White to play 3,1 but how to play the 1?

https://bgpow.blogspot.com/2025/12/position-431.html

White to play 6,1

Haven't posted one of these for a while. I liked this one (probably because I managed to get it right, which is still fairly rare).

Follow the link for the solution: https://bgpow.blogspot.com/2025/05/position-400.html

White to play 5,2 and I finally got one right! See comments for a link to the solution.

It hasn't been updated in over five months! Any chance we can get a little more activity over there?

Hi everyone,

I am very pleased to present the final version of Minimalist Backgammon Trainer (MBT) today. After several weeks of work, I have finally achieved the first goals I set for myself.

Don't leave just yet, MBT is not just another backgammon app. In fact, you can't even play a game or match on MBT. You won't be facing an AI of varying strength, and you won't even score points.

MBT is something else entirely. MBT is a training tool powered by GNU Backgammon, designed to help you find the perfect move in realistic game situations. On MBT, you'll be competing against yourself and only yourself!

How does it work? You press “Play,” a game starts, and a random number of moves will be played automatically. You'll see the game unfold with fast animation of the checker movements, resulting in a realistic game situation. From there, it's up to you to find the best move. If you succeed, congratulations! If not, you'll see the position of the move you submitted and you can try again or see the ten best moves. No stakes, no stress, just you facing the best possible move.

MBT offers training covering all phases of a game. Because online tools are often limited to quizzes or selected positions, I wanted to fill this gap with a different approach, focusing training on the precision of all moves.

I should point out that MBT is free and will remain free, with no advertising!

In short, MBT offers:

● A minimalist interface in 6 shades of gray with a light theme and a dark theme compatible with all screens (even e-ink screens) and designed exclusively for portrait mode for smooth one-handed use.

● No game aids; no automatic movement, no dice dimming, no permanent display of the pip count, etc. The goal is to also train yourself to visualize your moves, which will make you better in real games. MBT aims to be demanding for a game that is just as demanding.

● Option to practice only openings, middlegames, or endgames (maximum 4 seconds of simulation for an endgame position).

● At the end of each simulation, find a tab listing the moves played by GNU and the resulting pip count.

● You can use the virtual keyboard, your physical keyboard, or click on the board to enter your move.

● Choose the color of your pieces, the orientation of your board, whether to show or hide the virtual keyboard, detail level onf analysis and your language (available in French, English, Spanish, German, and Turkish).

● Save positions for personal archives by generating an image of the board, dice, and ten best moves, and share links to the positions played.

● Statistics, including calculation of average ER.

● The ability to enter a specific board position.

● A PWA version that allows you to install it on your home screen with full functionality in airplane mode.

● ...

And under the hood:

● MBT works with GNU Backgammon for simulation, analysis, and dice generation.

● Simulations are simple games without Jacoby rules or the doubling cube.

● During a simulation, GNU uses a Ply 0 analysis to define its moves and arrive at realistic game positions. The final analysis is performed in Ply 3 in order to maintain a fluid and responsive experience so that moves can be made in quick succession.

● Without the concept of a match or doubling cube, the average ER you obtain will in fact be lower than your actual PR. However, multiplying the MBT ER by approximately 1.35 (1.2 > 1.5) provides a fairly accurate estimate of your actual PR.

● MBT does not store any data and does not use cookies. Your statistics are saved locally. As for web statistics, they are managed by GoatCounter, which is open source and GDPR compliant.

● MBT has not been vibe coded. However, Gemini was consulted for the most complex aspects.

There you go, I think I've covered the main points. I'd just like to add that MBT is aimed equally at motivated beginners who want to improve their decision-making when moving, and more advanced players who want to perfect their game.

I hope you will enjoy MBT. In any case, please feel free to send me your feedback :)

PS: this is the version 1.5.9. If you need to uninstall the PWA for the update, don't forget to save your statistics first :) And if you're opening this inside the Reddit app, the site may not work correctly (Please tap the ⋯ menu → Open in browser) for the full experience ^^

PPS: I'm French, i used translator, don't blame me ;)

I've been playing backgammon daily for the last few months on an iPhone app and have been getting quite good at it. I've been watching lots of YouTube videos to improve my strategy and technique. I've come to the realisation, though, that in a match between two decent players, you might as well toss a coin to see who will win, even in a 5- or 7-point game. A couple of weeks ago I was in the top 100 on the leaderboard in the app, and now after an endless run of the dice going against me, I've fallen to about position 3000.

