You probably have missed the biggest news around backgammon apps and AIs in recent months: The author of True Backgammon released a new version 6.20, which lets you play against its BGBlitz engine on 3-ply level, which takes it from superhuman to totally superhuman.

3-ply means that it looks ahead 3 die rolls when evaluating its move. Yes, all combinations of dice and moves of it moving, you rolling and moving, it rolling and moving.

Played my first match – on my old iPad Pro 12.9 (3 years old) I have to wait around 5 to 10 seconds for a move, ie. normal tournament backgammon speed.

Now the big question is how much PR will this gain? Will it take the crown of iOS backgammon AI strength?

You may remember my lengthy shootout that seems to show that XG Mobile plays at a PR of 0.6, while True Backgammon with BGBlitz on 2-ply plays “only” on PR 1.1 (remember, there is no human below PR 2.2, so True Backgammon already makes less than half the mistakes of the best humans).

Will keep you updated. For the first match to 5 points, Extreme Gammon 2 rated it at a PR of 0.37. Supersuperhuman. And it had to play a complicated back game.