I have been playing online backgammon this week for the first time. I wasn’t playing for real money but the free internet version that comes with Windows these days. I have to say that the quality of play is very poor. The match length is short and usually the first to 5pts. Yesterday I gammoned my computer opponent with the cube on 2 and won instantly. The level of play with the computer opponent is very poor and I would rank it as novice standard or perhaps even worse at beginner.
The standard of the average player isn’t that great either and looks very weak tight. Just for entertainment I played four matches although what tends to happen sometimes is that because the games are free and easy to start then many players leave in mid-game. This happened to me when I was leading 3-0 in one game. In another game the player left at the opening roll and the computer player stepped in.
I won that game 5-0 as mentioned and the other games I won 5-1 and 5-2. Only the 5-2 game was against an opponent who I would describe as decent. However you would not expect to get a strong backgammon player in these games although I would consider myself a strong player, I was merely playing out of curiosity. I would recommend these free backgammon games on Windows as a good training platform for novices but the standard is probably too poor to take your game onto the intermediate level.
