Editing Backgammon (section)

==== Software ====
{{Anchor|Computer backgammon}}

Backgammon entered the computer era in the 1990s when software was developed to play and analyze games, and for people to play one another over the internet.

*''Johnson's Expert Backgammon'', introduced in 1990, was the first commercially available software package to analyze positions and provide stats for wins, losses, gammons, and backgammons.  It was based on conventional programming techniques and only achieved a level of play of weak intermediate.<ref name=Bagai>https://static1.squarespace.com/static/536b3994e4b0ef7a9fb66678/t/536d60b5e4b0561102297915/1399677109882/introcbr.pdf</ref>
*''TD-Gammon'', written by Gerry Tesauro at IBM, used [[neural net]] techniques that allowed it to ''learn'' based on experience.  A full package with [[Rollout (backgammon)|rollouts]] was never released to the public.<ref name=Bagai />
*''JellyFish'', written by Fredriik Dahl and released in 1994, was the first commercially available software based on neural networks, and like TD-Gammon its play approached or surpassed that of the best human players.<ref name=Bagai />
*''Snowie'', written by André Nicoulin and Olivier Egger and released in 1998, was a neural-net program that had similar playing strength to its neural net predecessors, but had a more advanced user interface; in particular it could analyze an entire match instead of just one move at a time.<ref name=Bagai />
*''gnubg'', written by many programmers as part of the [[gnu]] free software project, was released in 2001.  It has a similar strength to JellyFish, but is free software.  It is still supported and is available for Windows, macOS and most varieties of Linux. Since it is open-source, the source code is publicly available.<ref>https://www.gnu.org/software/gnubg/</ref><ref>https://bkgm.com/gnu/AllAboutGNU.html</ref>
*''[[eXtreme Gammon]]'', written by Xavier Dufaure de Citres and released in 2009, is available for Windows and mobile platforms. According to the ''[[Financial Times]]'', the program is the best backgammon player in the world, and the near-exclusive study tool for all serious backgammon players.<ref name="FT">{{Cite news |last=Roeder |first=Oliver |date=2023-07-28 |title=Backgammon's AI super-brain is for sale |work=Financial Times |url=https://www.ft.com/content/4c01969d-4d79-4feb-8e4f-bfa9833ddfea |access-date=2023-08-01}}</ref>

Real-time online play began with the First Internet Backgammon Server in July 1992,<ref name="fibs-hist">{{cite web|last=Schneider|first=Andreas|url=http://www.fibs.com/guide.html#history|title=Brief history of FIBS|publisher=FIBS, the First Internet Backgammon Server|access-date=2006-08-05|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060813210439/http://www.fibs.com/guide.html#history|archive-date=2006-08-13|url-status=dead|display-authors=etal}}</ref> but there are now a range of options.<ref>https://ukbgf.com/backgammon-resources/online-backgammon-sites/</ref><ref>{{cite web|last=Keith|first=Tom|title=Backgammon Play Sites|url=http://www.bkgm.com/servers.html|publisher=Backgammon Galore!|access-date=6 March 2017}}</ref>