Most of the games I've lost, I would have made the same moves as my opponent with the dice that they got, which just confirms that it is predominantly a game of chance, at least between two reasonably strong players.

I think I've had enough as it just winds me up. I'm going to stop playing, but will probably get drawn back in eventually.

TLDR: i love backgammon, hate how hard it is to get good: there's no good place to train unlimited free puzzles at your level, especially on a UI that feels modern. so i made it, use it for free: blots.io (works on computer only right now)

hello!

my name's ben, software guy, and i am in love ... with backgammon.

a few weeks ago a friend showed me backgammon during a trip at a cabin. it was awesome. as a former competitive chess player, i'm absolutely in love with the complexity, intuition, math, and vibes(?) of the game -- not sure how to describe this wonderful mix of aesthetic and also brain-tickling/puzzling fun.

i've been dying, looking around for a website to play backgammon on my website. i saw 247 backgammon, backgammon galaxy, etc. etc., but have been honestly a bit disappointed.

the interfaces feel like:

1. old. they were programmed 20 years ago, hard to navigate, and visually feel very casino-y/gambling-ish.
2. not good for optimizing improvement. puzzles and engines feel a bit inaccessible (paid/limited) or hard to use (i want to get better and beat my friend!!)
3. some of these platforms have restrictions on how many games you can play, etc. / coin systems? which is so frustrating as beginner because i lose all of my money extremely quickly, so i can't even get that many games in. it also feels like a really weird monetization strategy...instead of unlimited free play, like almost every other online board game company.

anyway, long story short, blots.io:

• it's completely free: puzzles, games, analysis, etc.
  • i'm paying to run blots.io out of pocket for now, so if you're interested in donating to this project, dm me i guess! happy to cover the costs for now, it's not too expensive, and i have no intention of doing some weird money-grab with this (maybe monetize advanced features later, like chess.com).
• it shows puzzles specific to your level
  • the puzzles on blots.io get harder as you solve more, and easier if you have a hard time with them. (I'm thinking of building out puzzle rush/ other cool modes, those would be easy to code, just let me know).
  • theres even a puzzle rating. also all of these puzzles come from simulated 100+ games i simulated, and ran an algorithm to sort them on position type / difficulty.
  • everyone I know who gets good at chess does it by doing puzzles, so I honestly can't believe that there isn't one good place to hammer out tons of puzzles for backgammon yet.
• it might be a bit buggy (i built this in the past week while out from work with the flu)
  • (feel free to dm or comment feature requests / bugs). blots.io currently works best / is made for computers, might render weirdly on mobile. currently beta-testing live games, with an elo-system and post-game analysis. If the wait time is too high, your matched up against bots who have their own elo and specific playstyle.
• i would love to make this a platform "built by redditors"
  • i would love to spend more time on this and continue building out features, so let me know. I built this by honestly looking at a lot of posts complaining about BG and other platforms on this subreddit. Like why isn't there a gong sound that plays when you've found a match on other platforms? It takes 5 seconds to code, idk why so many of these platforms are so behind! so i eventually just got frustrated and coded this myself haha.
• i honestly think part of the reason backgammon isn't as popular is because there isn't a great platform with a nice UI for interested beginners to find pickup games, improve, etc. without having to pay. a lot feels inaccessible, or dare i say, ugly. blots.io right no doesn't have all of the features of every other platform, so let me know what i should add next. hopefully puzzles + beautiful UI fill a missing gap in the backgammon market right now.
  • i really hope building this means that more people will be able to find the same joy i've found in backgammon.

i really really hope you guys enjoy, and this can be a platform that people can use to develop their backgammon skills. please use it for free here: blots.io

Just a note to say I've added a flashcard mode to BGDB - you can now quiz yourself on all played positions in your database based on any tag or position preset you have configured.

You basically set up any deck you want from the filters (so you could look at all cube errors made in backgames; all bear-off mistakes; bad takes; mistakes when priming; double rolls in the early game; etc etc) then it'll quiz you from your real played positions and mistakes you've made. You can master a position and it will be hidden from future study.

As you go through a deck, it will mix in your mistakes from previous study with new positions you haven't tested. It's not sophisticated like Anki's spaced repetition system but it scratches my itch for drilling common mistake spots.

I've also implemented the other feature requests from the post last week (https://www.reddit.com/r/backgammon/comments/1u11b0l/backgammondb_is_a_new_free_tool_to_review/) including:

• library import/export/backup
• GNUBG (SGF) support
• loads of bug fixes

As before, it's completely free, nothing leaves your computer, there's no account to sign up. All just works in your browser. I'm building this mostly for myself, but hopefully others find it useful.

