Paranoia about playing BG for money

Whopper · Joined: 14 Jun 2007 Posts: 14

Until I stumbled across this forum I had no idea that people actually played backgammon online for money. I thought that was something reserved for live tournaments. Anyhow, I guess my question is just how people can feel comfortable doing this. How can you know that your opponent isn’t using computer software to determine all of their moves? I think I would be too paranoid to waste my money playing against people who I don’t know and trust.

Jennifer · Joined: 14 Jun 2007 Posts: 17

Unfortunately, you are right in being paranoid. There is really no way to know for certain if your opponent is using aids (computer or otherwise) in his game against you. However, there are a few ways to protect yourself if you suspect a cheater. For starters, if you expect that your opponent is using a bot such as Snowie or GNU against you you can analyze the match yourself in one of these programs. If your opponent’s moves come up as “perfect” again and again then you have a logical reason to believe that your paranoia is warranted. The best you can do now is to submit this analyzed match to the site you are playing on and hope that they will ban this particular player so it won’t happen to you again. Also, many sites analyze all the matches for this type of behavior in order to keep cheaters off of their server.

For a lot of players, the thrill of playing backgammon for money outweighs the chance that they may be playing against cheaters or bots. However, if you are paranoid perhaps you should stick to playing free backgammon games.