Is there a stop to Internet Backgammon cheaters?

You make some good points, but (not by you) there seems to be a misunderstanding of what I consider cheating.

The only cheating that I believe is going on is the stall cheat bug, ie: your opponent makes a move, then reverses it, then makes it again, then reverses it, and so on. He then stops all together, and  then somehow you get timed out, even though it still shows as his move. Surely msn are able to solve this bug at a fairly low cost? I don't know about computers, but I suspect someone has designed a bug, and I would hope another expert could design a way to destroy the bug.

A lot of people on here are claiming that because someone gets perfect rolls that they must be cheating. They even claim that opponent gets many doubles on the trot and this is a sign of cheating.

As all good players know, too many doubles are actually bad for your position... not good. Okay if you got a double every single throw then maybe not, but too many and you cannot build a position.

I do not believe the dice are properly random, but I do not believe that it involves cheating by opponent, just a poor dice programme. This is proved in my opinion, by the fact that I am sometimes extremely lucky, and sometimes extremely unlucky, and generally it happens in streaks: I have often lost 15 matches on the trot, and every single throw my opponent needs he gets; but also many times I get every throw I need, and have won many matches on the trot (never 15 though). I don't cheat so it must just be a poor dice programme.

Maybe some computer expert could explain if there is a way to have absolutely random dice

Fred; thanks for at least giving the Windows version that you were using. That may be part of the issue here as frankly I have just not observed many of the things mentioned here. e.g. I did keep track of doubles and the numbers were well in expected ranges (I actually rolled 4 more doubles than the opponents over about 200 total doubles). I don't cheat and win a majority of my games . . . . no check that, a majority of the games I leave after the opponent quits . . . hardly anyone complains about that except very early in the thread . . . that happens A LOT, most people do when then fall behind. There are lots of reasons why one must abandon a game but very few say anything like "sorry I have to go now". The only way to combat that is to be able to choose your opponent by handle, that way you know the good players and the ones to avoid.

So yeah there are annoying things going on and after playing for a while I just don't see that cheating is a major one. BTW I play with W7 Pro. The game works really well I think as far as speed/visuals etc. it is just the rude people that spoil it, no surprise there since they are anonymous. But, I have too had great games with very good players that play honorably.

between rolls, wouldn't this be a little of an overreaction?

I don't wish to be rude - but I'm not sure if Microsoft would dedicate a team of moderators AND a bunch of expensive servers to a game that frankly was made to entertain people when they're bored.

I agree, it's a great game. However Microsoft have lots of important things on their agenda - they've got to develop updates for MSE, they're always creating new software, fixing bugs for windows, etc.

They'd have to dedicated hundreds of moderators and servers - ideally you'd need one moderator per game going on at any one time. If you visualize how many people play backgammon - especially at weekends - it might start to become too costly for what it's worth.

Microsoft made IB for people to play. They pay the amount they do and dedicate a few people to fixing bugs. They give it allowance to connect to other players, etc. But I don't think Microsoft can simply say 'Ok, people are cheating at our game. Let's spend, say, $200,000 on wages, servers, etc.

That seems like a lot of money, and it is. Perhaps not to Microsoft, but they wouldn't want to lose it.

I live in the UK, so I'll do this in pounds.

Minimum wage: £5 an hour.

Let's say this backgammon worker works between 9 in the morning, and 7 in the evening. Let's just say that. Ok, 10 hours of work that day. Multiply that, you get £50 a day. Multiply by 365 and you get £18250. Of course, this worker needs a break.

Let's say this worker has 5 weeks off per year, let's just say. 3 weeks in holiday, 2 weeks in Christmas, being ill, etc.

Multiply 35 days (5 weeks) by £50. You get £1750. Subtracting this from our yearly wage we get £16500.

Now, this wage is for somebody getting the MINIMUM wage, with rather good hours and holiday times.

This person would probably get paid more than this minimum wage, perhaps double or triple it.

For now, let's stick with this wage. Now, how many moderators would we need, say, for a constant onslaught of, say, four or five games starting per minute? This isn't too much at all considering the amount of players, and it could be more.

How many minutes in this worker's 10 hour day? 600 minutes. In 600 minutes, there would be AT LEAST 3000 games starting. Let's say each game to be moderated takes 20 minutes. If we calculate how many individual 20 minute games can

occur in 600 minutes, we get our result to be 30 of these 20 minute games. This is WITHOUT multiple moderators. Now, divide 3000 by 30, giving us 100.

For THIS AMOUNT of games being started in a day, there would need to be 100 moderators constantly working.

Let's get back to our moderator's minimum wage, and multiply it by 100. That's £1650000 per year for these moderators.

Microsoft would have to shell out on this, PLUS the cost of buying the servers and upkeeping them.

That's a lot of money for one little game. People who SPECIALISE in online games (like kids' games such as 'Club Penguin' by Disney) spend TONS of money. They have something

like one million players on at once at peak times, possibly more.

The whole point is, it's a bit too expensive for Microsoft to pay that much for a game designed for a small amount of entertainment.

I might have made some sort of mistake here - if I have, please inform me so and I will correct it.

I see this post is almost two years old but when I tried to get back into backgammon today (2/18/2012) after at least two years of being away because of the cheaters my "microsoft backgammon" Google search led me to this old post.So it appears the same old cheats can and do prove that they can still run their cheat programs. 

I do love the game and one of the aspects of it is that one must accept the occasional extraordinarily lucky roll(s).

BUT, if one does accept this possibility and then blatant cheating occurs, which I will not go to the trouble to describe other than to say it is obvious, acknowledged by the perpetrators and  curiously ignored by the owners of the format, then the possibility to expand the audience of the game in an environment that could promote one of the oldest games, and since it is still played today, one of the most popular it seems an intentional if not malicious oversight.

I am certain the programmers at Microsoft Games could easily control the cheating but choose not to. I don't really care but it seems such a waste of a great opportunity, you know - backgammon, the internet, Microsoft.

I am truly - Disappointed.