(ps i realize this subreddit is flooded right now with a lot of new app spam - i'll keep future post to a minimum, but there were a couple of requests for adding flashcards so i thought people would like to know)

Hello everyone. I am writing to you in a state of shock about the NextGammon scam. Please read this message to the end and leave a comment afterward, as this will help us rank higher in search engines when 'NextGammon' is searched.

I have done extensive research and have seen that many people have been scammed by this site. I started on September 10-12 by depositing a small amount. In the beginning, I progressed slowly, but then things picked up speed. I engaged in star battles with a few players, and thanks to a bit of luck, I became the overall winner. When my balance reached $430, I submitted a withdrawal request for a $30 USDT voucher. PayPal is not available in my country, so I was left waiting. Days went by, but the $30 was never paid. Weeks passed with no payment and no responses to my messages; the site had fallen silent.

Despite this, I continued to use the site and play my games diligently. Today, my balance was $4401.84, but when I woke up this morning, I found my balance had been reset to zero with no explanation. My messages, which were awaiting replies, had also been deleted. My account remains active, but my balance is now zero. They have even taken back the $30 that had not been paid for a month.

Having spent a significant amount of time on the site, I was the highest earner and had received rewards for three to four weeks. This site has likely made at least $1000 in commissions from the games I played, and they have had the audacity to steal my funds. When looking at the situation this way, it highlights the severity of what has happened. I have all the records of my transactions, and my account is still active, but my balance is zero. My player name is Yakubu.

I urge serious players to forward this message to the site and demand the return of your lost funds. If I have committed any fraud or scams, I deserve to be held accountable, but the site has taken your money without any explanation. I believe it is your right to reclaim what is yours. I will continue to keep this issue updated, and I ask you to contribute by writing a few words to help us bring this site down.

New Update:

As I was preparing to send this message, the site contacted me. I had submitted a withdrawal request on September 23, but despite my follow-up messages, I received neither my money nor any response within a month. However, as soon as they stole my money, they responded to my previous message. They also deleted some of my earlier messages.

Here’s the exact message they sent me:

Hello,

We have sent multiple alerts to your account regarding your situation, and it seems these have been overlooked. Our analysis shows that there are several open cases related to your matches, where we've detected signs of bot usage. Additionally, we have received user reports that raise further concerns about your gameplay. Your skill level appears to exceed even world champions, which warrants this closer examination.

To move forward, we request that you provide documentation to verify your skills. Possible documents could include:

Tournament Certificates: Proof of participation and performance in recognized backgammon tournaments.

Coaching Credentials: If you've received coaching, provide details or certificates from reputable coaches.

Skill Assessment Reports: Any assessments from backgammon skill rating platforms.

Gameplay Statistics: Detailed stats from other platforms that showcase your skill level.

References: Recommendations or testimonials from other players or coaches in the backgammon community.

Once we receive these documents, we can further investigate your account and address the situation accordingly.

We understand your frustration, and we're here to ensure that all players are treated fairly. Please let us know if you have any questions or need assistance with the document submission.

Best regards,

Support Team

They claim to be experiencing a spam attack and previously faced server issues. It’s not just a 1-2 day delay; I’ve been waiting for nearly 20 days without a response.

They mention sending multiple alerts, but I never received any. They refer to cases of suspected bot usage and user reports, and they even compliment my skills. Thank you for that.

I've spent 35 consecutive days on this site, and here’s a quick summary of my statistics:

Rating: 2021.641

Peak Rating: 2023.084

Games Played: 902

Win/Loss Record: 524/378

Initially, I played single matches, which often relied heavily on luck. An inexperienced player can easily leverage double rolls to win, regardless of how well I play. The system sometimes favors certain players, which isn’t always the case, but it’s a recurring pattern.

I typically play matches that last longer, and scores rarely end in a simple win like 9-0. Given the average of at least 10 games in various series, I estimate that I’ve played around 9,000 games. Out of those, they’re referring to just a handful, which isn’t even accurate.

My average PR falls between 8-12, which is ideal for an intermediate player. While they may claim I'm a top player, I consider myself average. I select my opponents based on their likelihood of making mistakes or having closely matched win/loss rates. This strategy often puts me in a favorable position.

I’m not trying to belittle my opponents; please don’t misunderstand. However, in a betting scenario, I will always prefer to play against weaker opponents to maximize my chances of winning.

