Backgammon ∙ App Reviews

Degree of difficulty should not be equated with cheating, getting the right dice and beating the odds. You are setting a bad example. The app is missing some fundamental moves. However, it is a better one among available apps. Keeps me playing in my spare time.

Seems to throw doubles way too much when Im about to win. Its called cheating. Very frustrating. Looking for a better one out there even if I have to pay up front.

This is a terrible app! If you play against the app on the "medium" difficulty setting, it plays like an idiot and you win every game. Obviously, Im a moderately experienced player, so I should play against the "difficult" setting, right? Wrong! You will consider suicide if you have a low threshold for frustration, like I do. It does make the obviously correct move for the roll it gets-- HOWEVER it makes the game more "difficult " for you by cheating with the dice rolls as shamelessly as a 6 year old! If you are forced to leave a piece exposed, it ALWAYS miraculously happens to roll the right dice to land on you. If you land on its piece, it ALWAYS gets the perfect roll to get back on the board on the first try. If youre ahead in the bearing off phase of the game, and it looks like you will win, it will roll doubles 3 or 4 turns in a row to win by 1 roll, while you roll 1s and 2s. This happens MUCH more frequently than in the real world. On the subject of rolling doubles, just about the only time you will ever get so "lucky," it will usually be when youre trying to get back on the board-- then youll roll doubles 2 or 3 consecutive turns, but only of a number youre blocked from using. HOW HARD WOULD IT BE TO PROGRAM THE DICE ROLL TO BE GENUINELY RANDOM, LIKE REAL DICE?? Lastly, on the initial roll to determine who plays first, at least 90% of the time the app wins. Just about the only time will be if the app rolls a 1. All of these things become apparent after playing a couple hundred games-- for a while you think youre just having rotten luck, as sometimes can happen when youre playing the real game; after you have a statistically relevant sample, though, youll see the app is truly programmed to cheat. The real shame is that its a pretty good user interface, and would be a favorite of mine but for this glaring flaw...

The worst. Makes stupid moves for you and rushes on. Doesnt play like a real person. It keeps moving men up in its home board when it could be bearing off. Its not fun to beat!

You need to fix this. Until then I would never buy an app from such an untrustworthy source.

Never has cheating by the computer been more obvious. You would think a computer would be able to simply make the best move with a random roll of the dice to keep the game fun and fair. Though the developers claim all moves are random the reality is they are unable to develop a fun competitive app. Looser! Delete!

Easy to play, quick game

Really needs an easy way to concede/ double.

The game rolls doubles much more often for itself than me I realize in programming its impossible to roll truly random or move based on easy/med/hard in a skill game like this Nature of the beast unless you wanna write a novel worth of code that runs slowly

The app interface is really good; however, it has one of the worst gameplay i ever played.

I love backgammon but this app is rigged to make you lose. Im a good sport but this isnt worth installing.

Doesnt work well with iPhone, not well laid out, adds get in the way.

This is a very good game except for the fact that the computer gets whatever role it needs every time. Then after getting the cube that constantly rolls doubles to win the game

I play to relax. This is an enjoyable way to pass time with no ads.

It mustve been too hard to write a smarter app for the Hard setting, so they settled for one that cheats some. I figure the computer has "cheat" & I have "undo", but the more I use undo, I think the computer cheats more. I agree -- the updated version is much better. For me, the level of cheating is tolerable now -- I can still beat the computer in abt 75% of the 15-game sets.

Very basic app. Backgammon app for windows phone is many times better, both in features and usability. Highly encourage looking at it..

Hard mode = Cheat mode Seriously. The developers should be given props for creating a shameless cheat of an AI. 72% of first rolls were a 5 & 1. Computer would "roll" doubles 4 times in a row if it was about to gammoned or worse 31% of the time. I had a pice in jail, computer had 4 open spaces, I rolled those safe spots 3 times in a row on 4 occasions. Sad.

No respect for a cheating game. Theres no other way to say it.

While I enjoy this app very much -- good way to waste time in a doctors office -- it seems to me that the computer is always luckier with the dice roll than I am. While I have not done a "statistical" study, I have noticed the following "coincidences": 1) The computer usually rolls a double after offering the doubling cube; 2) Once one its inner table, the computer seems to roll 3 to 4 doubles while bearing off; 3) when I have blot on the board the computer seems to have an uncanny ability to roll the exact number to land on it far too often to be the result of a good random number generator. In spite of these apparent flaws, I still play the game several time a day and enjoy losing most of the time. I would enjoy it even more if the odds of winning were evened out. Can you"fix" that?

Why attach the in app sounds to the ringer volume control? Do you have any sense at all? App deleted.