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BGonline.org Forums
Sage Pro Reviewed (Long)
Posted By: Stick
Date: Friday, 31 July 2026, at 9:21 a.m.
As I'm sure most of you have heard through the grape vine there's a new bot out called Backgammon Sage Pro. It has been available for at least a couple of months now and I tried it in the beginning and wasn't overly impressed. I was torn in the following months as to whether or not I should do a write up as bad publicity is still publicity. I keep seeing people on Facebook posting or inquiring about it so I decided to go ahead and give my always refundable two cents worth.
First, there is a free trial available for 7 days, no credit card required. This is great. I always hate trial periods where when the trial is over they charge you for the membership/renewal automatically if you didn't cancel. That's generally the real reason they offer a 'free trial' period, to hook people who forget to cancel. For those who don't know in general you can cancel these immediately and still use the product for the entire trial period.
Your initial 'verify email' email is likely to go to your Spam folder.
Unlike bots of distant past like XG, BGBlitz, or Snowie, where you could purchase the program outright Sage Pro charges either a monthly or yearly fee. To me this is an enormous knock against the program. Theoretically if the program was successful it would be much better for their bottom line, I get it. If it will be only time will tell. Here's the current pricing.
- Annual membership - $59.99 the first year (subscribe by the end of 2026), $79.99 a year after that.
- Monthly membership - $7.99 a month
The 'program' when it first came out was browser based only. This is because it's powered by the all mighty Cloud. This should mean everything is synced from a desktop to a phone to an iPad. App should be the same strength as desktop and so on and so forth. They have now also released a downloadable version. It's still doesn't have the feel of an actual program that you're used to for backgammon. It still has the feel of playing in a browser.
Here is a list of annoyances/spots available for improvement I've found so far in no certain order.
- You can't click the actual doubling cube to double. I much prefer XG where if I want to roll I click anywhere on the board basically, right side, left side, whatever ...and if I want to double I click, you know, the doubling cube. (or the icon at the bottom left of the window or the keyboard short cut ctrl + d)
- The dice wiggle for far too long when rolling. With XG they're just there, done. With SP I have to watch the dice dance for a second before settling.
- The short cut for undo, ctrl + z, does not work. With XG if I move my checkers I can move them back either by right clicking or by hitting ctrl + z. (or cancel move again in the icons at the bottom left of the screen) With SP you have to hit the Undo button in the center of your opponent's side of the board, only option.
- With SP clicking the undo button undoes only the last thing you did. For eg, I roll double fours, I play the full roll to look at the position. To get back to the original position I have to hit the undo button four times! XG undoes the entire thing in one swoop. Preferred.
- There is no *hint feature as with XG. With XG I can either hit the hint light bulb or the short cut ctrl + h and get shown the analysis. From there if I want to take XG's advice I can simply hit the light bulb icon again and it will make the best play. With SP you can analyze the position at hand by clicking the analyze button but that's it.
- With XG I can right or left click on the dice to change the order of which die is played first. With SP you can only right click. Also, with XG I can right click anywhere on the board to change the dice order. With SP it has to be specifically a left click and specifically on the dice.
- When you are playing and looking at analysis or anything that has to do with moves or equities you see etc... is small af. I feel like I'm back in the 1980s looking at code. Why is it so small? A lot of your backgammon audience is old enough already to be on the bad end of eyesight.
- If a game is into the no contact phase there is the option as with the rest of the bots to autoplay the rest of the game. The issue with SP is it will only autoplay the position if you stay on that screen!? I hit autoplay so the game will finish while I go check my email or Facebook or BGO or auctions or whatever ...when I come back, next game is ready to go with all the other bots. Not with SP. Game starts playing out right where I left it.
- There is no short cut to clear the board when editing positions
- There is no export feature for, oh, let's say if you wanted to post positions/analysis to BGO for eg. XG gave us a drop down menu for HTML, text, or BGO!
- There are only 3 available 'themes'. (board + checker patters/colors) The two aside from the default are fairly hideous. No 3D boards available.
Lastly and worthy of a paragraph of its own is the Sage AI explanations. While others have admitted this has no real value for an advanced player they maintain that it does for a beginner or intermediate player. I have talked to several other players and nobody not involved in the SP project has disagreed with me yet, this feature as it is right now would do far more harm than good for a beginner or an intermediate player. I won't bore you with countless examples of the AI just rambling, talking out of its ass. An advanced player knows to ignore it. Others might try to make sense of it and apply it and it will potentially cause a lot of harm. It is a lot harder to unlearn something you've learned incorrectly than to learn it the right way from the get go.
Let us not forget that it is far easier to criticize than applaud. If you want to come at a program like XG though even if it hasn't been updated in almost 15 years you still better bring your A game. Here is what I found to be the good that may not be available or has been improved upon from our standard bot line up. Again in no particular order.