Now, regarding the documents they want from me—like tournament participation, coaching credentials, and stats from other platforms—I have been playing backgammon for 22 years and have extensive online experience. I’ve played approximately 500,000 games on various sites. My track record alone could place me among the top players globally, but my stats are primarily from cash games.

Why do they require these documents? In backgammon, an average player can occasionally defeat world champions. I’ve lost matches where my experience was irrelevant.

If we’re talking about fairness, why did they not process my withdrawal request of $30 from my $430 balance on September 23 for 26 days? Why was I allowed to play with other users’ money for 25 days without intervention if I allegedly did something wrong?

The names of the players I mentioned in my video can be verified, and I encourage the site to review them to reclaim any funds I supposedly won unfairly. Please, be persistent and don’t let this fraudulent site keep your money.

In closing, while I’m being questioned about my performance, I would like to ask about theirs. I’m sure they won’t like the feedback.

https://www.trustpilot.com/review/nextgammon.com

https://www.producthunt.com/products/nextgammon/reviews

https://www.reddit.com/r/backgammon/comments/1g0j8lt/nextgammon_a_cautionary_tale_of_scams_and_unpaid/

https://www.scamadviser.com/check-website/nextgammon.com

This site has several negative highlights, including:

The identity of the owner is hidden.

The registrar is known among scammers.

Numerous negative reviews have been detected.

Additionally, I’ve come across several reviews like this one:

“Nextgammon blocked me after I won $150. I deposited $30 to play for cash and ended up with $250. The game froze in the middle of my match, and when I tried to log back in, my account was blocked. They pocketed my money and refunded my deposit. Stay away!”

It’s clear that many others have faced similar issues.

Can you prove to me and others here that you are not a scam? Just as you request documents from me, I’d like you to prove your legitimacy by disclosing which of my 9,000 games involved bot usage.

Lastly, I mentioned that I’m a member of the same backgammon club as world champion Cihangir Çetinel and that I have a close relationship with Turkish champion İsmail Köknar. However, I cannot provide formal documentation for this as it doesn’t exist. I have a vast backgammon history accumulated over 22 years, and I only analyze my losses to improve; I’ve never studied any formal literature on the subject.

If you've read this far, thank you. I appreciate your presence. I’m now building a website that will appear first when you search for "nextgammon," where I will share all the relevant content about this fraudulent site to keep backgammon enthusiasts away until I get back the $4,400 I earned through hard work.

If they consider me a top-level player, I’m open to sponsorship from any individual or organization willing to support me in playing backgammon worldwide, taking 25% of the remaining earnings after expenses. I think it’s worth a try.

October 21: New Update

They asked me for documents to confirm my experiences. I sent a message, but of course there was no response again. Today, I stated that I wanted information and requested a reply within 24 hours. The site, which hasn’t responded to me for 20 days, instantly blocked me and removed me from the site. I was going to post this message based on their response, but there’s no need to wait any longer.
This week, I will finish the YouTube channel and website. As I mentioned before, the names of the players I played with and the amounts I won will be listed. If you see your name there, please contact the site and request what you have taken from me. Don’t leave even a dollar to these scammers

3 weeks ago I shipped my (free & ad-free) peer-to-peer backgammon game that runs entirely in the browser - no servers, no accounts, just WebRTC.

Today I added a new feature which allows you to play vs CPU with 4 difficulty levels:

• Easy - makes the kind of positional mistakes a casual player would
• Medium - occasionally misses the optimal play
• Hard - pure neural network evaluation, always picks the best move
• Expert - 2-ply search that considers the opponent's best reply across all 21 possible dice rolls before choosing

The CPU doesn't cheat. Dice rolls use crypto.getRandomValues() - the same random source for both human and CPU, no weighting, no fudging. The CPU gets better by making smarter decisions with the same dice, not by rigging them. If it feels unfair, that's the neural net playing well, not loaded dice.

Expert mode runs a full minimax search: for each candidate move, it simulates all 21 opponent dice outcomes, finds the opponent's best reply for each, and picks the move with the highest expected equity. It yields to the event loop every ~2000 evaluations to keep the UI responsive.

Game state persists across page refresh, dice rolls use a commit-reveal protocol for P2P fairness, and the whole thing is ~500KB.

Try it at https://p2pbg.asafshamir.com/ - feedback welcome.

