Backgammon Galaxy opens its doors for testing

Recently the website Backgammon Galaxy opened its doors for beta testers. It is a new site where you can play backgammon online against other people. A big advantage for backgammon players is that one of the people behind the project is a strong backgammon player himself. I was one of the lucky 400 people who got a change to try it out.

My impression was very positive. The look and feel are good, and it just feels nice and intuitive to use and play games on.

Artificial intelligence helps you getting better

A major difference between this backgammon site and the others is that it is made for serious players who want to become better at the game. There is a built-in artificial intelligence that will provide you with a complete analysis of your match as soon as you have moved the last checker. You can go into the analysis interface and browse the whole match and get hints about what you should have done and how large your errors were.

A game of skill

With a focus on backgammon as a skill game one of the new ideas is the design of the ranking system. Usually you move up when you win and down when you lose. Here they changed it, so you will only be able to move up if you win and played the strongest in the match. This way you will also be protected from moving down if you got unlucky and lost but played best in the match. This would then be considered a tie.

Understanding how well you played

In backgammon circles we have measured the skill level for many years by an index linked to how many and how severe errors you made in a game. The lower the number the better you played. If you on this scale on average play 4.0 or lower you are considered to be at grand master level. If you play 5.0 or lower you are considered to be a strong international player. Most casual players will play above 20.

These numbers are of course to be taken with a grain of salt in the short run, because there are a lot of fluctuations over a few games. Usually it would take multiple tournaments running for weeks to meet the required volume to be able to determine your skill level.

More to come

In the future I’ll write some blogs discussing different topics that I have been working on.  Based on a series of lectures I recently held at a local backgammon club I realized that I totally forgot to follow my own advice that I provided at the lectures. In essence – do the hard work.

Writing and explaining is a good way for me to process material. I’m happy to share some of my ideas and results with you.