How to install eXtreme Gammon on macOS

As of this writing, eXtreme Gammon (XG) is the most authoritative backgammon bot. This is despite the ticket price ($60), it having no new major releases since 2013 or any active development since 2015. Most damningly, XG only runs on Windows, making it inaccessible to Mac or Linux users. That said, if you want what most people consider to be the “right” answer, you need to get yourself a working copy.

The conventional advice is to install XG using Crossover; however that boasts its own steep $74 price tag. It also turns out to be entirely unnecessary, as XG can be installed on Macs using Wine, which is free and open source. There doesn’t seem to be any reliable tutorial on how to do it, so we present one below. Here are the specs for the computer where this is tested:

  • MacBook Pro 2021
  • Apple M1 Pro chip
  • macOS Sequoia 15.0.1
  1. Download XG from the official download page.
  2. Download and install homebrew.

Open the macOS Terminal, and type in:

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

3. Use brew to install Kegworks, which is a maintained version of Wineskin:

While still in the Terminal, type in:

brew upgrade
brew uninstall --force --zap wineskin
brew install --cask --no-quarantine gcenx/wine/kegworks

4. Navigate to your Applications folder (/Macintosh HD/Applications), and open Kegworks Winery.app.

5. In the “Winery” click the + symbol, select WS12WhiskyWine2.4.4 from the dropdown menu, and Download and Install the engine:

6. Once the download is complete, click OK and then Create New Blank Wrapper. Name it XG.

7. Click “View wrapper in Finder” (or alternatively, navigate to /Macintosh HD/Users/YourUsername/Applications/KegWorks) and open the new “XG.exe”. You should see the following dialog:

Select Config Utility. The following dialog will appear:

Navigate to the Desktop Integration tab, and under “Theme” select “(No Theme)”, and click OK:

8. Now click on Install Software on the “Advanced” dialog, and click “Choose Setup Executable”:

Select the XG installation file you downloaded in step 1. It should be called xg2install.exe.

After a moment, it will open the standard Windows XG installation dialog:

Go through the installation like you would any other on Windows. (“Next next next, Finish.”

9. Once you click finish, you are likely to see this error:

Select the correct exe, and then click OK.

10. Now close the Advanced window and any other Wine windows you might have open. Double click XG.exe, and you should be in the XG Configuration Wizard!

Note that the emulator will not be able to take full advantage of your processor. Below is my Calibration benchmark, at about 700k positions per second.

Part of the reason it’s so slow is that it’s running on Apple Silicon — Intel Macs have much better performance (millions per second) and running XG natively on a modern Windows machine can get to 10 million positions per second. That said, there are many tweaks that can be made to speed this up. If you find any that work, please share them and we will update this tutorial!

If you want to update the theme of your board, there are many resources online to do that. I personally use Aurele’s XG Theme Builder, which allows you to fully customize your board, and has a handful of pretty presets as well.


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