Backgammon NJ 4+

Cheats but great

There is no way that the dice rolls are based on probability. I've been playing BG for over 30 years and it's uncanny how it knows what's coming next. I still love this game - defo best I've seen on market. If you can win consistently against expert then you will be a champion in actual competitions. However, I think it's nigh on impossible. I wish the guy who taught my mum and I was still alive to play this game to see whether he could win!!

In response to the developer - the way it used the doubling cube last yesterday was plainly obvious that it knows upcoming rolls! It accepted where it could only win with rolling a double and lo and behold... then I I doubled again in a very similar situation and it declined.

Developer Response ,

The app is honest & has random rolls. Proofs here: http://www.njsoftware.com/note.html

If you don't understand why the computer doubled you, you should post the match position to a forum such as BGonline and ask the experts there to help explain it to you. One situation that could have occurred is a "mandatory double". If you google these keywords:

mandatory double backgammon

...you can find a number of explanations of this concept.

Okay, but cheats

The game cheats, and is aware of upcoming dice, using this to its advantage. I have calculated, across a sample of games large enough for p<0.05 that for 1/6 probability outcomes, the computer gets such an outcome 1/2 of the time. Conversely the human player gets the same 1/6 probability 1/6 of the time. You can easily this for yourself by playing first with automatic rolls, and then using manual rolls from your own dice or an external RNG, or by resetting the "next roll number" in Settings. You will then find that the computer fails to get those incredibly lucky rolls that land so often on your blots. It's a shame as whilst the game improves your play to a point, it encourages a very conservative risk-averse style of play, utterly unsuited to real world opponents who, of course, don't have the benefit of knowing upcoming rolls. The developer's various claims about "fixing" do not address the fact that the game can see future dice rolls. None of the developer's supposed proofs address the possibility that the computer is aware of the upcoming rolls of its opponent, and uses this to predict play and thus win. The irony is that if you play unpredictably by making mistakes, you're more likely to win. Don't waste your money. And don't pay too much heed to the supposed expert players leaving positive reviews.

Backgammon

The dice throws are seldom random at hard level and have a bias towards the computer. The percentage throws where the computer has exactly the right numbers is over 80% as against the player where it can be as low as 20%. When one number is needed, statistically, the average number of throws would be 3, however, for the computer, this is below 2, but for the individual it is over 5. The dice throws do not have any level of randomness, they just seem loaded to the computer as the level gets "harder". Not very satisfactory. As such the game does not develop skills in playing. The computer often takes risks whereas an individual tends to be careful because the computer will normally get the right combination of numbers to take you out whereas you will usually have the wrong numbers! Has anyone added up the scores from the dice rolls for the two players? Similarly, have you noticed the number of times the computer gets doubles in a tight end game as against the number you receive?

Developer Response ,

The app is honest & has random rolls. Proofs here: https://www.njsoftware.com/note.html