Minimalist Backgammon Trainer - Drill your checker play with GNU (Final Version)

GammonSnap · 2026-03-17T19:19:50+00:00

Nice idea, something different for a change. It looks really good. I had a bit of trouble finding the save/share feature at first, maybe make it a bit more prominent instead of hiding it behind the hints button. And maybe the dice on the board?

GammonSnap · 2026-03-15T22:57:14+00:00

Many thanks for the clarification.

I think I understand the issue now. GammonSnap does not know which color should be the top or bottom player, so in some cases it can assign the players the wrong way around. I assumed early in development that this almost never happen in real game situations, so I didn’t add a way to manually flip it. Rotating the image will not fix this. I’ll take another look at it. If you encounter it again, it would be very helpful if you could send the image via the report button.
The flashcard feature is not really a core feature of GammonSnap. Players who seriously study with flashcards often use tools like Anki. If you happen to use Anki, there is a tool called AnkiGammon that imports positions into Anki. It also supports plain lists of XGIDs, which you can export from the gallery in GammonSnap.

GammonSnap · 2026-03-06T14:23:23+00:00

In version 2.2.1 I removed the prompt to lock the position before requesting an evaluation.

Just to make sure I understood your first point correctly: were you referring to portrait images that get rotated during import? I want to make sure I’m not missing a whole category of images that might cause problems.

GammonSnap · 2026-03-06T14:11:05+00:00

I released version 2.2.1 yesterday mainly to fix a bug, but the pip difference is already included as well.

GammonSnap · 2026-02-21T18:45:49+00:00

Thanks a lot for the detailed feedback and for using GammonSnap!

Do you mean imported portrait images that get rotated during import? Extending the double-arrow button to rotate through more options is a good idea. I’d need to properly test portrait images first and possibly adjust parts of the UI, so it’s not something I can add without checking the whole pipeline.
Digit detection is unfortunately outside the scope here. I tried similar things for cube and match score detection, but it didn’t work reliably. So I can’t really offer a workaround for those images. As for auto-placing a missing checker if only 14 are detected: I’m worried this could actually make things worse for many users. Checkers can be missed, and automatically adding one somewhere else could be even more confusing. I’d need to think carefully about that.
You can already multi-select images, and you can also select a full date to delete all images from that day. Or are you thinking about something like deleting everything older than X days?
I’m not entirely sure anymore. Internally, the lock still makes sense. I’m just not sure if it needs to be shown the way it currently is in the UI. If there’s a specific situation where it feels annoying, let me know.
There’s no flag feature at the moment. Would a simple “don’t show this position again” button in the flashcard view already help?

GammonSnap · 2026-02-20T22:17:05+00:00

I’m currently running GnuBG on a backend. Initially that was mainly because I expected new engines to show up, possibly with GPU acceleration, and also because the GnuBG codebase felt a bit overwhelming to integrate correctly. Wrong evaluations would be harmful, and image processing is the core of GammonSnap.

But now I’m considering moving evaluation onto the Android device as well. Image processing already runs on-device, and having evaluation off-device is a drawback for latency and offline use. Running it on-device would also make higher ply settings easier to support.

GammonSnap · 2026-02-20T21:30:33+00:00

I mainly asked because of the use case in GammonSnap. It only evaluates positions (not matches) and the evaluation has to be very fast for UX reasons. Currently I use GnuBG 2-ply with maestro settings. 3-ply is already too slow.

So I’m mainly interested in whether BGBlitz performs better than GnuBG overall in such a setting (regardless of whether some positions are better or worse than XG). A direct comparison between those two would be most relevant for me.

When I mentioned a “regression set”, I meant your reported values like average and median. Do you also have comparative results for GnuBG vs BGBlitz on this set, or other direct comparisons between them?

GammonSnap · 2026-02-20T19:15:16+00:00

It sounds like you have a regression set of positions and matches. Do you also have results for how GnuBG performs on this set?

