http://www.statslab.cam.ac.uk/~sret1/backgammon/main.html (World Wide Web Directory, ~04/1995)This page has the following sections:
The most important thing every internet backgammon player should know is how
to play other people over the internet. Nothing could be easier! Just
connect to
(the First Internet Backgammon Server, developed by Andreas
Schneider). If you're new, log
in as 'guest' and type 'help' for a list of commands. You can also get the
help pages,
nicely formatted, without logging into FIBS: there are versions by
Mark Damish in
North America
and Mike Quinn in
Europe.
Another way to play backgammon over the internet is Long Distance Backgammon (that is, backgammon by e-mail).
When you get bored of playing FIBS in ordinary text mode, you might like to get one of the front ends for it. These usually split the screen into an input window, an output window, and a graphical board, and maybe let you play your moves by dragging the pieces with a mouse.
Jörg Richter has written a program called printmatch to take the output of the 'oldmoves' command on FIBS and write the moves in standard notation with boards interspersed between each move. Jan Spitzkowsky has written a pair of programs called rfibs and sfibs to record games as you play and watch them on FIBS, and play them back a move at a time.
Sometimes there are tournaments on FIBS. At the moment there are two in progress: a free tournament organised by David Eggert, and a series of money tournaments organised by David Escoffery You can see the current status of both tournaments (thanks to Igor Sheyn for this idea).
You can still join the money tournaments. There is an open division, a lower rated division, and several blitz tournaments. I have a copy of the rules, or you can e-mail David Escoffery at davide@sco.com if you are interested. You must apply by 21st March.
For copies of matches from FIBS tournaments, see the section on annotated matches further down this page.
I've also got a list of FIBS players' WWW pages so you can find out who they really are (or who they say they really are!).
The newsgroup for backgammon lovers is rec.games.backgammon. It has a FAQ (Frequently Asked Question list), maintained by Mark Damish, with much more information than I could possibly put on one page: for example, it includes the rules of backgammon, a list of North American backgammon clubs, lots of reviews of backgammon books, journals and programs, and some variations on backgammon. This version of the FAQ is nicely formatted: there is also a plain text version.
There is also a page about Gammon Press, who publish many backgammon books.
A few months ago, Kit Woolsey and Jeremy Bagai played a match, recorded it, and annotated it with the help of the computer program TD-Gammon (thanks to Gerry Tesauro) and typed up by Mark Damish. There is a Postscript version of this match, typeset by Jörg Richter or you can have just the plain text version.
The finals of the FIBS 1994 Spring tournament, played on 31-Jul-94 between Michael Zehr and Phil Nutting, were logged by Kit Woolsey and posted to rec.games.backgammon. They're not really annotated, but Kit and many other spectators as well as the players made comments as the match progressed, so they're kind of quasi-annotated! You will find a plain text version, and a Postscript version typeset by Jörg Richter. I've also got the second semi-final of the FIBS 1994 Fall tournament played on 10-Dec-94 between Mika Laukannen and Anthony Wuersch, and the final, including comments by the program Jellyfish.
Frank Bommarito has organised a series of training matches on FIBS, in which the players and watchers whisper comments as the match is in progress.
Mark Damish also has some annotated matches in his filespace, and Pål Fladsrud has some in his, including some in Postscript format.
Kit Woolsey and Hal Heinrich have produced a series of annotated matches for the PC called Matchqiz. You can get a demo match for free.
Gammon Press also sell annotated matches.
I have a diary of forthcoming tournaments etc.
Also some information about match equities.
I have written a program, based on an idea by Jörg Richter, to turn backgammon positions into pretty boards. Jörg has now written a LaTeX style file for displaying backgammon boards without the need to draw them in Postscript first.
The Norges Backgammon Forbund (Norwegian Backgammon Federation) has its own WWW page, and there is a Finnish backgammon page too (only in Finnish). I have a list of backgammon clubs in the British Isles.
There are lots of other games you can play over the Internet. Here are some servers that you might be interested in. Note that not all of them are free to use.
Other Web pages that might be of interest are:
Page last modified: 28-Apr-95