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Backgammon variants tree chart

Posted By: MK
Date: Sunday, 16 February 2025, at 8:38 a.m.

As I had the backgammon variants on my mind and was wanting to write about the subject, I wondered if there were any bots and servers that properly implemented and offered some variants and I have done a little searching.

What I found is that there is no gamblegammon bot that implements a "true variant" (i.e. not just a different starting position) properly.

Nikolaos Papahristou's Palamedes bot that initially played cubeless Greek Tavli (Portes, Plakoto, Fevga) now seems to offer also cubeless Narde and Takhteh, and interestingly even plays cubeful gamblegammon including the Nackgammon and Hypergammon starting positions of it but I have no idea how strong it is compared to other gamblegammon bots.

You can get it from:

https://nikpapa.com/Palamedes/index.html

I still intend to write about variants and bots but in the meantime I made a web page of a dynamic tree chart of backgammon variants, including links for how to and where to play each variant.

You can access it and other content from the home page of my backgammon site at:

https://montanaonline.net/backgammon

Or go directly to it at:

https://montanaonline.net/backgammon/tree.php

I hope some of you will find it useful and perhaps give some feedback to improve it and add more to it.

MK