If you haven't got the program loaded in your hard disk the computer knows nothing of backgammon at all. And the program is not in the material world . A program is like a story or a tune - or a number, for that matter. Of course, the disks are material and the 'program is on the disk,' but this isn't the program, it's a recording of the program. If you damage the tape of a Schubert quartet you don't damage the quartet, only the tape.
Programs even have a kind of personality, though a very limited one.
The backgammon program makes strategic and tactical decisions depending on the throw of the dice. Other programs, even utilitarian ones like word-processor programs, also have this kind of personality, of course reflecting the personality of the programmer who wrote them. I don't know the details of the backgammon program, but without doubt it uses the computer's pseudo-random number subroutine, both to present the throws of the dice and to choose between possible moves after it's evaluated them for strategic and tactical advantage. But the effect is very convincing. Very tempting indeed, but dangerous.