Last updated on December 17th, 2025 at 09:52 am
Backgammon by George – Board Game Review
Backgammon by George is a Board/Entertainment/Family game from Graphics Software Labs, first launched in 20th July 2010.
It’s rated 4+ and currently has 10+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Backgammon by George Stand Out
If you liked the popular Windows version of this classic board game, then you must give this iPhone/iPod/iPad version a try.
Play against the AI at four levels of difficulty. REPLAY the most recent opponent's move. Get a HINT from AI to help you with your next move, or UNDO your most recent move. ROLL your dice with a shake, or with a single tap. AUTO COMPLETE a move with a single tap on your stone.
Use the SETTINGS menu to select board style, enable or disable sounds, control speed of the stone animations, and more. Use the HELP screens to learn about the game.
A quote from http://www.65cubes.com/windows-shopping-backgammon.html:
"Backgammon, by George is one of those which gambling players consider as an ancient backgammon program… But do not laugh at it. Some of the most successful gambling players confess that they have started humbly by practicing backgammon with Backgammon by George."
Art by Miguel. Programming by George!
This Board game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Backgammon by George is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 5th April 2017
Recent improvements include:
This app has been updated by Apple to display the Apple Watch app icon.
Bug fix. Both the player and the AI should now get the correct distribution of all possible dice rolls.
Download & Availability
Backgammon by George is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get Backgammon by George on App Store
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
We love this game. The speed and the strategy are on point. Everyone should download and play.
Addictive. Loved it on our laptop, great to have it on our phone now.
The AI on this game is great and the varying levels of difficulty are challenging to beat.
Be prepared for this app to 'cheat' on the "expert" level through non-random dice-rolling output, both for itself as well as the opponent (you) – not just occasionally, but consistently. It's an intensely well-done, fun (and simultaneously irritating) app.
Dice rolls are very unfair. Ai always rolls what is needed to win or land on unprotected stones.
We were enjoying this game on the Medium level, but once we stepped up to the Hard level it became apparent that the rolls were not random. The AI gets the roll it needs WAY too often. We dont understand why game designers think this makes the game more enjoyable-it doesnt. It just makes it more frustrating, causing us to delete the app. This means we wont be watching any more of the ads. Fairly counterproductive, in our opinion.
It gives only unwanted numbers to user and only the most wanted numbers to computer. So, you dont have any chance to win. Its waste if time to download this application.
Had same problem as previous poster. Advise from App developer said, delete and re-download. Worked perfectly. Glad to have this old friend back.
We have latest OS and the app is stuck in the intro picture where when you tap it's supposed to start the game. Nothing starts.
Since we upgraded to iOS 7, whenever we are playing the computer and can't move, the whole game freezes up. Please fix! We have been playing this for years and need our backgammon.
It will start and play, but hangs when doubling, when player (not computer) can't move, and always at the end of the game.
This game is like most (all) we have played….it cheats! It ALWAYS gets the roll to take you out. At end game it consistantly gets doubles to kick your butt. Now, we don't expect to win every game but when the rolls are stacked against you it gets very frustrating. We have now given up on all apps for this game as they ALL cheat in the AI's favor. We would give it less than 1 star if we could.
We love backgammon but never found a decent game for Ninentdo DS. So, when we got our new ipod touch we started looking for this game right away. It has great graphics and we do not find playing against the computer to be one-sided. Glad we got this version, very nice.
Does everything we want in a Backgammon game. Great A.we. For the computer opponent.
Plays a great game of backgammon. Easy and intuative to use. Lots of fun.
Nice looking game, fun to play, good challenge. Love the sounds and shake to roll feature.
Definitely the best looking iPhone Backgammon game we have seen. And fun to play. Great graphics, cool sounds, and fair (no cheating) strong AI.
We love this app. The graphics are clean and simple and don't detract from the purpose of the game. The AI is challenging but fair, and the interface works perfectly. Five stars.
We had originally got the previous version of this game and thought "what moron wrote this program?". This updated version has great AI and is completely realistic. Apparently less Bong smoking during the writing of this masterpiece. Great Job.
