One of the key things that make backgammon so popular despite its age is the board game’s interesting trait of being easy to learn, yet hard to master. It’s not unusual for a person to learn the basic rules of backgammon in less than an hour, become addicted and still feel that he has so much to learn after years of playing. With the existence of professional level tournaments and the chance to win a huge amount of money with backgammon playing, people will take any chance they can get to improve their game.
For people who want to improve, or even beginners that just want to learn how to play the game on their own, Gnu Backgammon (GNUBG) is the perfect software that can help you learn and improve yourself up to professional world-class levels of playing, it’s freeware so you don’t have to spend a single dime, and since it is available for most major operating systems (Windows, Linux and Mac OS), there is no issue of whether GNUBG is compatible with your system.
The reason why GNUBG is being recommended as a self-improvement software for backgammon players is its possession of advanced AI, which is considered world-class and can actually beat professional human players. In a sense, using GNU Backgammon’s tutorial and analysis mode is comparable to a personal tutorial from the best backgammon players in the world.
The most useful feature of GNU Backgammon is its Match Analysis mode. GnuBG supports the saved online games from most popular online backgammon programs such as Play 65, FIBS, GamesGrid, and Truemoney, for starters. Once you have a saved game, you can let GnuBG analyze it by using its “Import Games” function, which is accessed by clicking the menu Settings, then Analysis, which opens a big sub window that contains numerous options such as type of analysis, move limits, skill and luck thresholds (skill and luck, along with probability are the key factors of every backgammon game), as well as the level of AI to be used.
Once the progress bar has completed and GnuBG has fully analyzed your match (or session, if you imported a money game), a new sub window will open containing various statistics found in the analyzed game, such as Error Rate, Luck Rating, and other data that you can use to self critique your strategy. Like with most statistic-crunching softwares, GnuBG will give better results if fed more data, so it is recommended that you import saved games from longer play sessions. Finally, GnuBG supports one-click exporting of all the stats into the clipboard, so you can save your statistics and info to a word or text document.
As a perfect companion to its match analysis featureset, GnuBG can also serve as a practice software for beginners by allowing you to play against a bot with varying levels of AI (from beginner to grandmaster), which is perfect for people who feel intimidated with playing against random people over the internet. Ramping up the difficulty can allow for a steady improvement over time. No matter what your skill level is, Gnu Backgammon is possibly the only Backgammon software you’ll ever need.