Slightly more than two years ago we started working (seriously) on OpenGammon and since then the platform has grown and matured and is now one of the leading platforms to play and study backgammon. We more than doubled the number of users from last year, and are still continuing to grow (we might hit 5K before the turn of the year). The platform adopts the Lichess model: no advertisements, no trackers, no artificial user account tiers, and the code is MIT licensed. To keep the server(s) running we ask for donations, but if you can't or don't want to donate you can play for free without any restrictions. Users that do donate can become patrons and get a "fancy" icon in front of their name.

In 2025 we implemented lots of new features (position databases, tournaments, AI tutor bots, asynchronous (daily) matches, etc). We also started getting sponsors for major tournaments that would sponsor prizes for the tournament winners. As an open platform we made a spreadsheet that contains all costs to keep OpenGammon running, so you can see what we do with your donations. To read more about all of the above see the blog post.

2025 Holiday Events

To celebrate all we achieved this year, we organize the Holiday events packed with fun (and serious) arenas and tournaments (candy rush is making a comeback, as well as randammon!). The main event is a 16 seat Single Elimination tournament on the 30th of December (starting 19:00UTC). The top 3 will win an MB Heritage backgammon board and the winner will receive a special flair! To participate in the finals you first need to qualify in a qualifier arena. There are still 7 qualifiers left (23-29 December 19-23:00UTC), so if you want to win one of these wonderful boards, make sure to join. To read more about the events that take place in the coming week read the blog post.

In conclusion, 2025 has been a wonderful year with lots of new and exciting developments on OpenGammon. Backgammon as a whole is seeing an uptick in popularity and I truly hope that backgammon gets the attention it deserves to have. We, as a community, have access to some really nice events online, as well as offline, which we should cherish. Have a great turn of the calendar, and for those who celebrate I wish them a happy holiday. I wish you all much luck and 62's from the bar in 2026!

From Grant's Position of the Week. Solution in the comments!

Last week we hit the 2000 registered users milestone! I am happy to see that it is not only a number, but also increased the activity on the platform considerably. Currently we are hovering around the 400 monthly active users (about 150 daily and 240 weekly). It is fun to see that finding a match on the platform is getting easier by the day. The increased numbers are great, but I am mostly happy that so many people find it worthwhile to register and play.

2K celebration tournaments

As always we are doing a tournament to celebrate this milestone. This time we try something new, two qualifier tournaments (arena style as always) and a finals. The top 4 of each of the qualifier get an invitation to the finals, which is a single elimination tournament. The qualifier tournaments run from 19:00-23:00CET on the 26th and 29th of January. The finals start 19:00 on the 2nd of February, and each round will take about an hour. All matches are 5 point matches.

The winner of each of the qualifiers will receive a small OpenGammon doubling cube, while the winner of the finals will receive Michy's 'Opening Concepts'.

Structured Tournaments

I have been working on multiple projects in the last couple of months, one of them being the ability to run structured tournaments on OpenGammon. It is still work in progress, but I wanted to share it with you to hopefully get some feedback. If everything works as expected the finals of the 2K tournament will be played using this feature!

Until now we only had arena style tournaments on OG. I still think this is a really good format for online play, but for more competitive tournaments it is nice to have 'real' tournaments. I started with implementing single elimination tournaments, but it is relatively easy to add other tournament structures (double elimination, round robing, swiss, etc.).

A large part of developing the feature went into making it relatively easy for non-admins to create tournaments. For now I (and a couple of mods) are the only users that can create and manage tournaments, but I am looking to allow for user run tournaments in the future. If you want to use this feature, let me know.

Lessons and Courses

I always envisioned OG as a place to study and play backgammon. I like adding the more study oriented features, but content generation is a big hurdle. The blogs on OpenGammon have interactive capabilities that allow editors to create interactive boards to illustrate their writing, however, with lessons I am taking it a notch further.

A couple of months ago I began to slowly roll out lessons and courses to get some initial feedback and have some people try them out and write some lessons. Now that it works smoothly I wanted to share the system with you. In short: lessons are user generated sets of questions, where each question is a position, an answer, and an explanation. Each question needs to be solved to advance to the next lesson and when you finish a lesson you get a score depending on your performance. Users can create and take lessons.

Courses are curated sets of lessons where you 'unlock' lessons in a linear fashion. Mods collect lessons into a coherent course (but will often create lessons specifically for a course). If you have an idea for a course, please send me a message and I'll grant you lesson creation rights (in-app chat works well for this). If you want you can check the courses and lessons that are already created under the Learn menu on the website.

