My first Android review :-) - Backgammon by AI Factory

 Okay, it's time to also review Android Backgammons. I wiped the dust off my old trusty Galaxy Tab S2, and installed my first Android Backgammon in a long time: Backgammon by AI Factory. 

 

Backgammon by AI Factory in action

There's this urban myth about Albert Einstein. It says that he has received poor grades in school, particularly in physics. Actually he has received a grade "6" in physics, but while a "6" is a poor grade in most European countries (an "F"), it is a very good grade in Switzerland, where Einstein went to school.

I had to think of this myth when playing a match against Backgammon by AI Factory (henceforth BGAIF) at its supposedly strongest play level "7". Is this all a big misunderstanding? Is the strongest level maybe "1"? But no, even the text explaining the levels goes into great depth about the two new levels 6 and 7 which use a different, very strong AI.

But look at this, for example (NB this is a screenshot from XG2 that I used for expert analysis):

 

Blue to play 22

 

In this position, a blue checker is trapped behind my 5 prime. It's not so important what blue does with three moves of checkers in his home board. But blue MUST move one 2 as 23-21, hoping to roll a 6 later and get behind my prime. Unless you're a total newbie you immediately sees this necessity.

It turns out that BGAIF didn't. It moved 6-2(2).

 

Blue to play 22, with analysis fro XG2

Not unexpectedly, XG2 considers this a horrible blunder, losing nearly a full point of equity (-0.894, to be precise :-) ). And if you look at the move list on the left side, you see quite a lot of BGAIF's moves marked in red color, because they are blunders.

At the end of my match, XG2 awarded BGAIF the poorest of all ratings: distracted (PR 41,8). This means that you cannot hope to improve your backgammon skills by playing against BGAIF and learning from its moves. You can also not hope to enjoy playing against it if you're not a beginner. It's not playing like the poorest AIs that I've seen, but it's nowhere near the same league as Backgammon NJ, for example. 

I'm a bit mystified how an app can offer seven (!) levels of difficulty, using two different AIs, and the top level plays like a beginner.

For completeness sake: yes, I won the match, even though I played poorly (Intermediate) and luck was on BGAIF's side. 

That said, let's cover the basics of this app: BGAIF offers quite a lot, everything that a newbie to Backgammon might want for playing casual games. It doesn't offer enough for anybody to improve her backgammon skills.

You can play money games or matches, with or without cube. It even supports the Crawford rule of matches. It offers several different board designs, some of which you only get if you have another app from AI Factory installed on your device. While playing it supports you finding the right move by highlighting possible checkers and target points and showing the current pip count. It also features an - unconventional - undo: on the one hand you can completely undo any number of moves, which is cool. On the other hand it doesn't feature the "normal" undo that everybody who plays backgammon seriously needs. Normally, when deciding what to do with a difficult roll, you play around with different moves, do them on the board, examine the position, maybe do some probability math, take the move back, do another one, until you're happy. In BGAIF you move the last checker and your move is done. This is a bit annoying, as the next time to undo is after the computer has rolled and moved.

BGAIF doesn't offer any kind of tutor, but that's okay because the engine's advice wouldn't be too much to learn from.

 

The default wooden board looks fairly good.

 

Ads in BGAIF deserve a special mention: BGAIF is completely free, so it's development is supported by in-app ads. No in-app purchases. The ads are VERY limited to a banner in the top right corner. Kudos to AI Factory for not destroying the game with too obtrusive ads.

Summary: I must say I was disappointed by the AI of this app. 7 levels, and the best one plays like a beginner? That's not good. Apart from that, BGAIF is a fairly decent app with not too many highlights but no critical flaws either. Good for a fun game in-between if you're not an experienced Backgammoner (Backgammineer?).

ps. please note that I don't own an android phone anymore, so I can only review how the app looks on a tablet. A good review should check how the app looks on different devices, sorry, can't do that.