Denial

Anyone into backgammon? Yesterday, I won over the strongest backgammon AI in the world, with the score 9-0:
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid= ... 1406814999

I love backgammon. I like it even more than chess, which itself is a great game too.
The combination of both random chance and strategy appeals to me very much.

I have mostly played again other people when I was younger, but it does not seem to be popular anymore.
A few nice computer versions have come my way. Isnt' Backgammon on the Mega-Cart (can't quite remember).

I have a friend I have occasionally convinced into playing. But for the most part my experience is limited to computers. I actually got into the game because I had a copy for c64. http://www.gb64.com/game.php?id=549&d=18&h=0

Backgammon a good game because the games are so short. Experienced players can complete several rounds very quickly.

I've never played backgammon, but I suspect it has similarities to a game I deeply enjoyed as a child: Mancala (though I knew it by a different name). It was amazing and needs more exposure.


Sent from my phizzone

What did you call Mancala? It was marketed here for some time as "Warri".

I suppose it has some similarity to Backgammon; however, I am not completely familiar with how it is played.

I've never learnt Backgammon, but I would like to one day. Apparently it evolved from an ancient Egyptian game called Senet, which was played during the Pharaonic period, so was unsurprisingly obsessed with the afterlife. Many sets were found in tombs, butt he rules were finally worked out by the paintings found in tombs.

I can't abide Drafts though. Get those tiidlywinks off my chess set!!

The best free backgammon software that I've come across:

Gnu backgammon:
http://gnubg.org/
This is the second strongest backgammon AI in the world (next to extreme gammon). I almost always play matches. When you have played a match, you can let the program analyze the whole match and mark out your bad moves and you can see how the AI player (or another AI player) would have moved instead. I don't always agree with the computer though and that is probably why the computer wins a bit more often than me ... If you analyze the game with a different AI player than the one you played against, you will see that the analyzing one form time to time would have played differently. Another good thing is that it shows how much luck you had. So if you loose, then analyze the game and see that you got several dice throws marked as "very unlucky" while the computer got many "lucky" throws, you can still be happy with the result. But that works two ways: Even if you win, the computer can say that you played awful according to his calculations. The computer calculates which moves that are most probably to give a win, the more you move like that, it will give you a better score. I once got the same score as the computer (supernatural), but sometimes I get the score "awful". The thing is you can win even if you are awful if you're a bit lucky.

For iPhones:
Extreme Gammon Mobile
The free version is strong, fast and works well. The limitation compared to the full version is that you only can play up to 3 points if you want to play a match and that you can't play against the strongest AI player. But the strongest in the free version is certainly strong enough.

To play against real players over the internet:
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (See later warning!)
You can either play with fake money for free or for real money. This is probably THE online backgammon program. You will find someone to play with in a matter of seconds. A lot more people are playing with fake money than for real. I've tried to play for real money but I don't think that's my game. I get kind of stressed out and only think that I HAVE TO WIN HAVE TO WIN even if I play for just one dollar. Anyway, the program is said to check if you run any other backgammon software on your computer to cheat but I guess it can't check if you run it on another computer at the same time. But there is also a time limit for each move so I guess it would be a bit hard to cheat anyway.

For Commodore C64 (probably not free though):
Club Backgammon. Nice game and menu based (you move a mouse pointer around with a joystick). It doesn't stand a chance against the modern gammon AIs though.

The 3D view in gnu backgammon was a bit hard to get to work on my computer though. I discovered why it didn't work just by chance.

#1 When installing, it asks me if I want to install the version recommended for this computer or a more compatible one. I have to choose the more compatible one.

#2 I have to change the windows system display settings to "Windows Classic" (instead of the standard Vista). I would guess that turning off desktop composition does the same thing.

#3 "Quick drawing" should (probably) be turned off.

#4 In the properties for the program (icon), I've set it to run in Windows XP compatibility mode.

The 3D view looks a lot better than the 2D so I'm happy I figured this out (which I did TODAY )

3D view with my custom colors:


2D view also with my custom colors:

Proof of that playing like a computer isn't always the best

In gnu backgammon you can set the seed for the random number generator, and in that way you can play two games with exactly the same dice throws. Here I have used the default random routine (Mersenne Twister) and set the seed to 8192 (as an easy number to remember ).

Here is the result of me (blue) playing against gnu grandmaster (white):


and here is gnu grandmaster playing against himself with exactly the same dice numbers (as you can se on the right in both pictures):


In the first case, blue (me) wins a gammon (3 points).

In the second case, white wins a gammon instead.

I rest my case

Never been into this game but... If there was a VIC port... Anything around for the friendly computer? Not that I'm looking for another Sargon II, something (literally) basic would be just fine to learn .

There's two Backgammon games in GB20 that I can see, one by Bug Byte and one published by Compute.

Here are the rules:
http://www.bkgm.com/rules.html

(Edited the post about how to get the 3d view working on my computer... )

What is this then? (I don't have Java installed to try it)
http://www.vavasour.ca/jeff/playvic.html

Seems to be the Compute version, posted by the author: http://www.vavasour.ca/jeff/games.html#backgammon