About Us
About playbackgammon.app
We publish a free, modern browser version of backgammon — the classic dice and strategy race game — played against the computer, with undo, hints, and progress kept on your device.
Play backgammonThe game
What backgammon is and how it plays
Backgammon is a two-player game on a board of 24 triangular points. Each side has 15 checkers, and each turn you roll two dice and use each number to move a checker toward your home board. A point held by two or more checkers is blocked to the opponent; a single checker is a blot that can be hit and sent to the bar. Once every checker is home you bear them off, and the first to clear the board wins — for one point, or two for a gammon and three for a backgammon.
The dice keep every game unpredictable, but the choices are real: which points to make, which risks to take, when to hit, and when to run. That balance of luck and skill is why beginners can enjoy a game straight away and experts still find new things after decades.
Origins
A few thousand years of dice and checkers
An ancient race game
Two-player race games played with dice and a track of points are among the oldest board games we know of. Boards and pieces from the ancient Near East, the Roman game tabula, and the Persian game nard all sit in backgammon’s family tree, though the exact line of descent is debated by historians.
The modern game
The name backgammon appears in English in the 1600s, and by then the layout — 24 points, 15 checkers a side, two dice, hitting and the bar — was recognisably today’s. The doubling cube, which lets a player raise the stakes mid-game, was added in 1920s New York and turned it into the high-stakes strategy game of the modern era.
Computers and backgammon
Backgammon has a long relationship with computers. In the early 1990s, TD-Gammon showed that a program could teach itself to play near the level of the best humans, and today’s bots analyse tournament games move by move. This site’s opponent is far simpler: a transparent heuristic engine you can beat.
This build
Design choices
playbackgammon.app is an independent implementation of standard backgammon. The rules are unchanged; what is new is how it plays on a modern screen.
Instant to start
The board loads in the page and a game starts with one tap. No account, no download, no splash screen.
Rules enforced for you
Blocked points, the bar, forced entry, using both dice, the larger-die rule, and bearing-off exactness are all handled by the engine, so only legal moves are ever highlighted.
A fair, honest opponent
Casual and Expert differ only in how carefully the computer chooses among its legal plays. Both roll from the same browser random-number generator as you, with no hidden advantage.
Yours to keep
Wins, gammons, points, and streaks are stored on your device only. There is no login because there is nothing to log in to.
Built for phones and desktops
The board is drawn as scalable vector graphics that fill any screen width, with the roll, undo, and hint controls directly underneath it.
Free and uncluttered
No real-money play, no pop-ups between games, and no paywalled features. Anonymous analytics help us see which features are used.
Contact
Feedback and bug reports
playbackgammon.app is a family-friendly, single-player game with no chat and no user accounts. If you find a bug, a rules question the FAQ does not answer, or have an idea, email us.
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