Pretty fun and awesome graphics.
Best backgammon game for iPhone.
The game was fun and challenging with easy to figure out controls. The game is very configurable which we love. It's a great game for those just learning backgammon or those that have played it forever. We always like to give some positive critisism with each review, something that can be made better, but in this case we just can not think of anything that needs to be changed. If we had to stretch for something we think we would like an option at the end of the game to 'quit or play again' As it is, you see the game stats then it starts a new game. This game is well worth the cost and we suggest everyone give it a try.
This game is BEAUTIFUL!!!!!! We love how it plays, and all of the options it has. The ONLY thing we wish it had, and this is minor (but would make it PERFECT for us! LOL) is if you could change the colors of the pieces. We LOVE the Pirate board, but would LOVE to be able to change the pieces to make them custom to our favorite colors. Thank you so much for such a great game!!! Ive bought most all of the other backgammon games on iTunes, and this one is by FAR the BEST.
This game the best of the best, has the excellent drawing and as an excellent gameplay. We play Backgammon with friends. Thx for great game ^_^.
The graphics are very good. The boards are vey nice looking. There are 4 different ones to choose from. We would only recommend this game for more experienced players though. There is a help file but it only covers the basics of the game. It will not help you learn to play if you have never played backgammon before. The is no explanation of the board layout or strategy. Also when you press the hint button it automatically makes a move for you. That's not a hint that's the computer moving for you. And we can't change the setting for the move animation. Every time we set it to slow it doesn't work. It resets to fast by itself. Which makes the computer moves so fast it's hard to see what move it made. It makes it fell like you are playing speed backgammon. The AI is very good too even on the easy level setting. Overall a good game.
The graphic design and features are well done, and it seems very fair, but the AI isn't real good. We've won 40/52 pts against the highest level so far. Guess we'll keep looking for a BG app that is both fair and offers a challenge.
Ok, we have our setting set to play the computer's AI. So why am we having to roll the dice when it's the computer's turn??? The computer moves by itself, but you have to touch the dice in order to roll it's turn? And there's no setting to turn this off! We are not sure why all the 5 stars. It's ok, but not fantastic.
Really like a lot about this game -BUT…two complaints 1) AI seems to roll a lot of doubles at crucial junctures (am playing at the hard level) 2) no way to reset score unless you delete & reinstall app ADDENDUM: changed to 'hardest' setting. Seems fairer – AI rolls more appropriate # of doubles.
As noted by others, we have the same observations about the dice simulation. We suggest adding a dice counter feature that counts the number of combinations rolled by each player each game. (1:1-0, 1:2-4, 1:3-2, etc). It would also be better if the points could be reset.
Turn it on "difficult" and all of a sudden the game starts rolling itself a whole mess of doubles. Meanwhile, you start rolling 1-2 over and over again. The cheating is just brazen. Not worth the money.
This thing so obviously cheats. Why is it so hard to find a game that just randomly rolls the dice.
We tried all the free backgammon games and was disgusted each time at how the dice rolls obviously favored the computet, so we decided to pay for one in hopes we would find one more fair. We researched many and the reviews for this one gave us hope that someone had finally written a game that was pretty fair in its dice rolls. We bought it, and two weeks later we did the suggested update. Big mistake. We had been pleasantly surprised at how fair it actually was to that point. Now it's just like all the crappy free versions. The computer gets an inordinate number of high number doubles and rarely gets stuck waiting to reenter the game after getting picked off. Conversely, we have rolled and rolled and ROLLED high number doubles waiting to reenter when the computer only had pips on the fifth and sixth spots. We are more disappointed than we can say at this "update" that clearly skews the game in favor of the computer. Before the update we were very happy with this game, even though it ran a bit slowly. Now we're sorry we purchased it.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 2.03
- Size: 56.54 MB
- iOS: 8.0 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory:
- Developer: [Graphics Software Labs]()
Last updated: 5th April 2017 | Genre: Board, Entertainment | Developer: Graphics Software Labs