Backgammon+

I like that it can be played portrait or landscape. I like how fast the pieces move. You don’t have to wait long to play. Fast game. I like how when all your pieces are past each other the there is an option for the computer to finish the game for you. It makes good moves for both sides then. What I don’t like: it’s buggy. Sometimes a piece will not move according to the first or second dice. The space is empty but it will not play it and forces you to move where you don’t want to. I don’t think it’s on purpose since the computer only takes my force-played piece 50% of the time. I play on easy since I think that is most realistic to the real dice results. The medium and hard are manipulated accordingly by the dice results. No other difference. When they say the dice are random, that’s a bunch of crap. On the hard setting the computer will give itself at least three high number doubles and always “magically” land on a single open piece. Especially near the end when you are about to put all your pieces away, it will give itself an early double six advantage and at least one or two more to seal the win. Don’t believe me? Count the combined total dice points thrown for each side on the hard setting and the computer ALWAYS wins by a much higher margin. On easy the combined total is very close, as you would expect with true random. Strategy wise, there is no difference between easy, medium, and hard. Why do I play it the most? It’s fast, 2 orientations, and the easy setting is realistic with the computer having smart strategic moves. Weird that other backgammon games can’t provide the same advantages.

When playing a one player game, the algorithm is set to give the computer what it needs to put your chip on the bar or get off the bar. While it takes several rolls for me to get off the bar it will only take the computer 1 to 2 rolls depending on the number of slots I have open. The computer might have 2 slots blocked and that is the numbers the I roll while I will have 1 slot open in the home area for the computer to use to get off the bar and it will roll that slot. The number of doubles also favors the computer. I normally only get them when I can’t use them. I had to laugh, I had 1 chip by itself in my home area. There was a stack of 6 beside it and I rolled a 1 & 6. No mater how I tried I couldn’t move a chip from the stack of 6 one spot to protect my vulnerable chip. I was close to winning. I had to move another chip that left 2 other chips in danger. Of course the computer landed on 2 chips and sent them to the bar and the computer won the game. It is amazing how the computer can be behind and get enough doubles to win the game. I have given up the on the idea of winning against the computer. Now I try to just get one chip in before the computer wins. It was too depressing to try to win, so I had to change my thought to I will try to get one chip in before the computer wins. That way I can laugh when I see the computer get multiple double rolls the the exact roll that it needs.

Overall, the app works well, and is easy to use. This is my favorite backgammon app as far as interface and design. When playing against hard AI though, it seems like die rolls are not random, with the computer often getting an amazing roll after offering 2x and I accept. That may just be the frustration of losing skewing my memory, but it also seems like matches start with a 4-2 roll more than any other. UPDATE: The seven matches I played after originally writing this review all started 4-2. Seven matches in a row is significant enough that it doesn’t seem random. I believe there’s a 13.3% chance of rolling a 4-2 combination on the opening throw. The chances of doing that seven times in a row is incredibly low. I wanted to test to see if I could reproduce this. I started a match, and rolled 4-2. I surrendered the rest of the games in the match, and started another. Doing this three times in a row resulted in three more 4-2 rolls to open each match. That totals ten matches in a row that have all started with a 4-2 roll. Either the developers are lying when they say die rolls are random, or the algorithm they’re using to randomize has a bug they aren’t aware of. There’s a good chance die rolls during the games are random, and only the first throw is not random. It’s hard to test randomness once you get into the game.