Backgammon ∙

I agree with others here: this game is clearly not using only a random generator for dice rolls. Far often enough, once you are in your home and poised/begun to move your pips off, the apps player starts getting a suspicious amount of doubles. BUT, it’s also quite stupid; sometimes instead of moving off even one pip to prevent you from scoring 2 points, it moves its pieces forward within it’s home area?! Also very occasionally you are prevented from making a valid move! I even took a screenshot of this occuring. That was all of “medium” difficulty. At least then you have a chance of winning. On hard, it’s just playing against a cheater - how frustrating! Rather than rely on only strategy, the app controls the dice very much to its advantage. I just received a rare app update for “minor bug fixes” - the first game played still resorted to double rolls. Besides all of that, it’s not obtrusive with ads at all, you can learn the basic mechanics and at least develop your own strategy/play style. I’ve left the game alone for long periods of time, came back with renewed interest for a simple app to pass time, but always end up bored and a bit frustrated. Keeping it installed only to try 2-player mode teaching my granddaughter how to play.

I have played the game many times and have found on the Hard level, the computer gets both an inordinate amount of fortunate rolls and doubles compared to myself. Hard should not mean more likely to get doubles, it should mean it employs better strategies. In the two most recent games I played, for instance, the computer had three doubles while I had none, and in the other. The computer had three doubles in a row and 5 for total for the game while I had 1 double for the entire game. There is no way one can call that a legit random dice roll algorithm. Update: I have lowered the rating from 3 to 1. In the 5 games I have played since my review, it still rolls a significant amount of doubles above what I get by a 4:1 margin. When I do get doubles, literally 1/3 of the time it is useless since I am trying to get a piece out of jail and it is for a spot that is not open. The last two games the computer rolled doubles 4 times while I did not get one for one game and the next it started with two doubles and had 4 in the first 7 rolls all told. This statistically impossible in any sort of reality outside a poorly written, apparently biased dice roll algorithm that seems to be designed to cheat (can’t say with certainty but this inordinate amount of doubles for the computer coupled with rolls that heavily favor the computer in timing would make one tend to believe such a thing).

Statistics show me through study of 20 consecutive games that the game consistently rolls doubles for itself at least 3:1 on average against opponent in final 20 rolls although double rate for overall game is statistically relatively even. Also average dice roll total in final 20 rolls is at least 20% higher on average for the game than opponent. Clearly the game needs to Cheat because no AI is going to perform that well compared to a skilled player so they have to tip the odds. Lucky rolls are part of the game after all and they admit that they increase double rolls once clearing off starts to "increase excitement" so consider this a way to pass the time not a way to improve your game. Interesting note the new version actually seems to make more mistakes than the old version leaving up to 4 uncovered men on a regular basis when Better options are available which in itself is frustrating but as I said it's just a game and it's free...