A hidden treasure: Backgammon KG

Apple‘s App Store is like a big ocean. If you‘re a fish who manages to live at its beautiful coral reefs, or at its wonderful famous beaches, plenty of divers will get to see you. But if you live down there in the black depths far below the surface, chances are you‘ll never get into a diver‘s sight. 

Backgammon KG is such a creature from the deepest seas. Unlike companies who have read their SEO (search engine optimisation) books and know how to get their app into your search results, its developer Keith Gould probably just wanted to create a good, free backgammon and nothing else. As a result it is near impossible to get it into your app store‘s view. I‘m regularly hunting for new backgammons, scrolling through long lists of apps, but this one never appeared. Only as a related game to another app it showed up. I downloaded it to my trusty iPhone and was amazed at what a beautiful deep sea fish I had found.

Backgammon KG on an iPad Pro

The thing is: there are many (MANY) backgammon apps on the App Store. But there isn‘t a single one that you can call full-featured without blushing and that is really free. Only this one. Backgammon KG. On the German App Store it has a single (one star “this app is cheating”) rating which suggests that only few people ever tried it.

Graphically it’ fine, but there‘s not too much to write home about; the UI gets the job done, the app has a clean and consistent look, you‘ve got 10 board designs to choose from. But I‘ve seen more beautifully looking backgammon apps. One complaint: sometimes, mostly in the lower row of the board, you have to click slightly left to where your checker should move or it will move one point too far. And a minor complaint: there is no native support of the iPad - it’s using app scaling which makes the app look low-res.

Some of the designs (here: metal) are, well, daring

It’s real strength lies not in its presentation but in its scope and in its price. Backgammon KG is really, actually, totally free. Not free as in “buy 1000 coins in-app to unlock this and that”. Not free as in “whenever you like it least it will confront you with 20 seconds of video to watch or with a blinking ad image. No. Really, actually free. Download it. Play backgammon.

And backgammon it plays. Not the “what doubling cube?” kind of backgammon that half of the apps support. Not the “there is something else than money games?” kind of backgammon. Not the “my developer got the task to build my AI in 10 working days so I play like the ultimate backgammon noob” kind of backgammon. Real, actual, strong backgammon! You can play matches from 1 to 11 points, with Cube, Crawford and everything else working the way it should.

Backgammon KG’s AI uses the same fundamental approach that all the top apps rely on - a neural net based machine learning approach that was trained by millions of self-play games. It shows that the app could have used a few million more of those self-play games. It’s strong, really strong, but not as strong as XG mobile or the BGBlitz inside True BG. I’ve played 4 test matches to 3 points, one myself, one pitting Backgammon KG against the PC program XG2 on an extremely strong level (“roller++”). My conclusion: KG’s checker play is world class level. Not perfect - sometimes an error or even a small blunder creeps in. But good enough for quite everybody to get a good challenge. Cube handling is not as strong; Backgammon KG plays a very defensive cube, missing good cubes quite often. So in the end XG2’s assessment of KG in the four matches was once advanced and expert each, and twice world class. Not bad for a free app.

The little red lamp shows the tutor’s opinion on my move (error!)

Also, the game includes a (nearly) full-featured tutor - great to improve your skills. If you activate the tutor in the settings, you’ll get two things: a little lamp that is white (“perfect”), green (“small error”), yellow (“bigger error”) or red (“blunder”). make a move, see the lamp, and take back/experiment to see what the game recommends. Next to the lamp you’ll find a “Moves” button. Hit it and see all possible moves, ranked from strong to weak, along with two mysterious figures that I haven’t understood.

The tutor’s move list

So to find out the best move, click on the first row and behind the semi-transparent list the move is made. Close the list to see the full thing. Undo if you want to still consider different moves.

I can’t stress enough how cool the combination of a strong AI and a tutor is - apart from reading Backgammon books or watching Backgammon videos of pros commenting pro matches this is the best way to hone your backgammon skills. And while I believe the top apps deserve your investment of around 10 bucks, this one does the job really well, completely free of charge.

One minor gripe: the app doesn’t tutor your cube decisions. This is sad because, at least for me, cube handling is the toughest part of backgammon. To make a proper cube decision you have to assess your winning chances, your / his chances to gammon, the volatility of the board, the likelihood of losing your market next turn. After decades of Backgammoning I still regularly make cube errors on the level of “this has cost you half a point”. But then, Backgammon KG isn’t much better in this respect, so a cube tutor wouldn’t teach you that much.

The default board design 

 

A few more words on features: Backgammon KG includes four playing levels, offers statistics on your playing performance, and tries to keep you motivated by gradually unlocking more board designs whenever you win a game on expert level. For the final “Andromeda” design you have to win 200 games. Not an easy job (though you can cheat by stopping and re-starting the app again and again with your last winning move on the board, but that wouldn’t be appropriate, would it?)

My conclusion: this is one of my top three recommended backgammon apps. True Backgammon costs you good money and offers the most beautiful experience. XG mobile isn’t as beautiful but IMHO a tad bit stronger, and an excellent choice for good money. And Backgammon KG is nearly as good without costing you a cent. Now go ahead and download it, what are you waiting for? :-)

 

Update (Sep 2022): as part of my project to have XG2 rank every app in a big table for easy comparison I've played a few matches against Backgammon KG and analyzed them in XG2. Result: it indeed plays quite strong, at a strong expert level, almost world class - PR 5.7. You hardly find a human opponent that is that strong, and gives you free backgammon teaching.