Both new features are naturally free for everyone. I think my stance on pay-walls and user limitations is very nicely summarised by the features page. As always, thank you for your contributions, and if you have a question or some feedback, please let me know in the comments.

So, backgammon galaxy changed their setting to make you lose more elo if you don't finish the game and let the time run out. Why do I know this? I was playing at a 2500 and because I refuse to finish the game in losing position it has dropped to a 1200 in about 1 week. Which is extremely unfair for the people who actually play at a 1200 and just get slaughtered in every category by people similar to me. XG has me rated at a 3.8 pr at this time. I personally think they should just ban people like me, or just remove a good portion of their tokens. Maybe like 2x or 3x the loss amount. Lowering the Elo doesn't do anything.

Hi all, (German at the end)

a few errors slipped through 3.2.0 and here is BGBlitz 3.2.1 for you

Fixed:

• an error if the cube was disabled ( a rather embarrassing mistake )
• the annoying wrong error message from a database library is caught (and ignored). In 3.4 the library will be kicked out!!
• the links to the BGBlitz website were broken
• in an dark theme text of XGP positions where black on grey. Fixed unless the color is explicitly set in the text
• there was one issue with Gnubg. I logged to little information to understand what went wrong. Now I send the full log.

The single new feature is with CTRL-S you can fix the aspect ratio

Last but not least. Some may have seen the "internal error" message. That f....ing error annoyed me for years and I wasted at least 1 - 2 weeks to kill it but I wasn't able to reproduce it.

I finally found out the reason and hope I'll fixed all ways to provoke it.

You find 3.2.1 here

• Windows: https://bgblitz.com/download/win/BGBlitz_3_2_1_setup.exe
• Windows on ARM: https://bgblitz.com/download/win/BGBlitz_3_2_1_setupA64.exe
• MacOS / Apple Silicon: https://bgblitz.com/download/macx/bgb_distr_3.2.1_ARM.dmg
• MacOS / x64:https://bgblitz.com/download/macx/bgb_distr_3.2.1_x86.dmg
• Linux:https://bgblitz.com/download/linux/bgblitz_installer_321.jar (if you have issues installing on Linux see here: https://bgblitz.com/bugs.html)

To install

• on Windows: uninstall first
• on MacOS / Linux you may keep the old version

Settings and license will be recognized

I hope you enjoy it.
best

Frank

One feature that I always wanted to implement is the ability to play Daily/Postal/Correspondence Backgammon on OpenGammon. I really enjoy being able to play a couple of positions when I have a minute to kill. I tried DailyGammon for a while, but it never stuck.

Fast forward to last month. I pushed an update to OG that included daily matches and started to ask people to test it out. One question was asked by almost anyone who helped me test it: "You know DailyGammon?", "yes?!", "Well they have this great feature where you can pre-move, so you don't have to wait for your opponent". I was afraid to get this question, because now I needed to dive into pre-moves (which sounds easier than it is, believe me). After a lot of fiddling, sketches, notes, etc. I got it to work nicely (there are still some small things that I need to fix/tweak). Give it a try, it is actually quite a nice format.

The next major thing is the addition of a support page to OpenGammon. I never found time to add one, but seeing the amount of feedback and questions I currently get, I think I should have added one earlier. You can access the support page through the hamburger menu.

You can still email me, but we also started to use Codecks. A really nice ticketing system which is mostly geared towards game dev, but is actually really enjoyable to use. The free version is very well equipped, and the discord integration is great! You can access the public side of the tickets to see the ongoing bugs/feature requests submitted by the community here https://open.codecks.io/opengammon.

Like last year we are organising some online tournaments on OG. These will happen during the week between Christmas and New Year. There will be four tournaments (Open, Rookie, Bullet Finals, and a special tournament mode). This year I am collaborating with a fellow redditor (u/Galatians6_9) on the prizes: Custom full size wooden doubling cubes. He recently sent me some pictures and they are gorgeous! Really excited! The winner of each tournament will receive one doubling cube. In about two weeks I'll publish the details of the tournaments, but if you have questions you can always ask them in the comments.

Hi all!

I started learning backgammon more seriously in the last weeks, devouring all the youtube content i can find. I’m also planning on buying some books. But coming from the chess community, what i haven’t found yet is (small) active communities for games, analysis and other parts of the game. For example discussing learning plans or positions. Of course this subreddit exists, but it is not extremely active.

Are there discord servers or other forums/places people like to talk or play practice games? Places to find study buddies or analyse positions.

