Comparison

Backgammon Reserve vs Neon Backgammon

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both games, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Backgammon Reserve

This app offers a premium backgammon experience focused on serious players. It features ranked online play with Elo ratings, daily matches with extended move times, and structured match play. An advanced AI opponent provides detailed post-game analysis to help improve your strategy.

Highlights
  • Ranked online play with Elo rating
  • Daily matches with up to 24 hours per move
  • Match play with Crawford rule
  • Advanced AI opponent (Sir Reginald)
  • Full post-game analysis and review
  • Global and friends standings
  • Secure, unbiased dice rolls
Read full description

Backgammon Reserve is backgammon the way serious players want it. Most backgammon apps bury the game under casino mechanics: coin balances, spin wheels, loud effects. This is the opposite. A quiet, premium table for people who already love the game and want a trustworthy place to play it. PLAY RANKED ONLINE Match against real players on a live Elo rating. Server-generated dice, a match clock, and full rules enforcement. The doubling cube, gammons, and backgammons all count. Your rating, global rank, and percentile are real, earned, and on display. PLAY DAILY Backgammon on your schedule. Up to 24 hours per move and up to twenty games at once, rated in the same pool as live play with the cube in full effect. A notification tells you the moment it is your move, and the app icon counts the games waiting on you. MATCHES TO 3, 5 OR 7 Play a proper match, not just a game. First to the target score, Crawford rule included, with the cube live throughout. Agree a format with a friend, or pick one against the bot and in Pass and Play. TAKE ON SIR REGINALD One opponent. The whole community trying to beat him. Sir Reginald plays matches to 3, 5 or 7 and never a single game. He is not a difficulty setting and nothing against him touches your rating: his ladder is its own contest, ranked two ways, most wins and best average performance rating. His judgement comes from a neural network that taught itself backgammon over 750,000 games against itself, with no strategy written by hand. A bot built from written rules can only be as good as whoever wrote them. One that learns from results is free to find plays nobody thought to teach it. SEE WHERE YOU WENT WRONG Every match against Sir Reginald ends with a full review. A rating for how you played, your costliest decision shown on the board with the better move beside it, and a chart of how your chance of winning moved with every decision. It separates the dice from the play, so you can tell being outplayed from being unlucky. STANDINGS See exactly where you stand. The global board ranks the strongest players by rating, and your own row stays with you whether you are in the top 25 or climbing toward it, with the exact gap to the player above. A separate friends board ranks the people you actually know. Every rated game moves you, live or daily, and one rated game puts you on it. FAIR DICE Dice come from a cryptographically secure random source with bias rejection. No streaks engineered to keep you playing, no rolls tilted toward anyone. Online, the server rolls, so neither player's device can influence them. Against Sir Reginald you need not take it on faith: his page charts every die face rolled against the mathematics. SHARPEN YOUR GAME AGAINST THE BOTS Four tiers, from Beginner to Expert, all driven by the same self-taught network. Each is defined by how much it may give away per decision, so a weaker bot plays weaker moves rather than random ones. Bot games never touch your rating. PASS AND PLAY Hand the phone across the table. A clean two-seat mode for playing in person, at a single game or a full match. CHALLENGE YOUR FRIENDS Add friends, send a direct challenge, and settle it in a rated match. Play live with a clock, or start a daily game and take it slow. Agree the format, from a single game to a match to 7. A RECORD OF EVERY GAME Full match history, win and loss stats, streaks, recent form, and an interactive rating chart tracking every rated game you have played. DESIGNED LIKE A MEMBERS LOUNGE Walnut and brass, ivory checkers, understated motion. No neon, no confetti, no noise. WHAT YOU WON'T FIND • No coins, chips, or gambling mechanics • No ads • No pay-to-win mechanics. Nothing for sale. • No engineered dice Full backgammon rules are enforced: bar entry, blot hitting, forced maximum-pip plays, exact and overshoot bear-off, and the doubling cube with proper gammon and backgammon scoring.

About

Neon Backgammon

Features
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Backgammon, the way it should be on a phone. No ads interrupting your turn. Nothing to buy. No sign-up, no account, and no internet connection needed at any point. Play against the computer or hand the phone to a friend. Your game saves itself the moment you close it, so a single match can last all week. WHAT YOU GET • The full game: hitting and re-entering from the bar, bearing off, gammons and backgammons • A real doubling cube, with ownership passing to whoever accepts the double • Three computer difficulties, from a loose racer to an opponent that plays out whole turns in its head before it commits to one • Two players on one device, passing the phone back and forth • Five board themes: Neon Night, Classic Wood, Ocean, Synthwave, and Felt & Gold • Play as white or black, and flip the board so your home sits where you expect it • Tap to move, or drag the checker where you want it • Undo any move before you end your turn • A How to Play screen covering the whole game, the cube included • Haptics tuned per action, and sound you can switch off WHAT IT DOES NOT DO • No ads. Not banners, not videos, not "watch this to keep playing" • No in-app purchases and no subscription. Every theme and every mode is there on first launch • No account, no email, no sign-in • No internet connection. The app never makes a network request, so it plays identically on a plane or in a basement • No tracking, no analytics, no data collection of any kind. There is nothing to collect Built by one person who wanted a backgammon app that was not trying to sell him something every ninety seconds. Questions or bugs: eric@erichunsicker.com

Screenshots

Backgammon Reserve4 screens
Neon Backgammon4 screens

Verdict

The call

Backgammon Reserve and Neon Backgammon are too close to call on the numbers: across 5 compared parameters — price, ads, in-app purchases and device support among them — neither pulls far enough ahead to decide it. What separates them is feature set and interface, not measurable difference.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

ScorecardNo meaningful differences
Backgammon Reserve versus Neon Backgammon: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterBackgammon ReserveNeon Backgammon
PriceFreeFree
Rating5.0 (17 ratings) — better—
Positive reviews100.0% of reviews—
Number of ratings17 — better—
Update frequencyEvery 4 days—
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationFree—
DevicesiPhone, iPad — betteriPhone
Requires iOS17.016.4 — better
Further details — not scored
Size17 MB39 MB
Age rating12+4+
DeveloperBenjamin TaylorEric Hunsicker

In-app purchases

None

Backgammon Reserve

No in-app purchases

None

Neon Backgammon

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Backgammon Reserve free?
Backgammon Reserve is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Neon Backgammon free?
Neon Backgammon is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do Backgammon Reserve or Neon Backgammon have ads?
Neither Backgammon Reserve nor Neon Backgammon shows ads.

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