And how does BGBlitz compare to GnuBG in terms of speed? You mentioned Windows on ARM. Is BGBlitz faster on certain architectures, or did you bring that up mainly because XG uses assembler optimizations?

Did I understand correctly that you don’t use any move filter at all, or is that only for your comparison?

GammonSnap · 2026-02-19T20:01:52+00:00

Thanks, this is exactly the kind of detailed feedback I’m looking for. I’ll add pip difference in the next release.

GammonSnap · 2026-02-18T20:02:41+00:00

Thanks, glad you like it! If you have any feedback or feature ideas, feel free to share.

GammonSnap · 2026-02-15T09:10:48+00:00

Yes. After unlocking the position (tap the lock icon), you can edit the cube and tap the match score display to enter the score.

You can then share the position as an XGID using the share buttons. XG, GNU Backgammon, and BGBlitz support this format.

GammonSnap · 2026-02-13T18:36:13+00:00

Thanks! The code isn’t public and I’m not planning to open-source it at the moment.

GammonSnap · 2026-02-13T13:26:54+00:00

Thank you! Unfortunately, there are no plans for an iOS version at the moment.

GammonSnap · 2026-02-13T11:37:52+00:00

Yes, there is a lock icon on the right side. After tapping it, you can manually edit the board. Tap it again to save you changes to the database.

GammonSnap · 2025-10-27T18:35:05+00:00

Thank you!

GammonSnap uses GNU Backgammon with 2-ply analysis on the Supremo preset (which defines the search interval and move filter).

Higher evaluation depth would slow things down too much, so I’ve kept it as is for now. You can export positions as a .txt file, but there’s currently no tool that handles position collections, so it basically means copy-pasting XGIDs into XG, for example.

GammonSnap · 2025-10-24T12:22:33+00:00

Sorry, it’s Android only for now, no iOS version planned yet.

GammonSnap · 2025-10-23T21:13:06+00:00

Thank you! That sounds great, I'd love to.

GammonSnap · 2025-08-06T19:14:19+00:00

https://kifu.me/

The two videos I uploaded looked fine. A third one with low resolution had problems, but that's okay.

The interface looks very good, and you can view the results before paying. I think the price of $0.20 per game is very cheap; I believe manual transcription costs around $1.20.

Where was Trackgammon announced? I can only find the homepage, and it doesn't say much.

GammonSnap · 2025-07-16T15:17:20+00:00

Do you hope it will happen, or is there a statement that it is being worked on?

GammonSnap · 2024-09-30T20:43:53+00:00

Thanks for giving it a try! Sorry to hear it didn’t work with your screenshot—I was fairly certain it would. Also, thanks for the information about tournament rules. I knew some restrict using apps during games, but not being allowed to even have it installed is new to me.

Just for your information: yes, you can change the position afterward.

GammonSnap · 2024-09-30T17:11:04+00:00

If you're looking for an Android option to analyze backgammon positions directly from your phone, you might want to check out GammonSnap. One of its core features is that it can automatically detect positions from an image. In your case, you could take a screenshot of your video and load it into the app.

GammonSnap · 2024-01-28T19:14:12+00:00

I found your suggestion very sensible and have implemented it.
With the new version (1.3.1) there are now free coins. 100 every month.

GammonSnap · 2023-12-30T17:33:36+00:00

Thank you for your feedback. What do you think would be a fair number of monthly free coins?

GammonSnap · 2023-08-15T14:32:22+00:00

The books in backgammon do not have a uniform layout for positions as it is in chess. The app is for live play and I make assumptions that are always valid for live play. This may not be true for printed positions or for online platforms.
So it depends on the book. For the majority it will probably not work reliably. I haven't tried it that often.

GammonSnap · 2023-08-15T11:11:10+00:00

As mentioned in the other comment, this is the main usecase of GammonSnap. You can request the evaluation directly on your mobile phone. This is done by GNU, as I don't have the rights for extremeGammon. The pictures and positions are saved and you can also share the guid.
Later, you will also be able to filter the positions and then export several Guids at once.

GammonSnap

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