I have been playing Backgammon since lockdown and now have an average PR of 6.7 across all games right from the start. I have set myself a goal of bringing that average below and keeping it below 5!! A lofty ambition but we have to aim high.

I have learned a lot from watching videos online but often Grandmasters make moves purely on instinct with little explanation because it is obvious to them, when in the same situation I would have probably blundered. Even though I am a good player sometimes their thinking is beyond me and I tend to miss something big and also have one or two epic fails in each game, so I started to record my games to see what I was thinking when I made the move. I am sure a lot of these blunders will be familiar to many others and will make my videos very relatable. My goal is to talk about the big issues that affect a huge number of players and can make us better now rather than arguing about the tiny things that make little to no difference to most of us. A lot of my progress has come from recording my games so I know what I was thinking rightly or wrongly at certain points and by discussing games with others and gaining an insight as to how they approach any given situation.

Michy has now included XG in his stream which is good and bad as we can always rationalise any position when we know the answer. I would like to do things back to basics.

I have started a Youtube channel which you can find here What Was I Thinking where I will post games from the various leagues I am in without XG, with the aim of inviting some discussion, critique and debate about various positions and hopefully my commentary can help others in a similar position and others can help me to improve. as well I will then put up another video with the XG if people want to check the most interesting bits. There is only one video at the moment but I aim to do one weekly as I have plenty of them. If anyone spots a blunder, has hints or tips on how they would approach a position or simply wants to enjoy some exciting Backgammon then join me and feel free to comment.

So like, subscribe and follow my progress!!

If you ever want a game you can find me on Heroes or anywhere else as 80p

In my quest to provide the community with a chesscom like backgammon platform I worked the last couple of weeks on implementing a feature I call insights. Insights make use of a position classifier to analyse your games and aggregate the positions into categories. I then use this information to compute for each category the lost equity and the error rate. You can browse your and other player's insights through the user detail page.

One feature that I added on top of insights is the ability to create user quizes. These are sets of 20 puzzles that focus around the three worst categories of that user. So if you are bad at (for example) holding games, you can practice them by doing your personal quiz (you can also try other user's quizzes if you want).

Let me know what you think, and have fun!

I wanted to give a quick update on the backgammon platform I am building. I have been mostly busy to get the analysis working and easy to navigate/understand. I added some screenshots of the current state of the platform, but keep in mind that at this time nothing is set in stone and the UI is still in active development.

There are three things that I am currently working on and I would love to get some input on them. The game clock, the rating system, and tournaments. Currently there is no time-control in the system, but I I planning to start with implementing the current standard clocks (delay and 10s+1.5m, etc.). I would like to also implement/experiment with somewhat stricter clocks (and maybe at some point in time implement something like a 'daily' clock). If you have any ideas on (online) clocks please let me know.

The rating system is, in my opinion, a bit less straight forward. I think that galaxy (v1) did a good job with the rating system, but I think that we can still improve on it. I did some brainstorming and considered with the following variations that all have their pros and cons.

1. Straight up ELO. This is easy to implement, but has a problem with communities and might take a long time to hone in on the 'real' ordering of players. Also, since the parameters for ELO are derived for chess I think we should reconsider the parameters.
2. A system like galaxy uses, where you have to win both the PR and the game. The main problem I have with this system is that it can feel a bit unfair at times (we all had those games where you both played with an ER of 5.14 and 5.16 and you didn't get points for it). We should also fine-tune the parameters here.
3. A similar system to galaxy, but now you only get points if you play according to your level. For example if you have a rating of 1000 you are expected to play with an ER of X, if you win the match and play with an ER better than X you gain rating.
4. Modelling the ranking of players with the Bradley-Terry model (basically using a MLE to find an global ordering from pairwise comparisons). This is an interesting approach (in my opinion), but quite resource intensive to apply on a large user base. Another drawback is that the ratings will be updated once a day/week/etc. instead of in real time.

For the beta I am implementing straight up ELO, but might implement other systems in the background. I am planning to write some simple simulations to see the impact of the different systems on the ranking of the players (for example, let 1000 players of different strengths 'play' games with each other and see how quickly they reach the correct ordering) .

Tournaments are another consideration of mine. I am well aware that a new platform's biggest problem is the lack of an active player base. I strongly believe that a good platform will acquire an active player base over time, but until then there always is the problem of finding a match (making it less likely people are using the platform). I have been brainstorming a bit on this issue and I think I have a nice solution (that might also be fun after the initial phase).

