The documentation and user manual for GNU Backgammon is still a bit sparse. Hopefully things will improve. Meanwhile you can take a look at these links:

• All About GNU Backgammon A superb tutorial written by Albert Silver
• Getting started with GNUBG, A guided tour. by Zorba (Robert-Jan Veldhuizen)
• Frequently Asked Questions Maintained by Achim Müller
• The manual at the GNU site

This article show you how to get the source code fresh from the CVS repository. [Read more]

There are two ways to get the source code:

• Download a source (CVS) snapshots, click here


• Connect directly to the CVS repository (cvs.savannah.gnu.org:/sources/gnubg), click here

 

There are binary builds of GNU Backgammon for GNU/Linux available, both as RPM packages for SuSE and RedHat. Debian GNU/Linux packages will follow shortly.

All packages are signed by Achim Müller. You can find the PGP public key either here or at any keyserver.

The packages are built with 3d-support. They are also optimized for i686 computers with sse support:

Gnubg rpms for OpenSuSE-10.1
Gnubg rpms for RedHat Advanced Server 4

[Read more]

GNU Backgammon (or gnubg for short) is a Free Software Backgammon playing program, licensed under the GNU Public License (GPL).

GNU Backgammon for MacOS X is a full binary version of gnubg, built for MacOS X, and available for download from this website.

This picture illustrates two new features: 3D boards and international support (here, French) [Read more]

You can get GNU Backgammon precompiled binaries for several systems. Thanks to our downstream maintainers - GNU Backgammon is available on a variety of the latest GNU/Linux based distributions including Debian, Arch, Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, Mageai, and Fedora. If you can't find packages for your distribution you can build from the sources available through CVS or a tarball. [Read more]

Downloading and installing GNU Backgammon on a computer with Microsoft Windows is fearly easy. This article will show you how to do this.

Update July 2006: This atricle of this install is a bit outdated. You should rather use Max Maini install files, found here. [Read more]

Take a look at some of these screenshots!

Windows Screenshot with 3d board
[Read more]

GNU Backgammon (gnubg) is for playing and analysing backgammon positions, games and matches. It's based on a neural network. In the past twelve months it has made enormous progress. It currently plays at about the level of a championship flight tournament player. Depending on its parameters and its luck in recent games, it rates from around 1900 to 2000 on FIBS, the First Internet Backgammon Server -- at its strongest, it ranks in the top 5 of over 6000 rated players there) and is gradually improving; it should be somewhat stronger than this when released. Since almost all of the CPU time required during supervised training is spent performing rollouts, and rollouts can easily be performed in parallel, it is hoped that users will be able to pool rollout results and collectively train it to a level stronger than any individual could obtain. [Read more]

You can post suggestions, bug reports, and questions to the GNU Backgammon mailing list. The address is: bug-gnubg@gnu.org. You must subscribe to the mailing list before you can post. The mailing list is also archived, and you can browse the archive here: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnubg/.
You should also subscribe to the mailing list at this site: http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-gnubg. [Read more]