GammonBase Desktop · Windows, Mac, Linux and Android
Play a full match against GNU Backgammon or Open Sage at the strength you choose. Record any game move by move — one you are watching, or one you are replaying. Then have every checker play and every cube decision graded: PR, error rate, and the eXtreme Gammon and GNU Backgammon skill tiers side by side. All of it on your own machine — nothing you play is uploaded anywhere.
A licence is €31.32 once — yours for good — or a subscription from €6.47 per month. Playing the engines and having every decision graded is what it unlocks.
You will be asked to sign in first — the download is tied to your GammonBase account.
Signed by Customation AS. The certificate is new, so Windows and Chrome may warn about it until enough people have installed it — the checksum below is how you confirm the file is ours.
Windows · 25.8 MB —
compare this against the file you downloaded:
Get-FileHash GammonBase-Desktop-0.1.30-windows-x86_64.exe
SHA-256 \a87c44d6112c4c5b571afa08a334e486d10a4ee86e903fe8b1609931c623f01aMac (Apple Silicon) · 29.4 MB —
compare this against the file you downloaded:
shasum -a 256 GammonBase-Desktop-0.1.30-macos-aarch64.dmg
SHA-256 dee19232ea6c7a9459ab04a084362cc043accf90c61a20a896fb30ffec04d0c4Debian / Ubuntu (.deb) · 32.6 MB —
compare this against the file you downloaded:
sha256sum GammonBase-Desktop-0.1.30-linux-x86_64.deb
SHA-256 29a2dc5b0c3a23a246b13e040eeba2e3a31d79ea97cdf4a9c3c8242c51d2fe61Linux (AppImage) · 105.1 MB —
compare this against the file you downloaded:
sha256sum GammonBase-Desktop-0.1.30-linux-x86_64.AppImage
SHA-256 329e5585f30ad31d10ee44b2b6237f3190e6f83ba8d28f3cd959e54b56a4e201Android · 22.3 MB —
compare this against the file you downloaded:
sha256sum GammonBase-0.1.30-android-aarch64.apk
SHA-256 7332e2307fa68042368766eda702668a7c95f59a6839bc11f73bebb73a8c1037
You can also check who signed it. On Windows, right-click the
installer and choose Properties → Digital Signatures;
on a Mac, run codesign -dv --verbose=2 against the app
inside the disk image. Either should name Customation
AS. Both checks are worth more than a browser's verdict:
they identify this exact build, whereas a warning only means the
certificate has not been seen often yet. The Linux AppImage
carries no signature — Linux has no equivalent scheme — so there
the checksum above is the whole check.
What you get
Pick GNU Backgammon or Open Sage, pick a strength, and play a full match — cube, Crawford, doubles, bear-off. No invented personalities: the engine you play against is named on screen, and it is the same engine that grades you afterwards.
PR and error rate for both players, with the eXtreme Gammon and GNU Backgammon skill tiers side by side, an estimated Elo, and the checker/cube split — per game or across the whole match.
Step from one costly decision to the next. See what you played, what the engine wanted, and exactly how much equity the difference cost — with the ranked alternatives underneath.
An equity graph across the whole match and your PR as it develops, so the game where it slipped away is obvious at a glance — and a live PR while you are still playing.
Transcribe any match — one you are watching, or one you are replaying from a record — and it is analysed exactly like a game you played. You enter the rolls for both sides; the screen is built for keyboard speed and stays deliberately silent while you work.
Every match is saved locally the moment you start it, so you can close the app mid-game and pick it up later. Nothing needs a server to play or to analyse.
The licence
Playing against an engine and having every decision graded is what you are buying. And what is yours stays yours: even if a subscription ends one day, the app still opens and every match you have recorded remains open and exportable.
€31.32 one-time payment
Pay once. The licence never expires.
GammonBase Desktop is a complete backgammon workbench that runs on your own computer.
GammonBase online, monthly
€6.47 per month
Runs while you subscribe. Cancel whenever you like.
Backgammon match and position library, analysis by multiple engines, play and compare the bots, and simplified streaming functionality.
GammonBase online, yearly (save 32%)
€52.92 per year
The desktop licence it delivers is yours to keep.
Backgammon match and position library, analysis by multiple engines, play and compare the bots, and simplified streaming functionality.
The engines
GammonBase plays and analyses through separate engine programs. They are not in the installer and not behind any account: the app fetches them itself from Settings → Engines on first run, and you choose which drive they land on.
The long-standing free backgammon engine, as an analysis daemon.
Alexander Strehl's self-play network. Cubeless, one forward pass.
GammonBase's house engine. Nineteen neural networks with a backgame-aware pair strategy, plus a one-sided bearoff database.
Carsten Wenderdel's neural net engine. Cubeless, one forward pass.
Getting started
On Windows it installs for your user only, so there is no prompt for administrator rights. On a Mac, drag it into Applications. On Debian or Ubuntu, double-click the .deb; on any other Linux, mark the AppImage executable and run it.
GammonBase offers on first run. One click, a few seconds — and you say where it goes if your system drive is tight.
Then open it in Review and find out what each position was really worth.
Windows 10 or 11, macOS 10.15 and later, or a 64-bit Linux desktop. The engines are free and come separately.
The Windows certificate is new, so Windows and Chrome may warn about it until enough people have installed it — choose More info → Run anyway, and use the checksum above to confirm the file is ours. The Mac build is notarized by Apple, so it opens without a warning. The Linux AppImage is unsigned, as Linux builds are; the checksum is how you check it.