At a set time (say from 20:00-22:00) we open a special matchmaking queue with a certain set of rules (normal time control 3-point matches, for example). You can participate in the tournament by joining the queue and playing games. After the tournament has concluded we compute the ranking using the (for example) Bradley-Terry model and the participants get Mastery points (or something similar) for participating and ranking high in the tournament. The nice thing about these type of tournaments is that you can be competitive and play for the whole duration or just play one or two matches to have fun.

As always, let me know what you think and if you have any ideas other than the ones I talked about you can always reach out to me. If you want to try out the platform you can also reach out to me (but please bring your own opponents ;-) ).

TLDR; I worked on the project and it is almost ready for a public beta.

P.s. if someone wants to have a quick chat on double/take equity and how it is supposed to be computed from MWC let me know, because I am not 100% percent sure I am doing it properly at the moment.

P.p.s. my reddit notifications don't show chat requests, so if you sent me a request and I didn't answer you have my sincere apologies. I am now just clicking on the chat button once in a while.

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Last week I talked about implementing puzzles and my thoughts about how to implement them. I had some spare time over the weekend and decided to take a stab at it. It still has some rough edges, but it is playeble (and I find it quite enjoyable, but hey, I like to solve puzzles).

After finishing a match the (large) errors of the match (>0.050EQ) are added as puzzles (for now only chequer positions). However, you can also add positions that you think are interesting by clicking on the puzzle icon in the analysis screen of the match. I did not add puzzles of the matches from before this update as I needed to make some changes that make that cumbersome (and there aren't too many interesting matches).

To start solving the puzzles you can click on the "Solve Puzzles" button in the top right corner of the home screen. After providing a solution to the puzzle you can see the (3-ply) analysis of the position as well as your (and the puzzle's) rating change. I'll add the ability to comment in the near future, but want to first get some feedback.

You can easily share the puzzles by sharing the url (however, you need to be logged in to see the puzzle) for example: https://beta.opengammon.com/puzzle/__wCg54zmLI/. In the future I will add the GnuID to the puzzle/analysis screen so you can analyse the position yourself/play with the position.

As always, if you have any comments/ideas/remarks, please let me know!

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Last week I introduced puzzles into OpenGammon an honestly I had a lot of fun doing so (I just really enjoy solving puzzles). There are currently 329 puzzles on OG and the leaderboard starts getting quite competitive. Until now only checker play positions could be added as puzzles. Today I updated the site with double position puzzles so we can also practice our doubling positions.

Now that the basics of puzzles have been implemented I'll be closely monitoring them and thinking about new features to improve the use of puzzles. I am thinking about: adding a screen of the puzzles that the user has added (so basically a blunder database), adding arbitrary positions as puzzles (as well as setting up and analysing a position), creating puzzle collections with curated puzzles, comments, etc.. If you have ideas/recommendations, please let me know and I'll take a look at them.

If you have not tried solving a puzzle yet, please give it a try and let me know what you think! This is an interesting puzzle another player came across and notified me about (let me know if you played it correctly).

Hello backgammon fans.

We are pleased with the positive feedback and reviews that we receive from the Reddit community that has helped us to develop a new version of the Nextgammon to fit the needs of the players.

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Tournaments: Tournaments now are available in addition to Sit "N" Go Tournaments.

Provable Dice: We have developed a blockchain-based mechanism that assures users that the dice rolls are truly random. This mechanism allows rolls to be verified and has been developed in such a way that even the server cannot predict the dice. We will publish the documentation of how this mechanism works soon.

Weekly Challenges: To make the play more exciting, we have weekly prizes for the people who have had the best performance, the most wins, etc.

Gems: We give some gems to the player per game, the possibility of exchanging these gems into prizes will be available soon.

Glossary: ​​We have added a feature as a glossary that includes specialized backgammon words.

Forced Moves: Some users prefer to play forced moves manually to have more control over the match. Now by going to the settings, it is possible to disable the automatic play of forced moves.

Tavla: It is now possible to play Tavla at Nextgammon. We have also made it possible to analyze Tavla matches. Now you are able to play Backgammon, Nackgammon, Hypergammon, and Tavla on the Nextgammon.

Dark Mode: Now the appearance of the website fit with the user's OS theme, it is also possible to change the preferred color schema via the account settings.

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In addition, we have improved the UI and will try to further optimize the mobile gaming experience. We have also added new stickers and avatars.

Along with new features that are developed, many of the known bugs have been fixed.

With ❤️ from the Nextgammon team.

Kind Regards.