The computer game “Doom” kicked off the whole 3D first person shooter genre. In this classic, you start by selecting a difficulty level. On “I’m too young to die” the game is easy, on “Hurt me plenty” it’s fairly hard to beat, but real men (and women) played it on “Ultra Violence” for a real challenge. This analogy came to my mind when thinking about why a Backgammon like “Backgammon Machine” that doesn’t include the doubling cube is fun to play, but somehow stale compared to the real thing. Checker play offers plenty of fun, but by including the cube you turn the game’s challenges from “hurt me plenty” to “ultra violence”.
That said, Backgammon Machine is a special app. It’s really, actually, totally completely free. No ads. No in-app purchases, no virtual coins, no “watch this video for <feature>”. Free. And beautiful. Man this app is well designed in its pure and beautiful grey look. Steve Jobs would love it. I love it.
Playing a game of backgammon on the iPad
But its beauty doesn’t stop at only visual appearance. Its user experience is also top notch - the way you move your checkers, how you undo is just perfect. For example: you roll 6/3, move a checker by 6 pips. Now if you tap on this checker, the app will highlight two target places - 6 back (to undo the 6) and 3 back (to turn the 6 into the 3). Very clever, have not seen this anywhere else.
The minimalistic options screen
Concerning features, this is pretty much it. You start a game in “match to 1 pt” mode. You make your moves (enjoyable). It makes its moves. You start another game in “match to 1 pt” mode. And so on. No tutor/analysis, no setup, no matches, no doubling, no exporting, no manual dice, you get the picture :-).
Oh yes, and the UI is so clean that it doesn’t show a pip count. The joys of counting pips by hand (strengthening my “criss-cross pip counting skills”).
But maybe that’s enough. Play against a strong, free AI can be fun, at least for a casual backgammon in between meetings or such, even without matches, without doubling. So all boils down to the question: is the AI any good? The answer is yes and no. It certainly plays a stronger game than the AIs that have been hand-crafted in a rush. It certainly plays a weaker game than then high-end AIs of XG, BGBlitz, BG NJ.
I‘ve played 18 games so far, and lead 12:6 against the AI. I feel I was fairly lucky sometimes, but I‘ve also seen it going for significant blunders. For example, in a situation where I‘m bearing off against 1 or 2 trapped checkers it moves those trapped checkers home far too early (considering it doesn‘t treat a gammon as 2 points it should wait it out as long as possible). Or take this one:
Backgammon Machine playing a 6/4 opening rather … uhm … unconventionally
This 6/4 opening, according to XG2, is nearly a blunder (losing 0.072 equity). This is way too loose, it will be hard for me to roll something that doesn’t hit, and hit on a point I want to make. Not something an app that claims to play at nearly master strength would do.
Nevertheless this app plays a good game of Backgammon, certainly better than many of the “beginner” level Backgammons out there, and as it’s fast, fun, free and beautiful, it’s great for a fast, casual game of backgammon.
So, just install it and have fun. Just don’t expect too much. I hope the author invests more into self-playing to improve its strength, and into a few more features. Matches would be great.
Update (September 2022): As part of my "
big table with all backgammon app rating" project I've played a couple of games against the machine, and had them analyze with XG2 on the PC. Seems I was lucky during my review; the app plays a strong expert game, almost world class level. (PR 5.2). Sadly it still has no cube.
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