How to play

You are White and move your checkers up the board from point 1 toward point 24, then off the board. The computer player is Black and moves the other way. Tap Roll Dice, tap the point holding the checker you want to move, then tap where it should land. Each die is one move; doubles give you four moves.

A checker sitting alone on a point is a blot. Land on an opponent's blot and it is sent to the bar in the middle of the board; a checker on the bar must come back in (points 1 to 6 for you) before anything else can move. When all fifteen of your checkers are in points 19 to 24 you can bear off by tapping the tray at the right edge. First to bear off all fifteen wins.

If your roll gives you no legal move, a Pass Turn button appears and the turn goes to the computer player.

The Oracle

The Oracle is an optional advisor for you alone. Tap 🔮 to open it. Every time you roll, it lists every legal play for that roll, best first, and explains its top pick in plain words. Tap any option to see it on the board: purple marks the checker to move, gold marks where it lands (numbered in order), and red marks an opponent checker that would be hit. It keeps advising each turn until you close it; Consult again re-runs it. It never helps the computer player, which keeps its own way of playing.

How it thinks

The Oracle uses a "minimax" search: for each of your plays it imagines what happens next and assumes the opponent always answers with their best play. Because backgammon has dice, it can't know the opponent's roll, so it tries all 21 possible rolls, works out the opponent's best reply to each, and averages the results, weighting rolls by how likely they are. If time runs short it looks at a sample of rolls instead and says so in the fine print.

How far it looks ahead follows the level you choose: level 1 judges your play on its own, level 2 (the default) adds the opponent's averaged reply, level 3 adds your own next roll as well. Deeper looks take longer and may not finish within the time limit; when that happens the Oracle keeps the deepest level it completed.

It scores a position by five things: the pip count (how far each side still has to travel), blots left and how likely they are to be hit, points held (home-board points count extra), opponent checkers on the bar, and checkers borne off. A finished game counts as an exact win or loss. Tags are green for a certain win, red for a certain loss, and amber for a judgement — "Ahead 12 — safe" means you would lead by 12 pips with nothing left to hit.