I have been very curious about backgammon for some time and recently got a version on my iphone. Can someone recommend a site that will teach me some solid basic strategy?

play65

if you wanna play me sometime

send me a PM

www.gnubg.org/ is how I learned. I enjoy how it can break down a game and show you the equity in every possible move.

Play65 is not good. Playmoneygames arent saved and and the rake there is impossible to beat partly because of their ******ed rating system.

i like play65s interface though

i definitely dont recommend playing there for real money

the rake is impossible to overcome

however its fun to play on for fun money

For sure it is. You can both PM me if u wanna play some funmoney games sometimes.

For learning the game stick to a free site like pogo.com and try playing the high rated players because they tend to take the game more serious and you can watch and learn by paying attention to your opponents playing styles.

Why donate when you can learn for free.

Once you start playing real money games, I recommend Carbon Poker or other site on there network. Get yourself a 30% rakeback deal and play there.

This is unless your a real high stakes player. a $25/$100 game will run on Carbon often enough and if you start a table players will sit.

Make sure at Carbon Poker to get a BIG rakeback deal - 30% is the max at this site, but...

If your playing higher than $25 per point then you'll want to go with a bigger site.

If you play over $500 max stake games online be sure to get a VIP host - sites will hook up the highest stake backgammon players with VIP banking, support and huge rake cuts. Just contact the big sites to inquire.

Also don't be afraid to contact smaller sites trying to negotiate something even if your just a low to mid limit addict that plays a lot. These smaller sites really want the business and if you contact them enough and land the right contact you can get hooked up.

For playing: FIBS has been around forever, and if you download a decent client like 3dfibs or javafibs, it's not too bad. There are some annoying droppers who will quit to preserve their rating, but for the most part people are OK. You might want to ignore the chat.
Yahoo has tons of people playing for free.
I used to play a lot on TrueMoneyGames/XcitingGames, which has a great interface (and strippers!). Sadly most of the player base disappeared after a while. Not sure what it looks like these days.
I'd recommend against real money play at play65/gammonempire for the previous reasons, and some scandals involve well-known players being accused of cheating. Although there are tons of fish on there, the rating system and ridiculous rake means that the easiest way of winning is intentionally blowing your rating at small stakes games, which is against the rules, of course. I'm sure some people do make money there, but I hated the interface anyway. I made maybe $40 and left. Of course play money play is fine.

For learning: there are some excellent books on BG. Everyone points to Magriel's Backgammon as the bible, though I've never read it, as I heard some things are wrong by today's standards...I understand it would still be a good starting point for anyone though. I started with Trice's Backgammon Boot Camp, which I can't recommend highly enough--it's very well written, not dry like a textbook, with many important concepts explained through examples of various difficulty. You'll be surprised how much you improve just reading it once. Robertie's 501 problems is also good, though you'll want some experience first.
Download gnubg for sure, let it kick your ass a few times, find your biggest mistakes and try to figure out what you're doing wrong. No, it's not cheating, it's just that good.

Good BG websites:
www.bgonline.org has many opening move rollouts as well as a truly fantastic forum, with tons of discussions by some of the best players in the world. Stick (who runs the site) usually has an online match versus the readers going, though he tends to skip what he deems are "easy moves," which may not be easy to the rest of us.
www.gammonu.com is run by Kit Woolsey and has a lot of excellent content. Many of the archives at www.gammonline.com are good too (see the annotated matches).
www.bkgm.com is a good general content site, with many articles and links, as well as archives of rec.games.backgammon. Do not, under any circumstances, attempt to read rec.games.backgammon today. It will make you sad.
Hope this helps! It's a great game, I like it (as you might have guessed). Sadly I am way out of practice since I've been playing much more poker and scrabble (heh). Honestly I was never an expert anyway

There is a freeware backgammon program called JellyFish Lite which plays a good game and can be downloaded free. Go to www.google.com and type in "JellyFish Lite" and you should find it on one of the first three pages.

Also, if you go to the backgammon group on google there is lots of good solid advice. However, just typing in "backgammon tips " into google will bring up some good stuff.

RepBot is your friend.

Clovis, read Magriel. Some stuff that's been written since has been interesting, and advanced the art, but Magriel's the original and still the best.

To online BG regulars: what do you know about cheating? I'd love to play against humans, but I'm worried that I'd just be sitting down with someone who's just plugging every move in to TD-Gammon or Snowie (or just botting the whole process), and is going to be just about unbeatable.

I forgot about RepBot on fibs, good suggestion.

I found almost no one cheating, but I was playing for very small stakes per match (maybe $5). In the very few times when I thought someone was cheating, they took a good 20 seconds to make every move, even stupidly obvious ones (bearoffs, point on head, etc.). So it was no surprise when their error rate came up inhumanly low (<1). I'm sure that a competent programmer/cheater could find a way to integrate it so as not to play so slowly, but I have no idea how easy that is--hopefully the software itself has some sort of security. Obviously a low error rate doesn't automatically mean cheating, especially in a short match, but (insanely slow+ridiculously good) usually is a red flag. Besides, why would you want to keep playing someone who is really slow and really good anyway?

Maybe someone else can comment on high stakes, where it might be much more common?

PropPlayer: thanks for the CarbonPoker suggestion. Sad that they have ratings too, but at least it looks like there is some action there and the rake is not bad at all. Is there any way to export the game to a file readable by gnubg? Auto-bearoff and not having to move one die at a time would also be nice, but it's all right.

Well, nearly played on all of them. Used to love playing on msn zone backgammon because they had quick tournies every 30 minutes, players were friendly for the most part, it was free, but still playing for something, so got some decent game. But that went away.
I'd recommend a site called truemoneygames.com. It's heads above the rest, software is fast and easy. Can play for free and they even have freeroll tournaments which cost nothing to play but can still make something. It's in euro's now. I've won a few of those freerolls, and was able to make a bankroll up to over 150 euro's starting with nothing. But gave it back on some no-limit poker action later on (They started as just a backgammon site years ago, but added poker action as well).
Anyway, give it a shot and play a few freerolls, I think you will like it.
P.S. They also have a clock which is great because it manages time so somebody can't just leave you high and dry waiting forever for the other to make a move. If you see me on it, my screen-name is Doubles_Dan and been playing on the site since 2003. Willing to answer any questions...

AAdanielAA

I have to agree on truemoneygames, best backgammonsite out there!
Why it is not more popular is something I can't understand.
Why people prefer to play on crapsites like play65, i don't know.

Well, popeye, it took me awhile to end up on truemoneygames too. But once I was on it, I knew it was a very good backgammon site, different from the rest. I'd be careful about playing for money on it though, or any backgammon online, especially high stakes...it seems when you get to 10 dollars a point or higher, few regular players play against each other and they seem to get great rolls, play flawlessly, and don't lose often (hint, hint, using Snowie software)...Other than that, I play on it nearly all the time and play the freerolls and low-limit action.
AAdanielAA

Jellyfish ftw!

What abot Gamesgrid.

Played their several years ago. They have lots of very cheap tournaments, and site bots of different level you can play against. Easy import of all games in snowie or GNU.

Great place to learn and a great community too.