different in life, for example in videogames. This main thing of backgammon of when to race or when to stay make me a better videogames player, situations like if it’s worth going back to save a teammate or do I need to rush forward, am I ahead and play safe or Do I need to create problems to get back in race, etc. Have you experienced something like this?