Backgammon App Reviews

The Rules The writers of this game don’t seem to understand how the doubling cube is supposed to work. If you reject the double offer and have pieces in the opponent’s home block or off the board, the game is treated as a x3 loss (the opponent gets (value of doubling cube) x 3). This means you have to take double or you’ll almost guarantee giving the opponent more points than if you reject the double. Rejecting a double cube should act as a x1 loss. If people actually do play this way, then the game should give you the option to choose how the doubleing cube works. Resigning the game seems to always result in your opponent only getting 1 point despite the current state of the board or the value of the doubling cube. There’s no way to justify that. Difficulty Scale Easy and normal are embarassingly easy. If you know how to play and play the doubling cube aggressively you cant get the computer to give up after 5 turns. (Seriously) This is mostly because the computer makes horrible decisions on these difficulty levels, but also because the computer seems to be afraid of accepting a doubling. Hard on the other hand is actually a real opponent. Others have said that the game cheats on cube rolls when you get ahead. I’m not sure this is true, but the computer definitely has gotten lucky enough rolls to make me consider punching my screen on mulitple occassions and this only happens on hard mode. Undo Button The undo button only allows you to go back a single roll…fine. That said if your only option the next move is to roll (double cube is max for the game), you don’t get a chance to undo. The game also gives the computer another random roll after your undo, which is fine, but it allows you to affectively undo the computer’s good roll. If the undo is going to be limited, the player should have to confirm each move (to prevent misclicks) and the undo button shouldn’t exist.

The layout of this game is great, and the pieces are easy to see and move with 1 or 2 clicks unlike other versions. That said, this game is rigged in favor of the computer, especially on the “Hard” difficulty level. On the easy and medium levels, the game is so easy that it’s a joke. At first I thought it was all in my head, but when I read the other reviews it seems that many of us agree that the computer has extraordinary luck. The computer rolls a ton of doubles, especially at the end of the game, while the player gets 1s and 2s. I wish this game actually simulated backgammon, because it is great functionally and aesthetically, but it is incredibly frustrating to play a computer that (for lack of a better word) cheats.

Like most of the other reveiwers, I agree that this game is a disappointment because it is too heavily weighted on the computer. I am referring to the increase in high doubles for the computer especially toward the end of the game.

love the game of backgammon, but this game goes beyond frustration - in order for it to be somewhat challenging, you have to set it to hard - great - done - meanwhile, the game CONSTANTLY gives itself doubles - no human would ever roll that many doubles - guess that’s what i get for expecting a fair fight against a celluloid opponent! like a fool, i keep coming back to this app - HOW DO I GET REFUNDED???

It’s not mathematically possible to roll THAT many doubles if the dice roll is, in fact, random. Obviosly, in this game, it is not. And, a preponderance of doubles come as the computer is bearing off. How nice for it. And what’s with the double 4’s? I get quite tired of seeing those. They come at a rate of nearly twice what a real dice roll would produce. And why must there be a dice roll when one player is on the bar and the opposing player has all his inner table points covered? It’s a waste of time. In live play a turn would be forfeited until an inner table point opens up. And speaking of wasting time; when bearing off if there is no mathematical possibility of winning why keep playing? Each player - including the computer - should have the option of resigning with the appropriate score being tallied so a new game can be started. Instead the computer keeps rolling those dice as if more than one pair may magically appear. The human player can resign but the computer wins only one point for the game notwithstanding the doubling cube having been used or a gammon or backgammon having been won. Taking advantage of this the human player can win nearly 100% of the matches providing a match consists of more than one or two games. That takes the challenge out of playing. To add to these annoying time-wasting features the game moves too slowly. And even in the expert setting it makes some mind-numbingly stupid moves not the least of which is its steadfast insistence on leaving a blot behind enemy lines until it has no choice, even if advancing that stone will allow it to win the game. I’ve beat the machine many times as a result of this suicidal tactic. This app does have a nice look and feel. It’s easy to play and has extras that are useful although the “Statistics” for all games played cannot be re-set. I even tried un-installing and re-installing the app but doing so did not delete the records of wins and loses. What’s up with that? Fix this game. These problems are annoying and reason enough to delete this otherwise nicely crafted backgammon app.

agree with other reviewers, this is not much fun as there is no real chance taking place here, just a bias of either too easy or nearly impossible.

I play this game all the time and like it except for one mistake that drives me crazy. It doubles WRONG. If you double, or if the computer doubles you and it is rejected, the game scores it based on how the board is set up at that moment. In other words, if you have pieces in the farthest quadrant, it will call it a backgammon. Why they havent fixed this is beyond me.

This game offers nothing for a player. On the 2 easier levels, it makes such bad moves that it is virtually impossible to lose. On the difficult level, the game is OBVIOUSLY rigged. It ALWAYS rolls numbers that will quickly put it ahead while giving you rolls that are extremely disadvantageous. Certainly not random rolls. Don’t waste your time.

not bad. difficult level still not as challenging as it could be

I am often skeptical of claims that games of chance are “rigged” and have written my own games to check their validity (including casino blackjack and video poker) and I can say that the randomness of the dice rolls in this game are suspect. I analyzed the frequency of doubles and their values both within any given game and within a match and what I termed “miracle rolls”, those rolls where only specific values one either die or, more miraculously, two specific values on both dice are to a players advantage. It appears that the computer’s strategic skill is the same for all levels and that the dice rolls are what is used to create the appearance of varying skill. In “easy” mode the dice rolls tend to favor the human, in “medium” mode the dice rolls are stastically equal between computer and human, and in “hard” mode the dice rolls favor the computer. The computer’s low strategic skill makes the easy and medium levels quite easy to beat but the advantage to the computer on the hard level more than makes up for the low strategic skill any makes any individual game extremely difficult to beat even when the computer makes obviously poor stratgic decisions. Without seeing the code used to generate the dice values this, of course, can not be definitively confirmed but is accurate based on anaylizing several dozen individual games and matches. It is a graphically nice game but the game play coding falls short.

I love this app, but I felt like the hard version was just too easy, I won 10 out of 10 games against the computer, so I don’t know why the other reviews said it was too hard. I love it.

I am enjoying this app. It is far better than others I have tried that keeps asking you after just a few rolls to purchase the app and it is supposed to be a free app. I am happy

The A.I. seems to play well, but the doubling cube algorithm has a crippling error. It scores a decline to double at the doubled points. If you are playing for one point, and double, a decline will cost you 3 points rather than just one. This is simply incorrect. Were this bug fixed. this would be a very nice backgammon playing program. As it stands. It’s not useful at alll. I’m sorry I can only give it one star when it could have had 5. FIX THE DOUBLING CUBE BUG! Please.

The graphics are nice, and its easy to move the pieces, but there are several annoying bugs. As others have noted, the "Easy" mode is ridiculous — I have *backgammoned* the A.I. opponent four times in a row, on more than one occasion. One issue with the graphics, though: the board should have the alternating colors arranged so that any even number lands you on the same color, but their board doesnt do that when you "round the bend." Also, several times now on my iMac, the sound has quit for no apparent reason, and the only way to get it back is to restart the whole Mac. I havent kept count, but the frequency of doubles does seem suspiciously high, especially for the computer player. "Boxcars" should come up only 1 in 36 rolls, but each player typically gets it two or three times per game.