Questions, answered.

It’s backgammon with a coach built in. Play full games against the computer, take on friends online, or learn with short lessons, puzzles and a position of the day. The coach doesn’t just show you the best move: it tells you why.

Yes. Tell the app you’re new and you’ll start with five short lessons on a real board: moving, doubles, hitting, coming back in from the bar and bearing off. Then you play a guided first game against a gentle coach. You can undo your moves, and your rating isn’t at stake. The first lesson takes about two minutes.

We doubt it. One calibration game against the Medium coach sets your starting rating from the quality of your decisions, not the luck of the dice. After that, the Expert coach plays at world-class level, and the Adventure ends with the match-play cube decisions that trip up club players.

Nothing. No ads, no subscription, no coins to buy.

On iPhone, from the App Store.

Three things:

• During the game, tap Hint and the coach shows you its move with arrows on the board, plus a short reason why.
• Before a costly mistake, it asks once if you’re sure. The final call is always yours.
• After the game, it walks you through your key decisions: what you played, what it would have played, what the difference cost you, and the idea behind it.

No. The coach says hello once per game and answers whenever you ask. Otherwise it only speaks up now and then: to praise a move it would have played too, or to flag a decision worth a second look after the game. Then it stays quiet for a few turns.

In plain words, based on the position in front of you: the pip count, which points matter, how many of the 36 rolls hit a blot, and what plan the position calls for. A typical line: “that turn left 11 of 36 rolls hitting you.” The numbers serious players use (equity, PR) are there if you want them, but they’re never the whole explanation.

PR stands for Performance Rating: the average cost of your decisions, on a scale where 0 is perfect play. Lower is better, and lucky dice can’t flatter it. On the app’s scale, the world’s best players come in below about 3. The review after each game shows yours.

On Expert, it’s world class. We test it the way the backgammon world tests engines, and we publish the results:

• Head to head: 1,000 money games against GNU Backgammon at its default 2-ply setting, the program that has set the standard in computer backgammon for decades. Both engines played the same dice and took turns in each seat. The result was dead level: +0.016 points per game (95% confidence interval −0.068 to +0.100).
• Move by move: across 3,519 checker plays graded by GNU Backgammon’s deeper 3-ply analysis, our Expert scores a PR of about 1.5, in the world-class band.
• The cube: doubling decisions are measured separately, as the experts do. Deciding whether to double scores a PR of about 0.3, and deciding whether to take or pass about 1.6.

No, and that matters when you’re learning. Each level thinks differently. Easy plays like a newcomer. Medium plays carefully and keeps its blots safe. Hard uses a fast neural network and looks one roll ahead, like a strong club player. Expert uses the full engine and thinks harder about the difficult decisions. When you beat a level, you’ve beaten a way of playing, not found a glitch.

The way the best modern engines are built: neural networks trained offline on a huge number of positions, then checked against established engines before anything reaches your phone. The finished engine has several parts:

• neural networks that judge a position, with separate specialists for contact play and for races;
• exact endgame databases, so many bear-offs are solved outright rather than estimated;
• an opening book for the first rolls of the game;
• deeper search, saved for the positions that need it.

The training recipe, and how the parts fit together, is our secret sauce, and it stays in the kitchen. The results above are the part we’re happy to share.

Speed, privacy and long flights. A decision takes about half a second on an iPhone, so the analysis is usually done before the dice stop rolling. Your games never leave your phone to be analysed, and everything except online play works with no signal at all.

The rules engine, the coach, the explanations, the lessons and the boards are all ours. Some parts of the engine build on open-source backgammon work, and their licences come with the app.

A path of 60 short stops across nine chapters, from your first steps to the doubling cube and match play. Each stop is one challenge: find the best move, count the shots, bear off safely, take or pass. Clear a chapter and you earn a rank, from Novice all the way to World Class.

Eight families: Backgammon Initiation, Openings (all fifteen opening rolls), Position Play, Dice & Probability, Racing & Bear-off, Contact Play, Doubling Cube and Match Play. Get one wrong and you can try again with a hint before you see the answer.

One position a day, the same for everyone. You get one go, and your first answer is the one that counts. Perfect for a friendly argument over coffee.

Because the doubling cube is where backgammon games are really won and lost, and where most players give away the most points. So it gets its own chapter, its own practice games (Take or Pass, Should I Double?, The Cube Window) and a place in the name.

Single games or matches to 3, 5 or 7 points, with or without the doubling cube, against four coach levels. Matches use the Crawford rule.

It’s an Elo rating, and only finished games and matches change it: games against the coach, and rated games online. Lessons, puzzles and the Daily Challenge never affect it, so you can practise without any risk.

No, and you don’t have to take our word for it. The dice come from a cryptographically secure random number generator. Against the coach, every roll is fixed before the game starts and sealed with a digital fingerprint. After the game, the app reveals the seed, so you can check that no roll was changed along the way. The Dice statistics panel also compares what each side rolled with what the odds predict. In online games, the server rolls for both players.

Yes. There are six original boards, each drawn for a city where backgammon feels at home. Las Vegas and London are yours from the start, and you earn the other four:

You can also show pip counts and point numbers, and choose how you move your checkers: Quick, Guided or Die first.

Yes. Create a private game, choose the match length, whether to use the cube and whether it’s rated, then send the invitation link. Your friend taps it and goes straight into the game.

Yes. Tap “Play someone new” and the app looks for an opponent near your Elo who wants the same match settings.

Only to play online and back up your progress. You sign in with Apple: we receive a private identifier, never your name or email, and you choose a pseudonym. Everything else works without an account.

As little as we can. We never ask for your name, email, phone number, contacts or advertising ID, and there is no chat. If you have an account, we keep your private identifier, your pseudonym, your rating, your progress for syncing and the state of your online games.

Usage statistics are off by default. If you switch them on, we receive anonymous daily counts, with no account or device attached. If you’re signed in, the same switch also shows us a short summary of your account, such as your rating and number of matches, but never your pseudonym or sign-in identity. You can export your data or delete your account at any time in Settings, Account & cloud.

Yes. Lessons, puzzles, the Daily Challenge and games against the coach all work without a connection. Only online games and syncing need one.

English and French. The French uses the vocabulary of the Fédération Française de Backgammon (porte, videau, jan intérieur), so it reads as if a French club player wrote it.

Yes. The board is described for screen readers, pip counts included, the touch targets are large, and the app follows your iPhone’s Reduce Motion setting.