- You can play Paskogammon! Of course you could do this with XG too by pasting the position and choosing 'play from position' but it is smoother with SP. Also, since Paskogammon has been added I have to ask, why not add Nackgammon or other variants?
- Clock option! You can play matches with a fully customizable clock so if you're someone who doesn't always manage their time well live now you can practice at home.
- The program is constantly updated (when online) because it's all in the Cloud. It's not like a program like XG where there needs to be a new release downloaded to update things. So if Mark were to see this tomorrow and decide it's easy to offer Nackgammon as a variant he could have it theoretically added that day.
- Heat map. XG and GNU have their own heat maps and SP seems to be a combination of the two plus some more potential features. I have only toyed with it a bit and it's a little slower to get the analysis but the features seem to be top notch.
- SP saves all your games/matches and in doing so you're able to access all your errors/blunders and review them. SP also tries to categorize them and you can go back and quiz yourself (or simply review) your own mistakes at any time.
- It is Open Source for the geeks among us. That means anyone can go and verify the source code, modify it, share, whatever.
Stick you say, what about the speed claims? What about the playing strength claims? Those are two of the biggest question marks surrounding the value of SP.
Speed - I, too, have always felt the need, the need for speed. I'm not a gamer but my PC is plenty fast. It clocks in at 28.5 million pos/s on XG right now. This means that for me there is no advantage to using SP on the Cloud. It is, in fact, a bit slower than XG. It will depend what machine you're using whether it helps, hurts, or comes out even. With SP you are able to use it from a phone or iPad and still have the same playing strength because you are using the Cloud whereas with XG you had to use a somewhat scaled down version.
To test the speed of rollouts I performed a few of the opening position with a [64] to play. Three candidate plays, 1296 trials. Default XG settings of 3ply/XGR and for SP I did 3ply/ply and 3ply/4ply. SP has the same general analysis levels that XG does. It lists them as 2P, 3P, 4P, 1T, 2T, 3T, R. P stands for ply obviously, T stands for truncated rollouts, R stands for rollout.
With XG it took 3 minutes flat to roll the 3 opening moves of a [64] 1296 trials on XG's default rollout setting of 3ply/XGR.
With SP we have two different results. One result when I used the Cloud and one result when I used the downloadable version. These were both 3ply/3ply (so weaker than the XG rollout), 1296 trials. Desktop: 1m 35s. Cloud: 3m 53s. Yes, they were the same seed and produced the same exact results.
To get closer to XG's settings I also rolled out with SP using 3ply/4ply on my desktop and it took 3m 28s. So again, clearly slower than just using XG for me.
Strength - While there has been something done it's nothing that proves anything. All you need to know is that it is a world class bot. Is it better than XG? Who knows. You don't. I don't. Mark doesn't. Until someone has them play each other it's all guess work or biased testing. I still don't understand why someone can't write a program that would have them play each other. I don't care if it's a bit slow or not ideal. So what? Get it cookin'.
For the advanced player one of the biggest draws to a new bot would be if it was proven to be stronger than the older bots, esp. if it was by a non significant amount. I don't believe SPP to be but would loved to be proven wrong. For all humans though it really doesn't matter. You put me against Snowie or GNU or XG or SPP on a higher analysis level and I won't be able to tell the difference. Neither will you which is what makes it hard to invest in a new bot.
Now I know all y'all are a bunch of lazy bitches so I read all the threads out there and watched all the available videos. In case one of you happens to not be as lazy as I give you credit for here are a couple of links.
Interview with Mark Higgins by Alex Eshaghian - Mark is the creator of SPP and actually posted here on BGO an entire 7 times back in 2012. It's a good interview. Lets you know who Mark is, how he created SPP, some of the features, a little bit of the future of SPP.
Switching from XG to SPP - Nothing mind blowing here. If you're comfortable with the bots already you know how to do it all and would have tried it yourself.
The final word (already). While I do believe SPP has a world class engine I don't believe it is ahead of XG and certainly not by any tangible strength. The playing and rollouts aren't faster for me and while it does have a few bells and whistles that are nice, it's nothing near what would draw me to paying for it at this point as I already have XG. (And Snowie, and GNU, and BGBlitz) If you watch the interview and make a drinking game out of how many times something along the lines of 'just like with XG' gets uttered you'd be comfortably numb by the end of it.
One last bitch and moan. The program is currently listed as endorsed by Sax, MCG, Dmitriy, Wacky Taffy, and Alex E. Simborg and Perry also helped in its development. My bitch and moan? Why does no one ever ask me to do things like this? Is it just because I'm an asshole or is there something else I'm missing? Did any of these people put as much work into researching it before endorsing it as I did for this post? I often feel like it would be beneficial if backgammon people would reach out and ask the right people ahead of time about this, that, and the other. Maybe for some reason I'm never the right people but it sure seems to me that I am.
Stick
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