Backgammon Tournament Play

Introduction

In this first article we are going to look at the very basics of backgammon tournament. In subsequent articles we will look in depth at the highly complex world of match play.

Backgammon tournament play is much more difficult than money play because the match score adds a significant level of difficulty. It is no surprise the best players in the world are the best tournament players – Nack Ballard, Neil Kazaross and Kit Woolsey are prime examples.

The Basics Of Backgammon Tournament Play

Backgammon tournaments are normally decided by single elimination matches in the same way as major tennis tournaments. Competitors are paired off and each pair plays a series of games to decide which player will progress to the next round. Players eliminated in the first round normally go into a consolation event (or plate) and, if it is a big enough tournament like the World Championships, there will be a second consolation and ultimately a Last Chance.

Matches are played to a specified number of points in Backgammon Tournaments. Consolation and Last Chance events are always played to a smaller number of points than the main event. The first player to accumulate the required number of points wins the match. Points are awarded in the usual manner: one for a single game, two for a gammon and three for a backgammon.

The doubling cube is used, so the winner receives the value of the game multiplied by the final value of the doubling cube. Thus if a player wins a gammon with the cube on 4, he wins eight points. If the players were playing a 7-point match, the match would be over in one game.

Matches are normally played to an odd number of points and the Crawford Rule is always used. The Crawford rule states that if one player reaches a score one point short of the match (i.e. he is at match point), neither player may offer a double in the following game.
This one game without doubling is called the Crawford game. After the Crawford game, if the match has not yet been decided, the doubling cube is available again and the player who is trailing in the match should double at the first available opportunity. Automatic doubles, beavers, raccoons and the Jacoby Rule are not used in match play.

There is no bonus for winning more than the required number of points. When playing a match to a certain number of points, the winner is the first person who wins that number of points. It doesn’t matter if he wins more than that number, or how many points his opponent has scored. The sole goal is to win the match, and the winning margin is immaterial.

Backgammon Tournaments

Match Length

The longer the match the more likely the stronger player is to win as he/she has time to recover from a setback. For example losing a doubled gammon (4 points) in a match to 17 points is unfortunate but not half so unfortunate as losing 4 points in a match to 5 points!
The early rounds of the World Championships (held at Monte Carlo each July) are played to 13 points. With each round the matches get longer and the final is played to 25 points.

Normally the better player will come out on top over such a long match but that is not always the case and backgammon tournaments are littered with examples of heavy favorites falling to rank outsiders. That is both the beauty and the frustration of the game.
As long as dice are involved there will always be outrageous swings of fortune - and rightly so. Without such swings the game would rapidly lose its appeal.

A better format which was used in the (now defunct) World Cup was to play best-of-five 9 point matches. This enabled those players with highly developed match play skills to overcome lesser players and thus the format is a much truer test of ability. We will see over time whether other tournaments will adopt this format.

Clocks

To enable tournaments to run on schedule we are increasingly seeing the use of clocks. We will look at the whole topic of clocks in a future article. For now suffice it to say that each player is allowed a number of minutes for his match (determined by the length of the match).
For each move he is allowed so many seconds (normally about 15) to make his move and only after those 15 seconds is the time used deducted from his allowed time.

As in chess if you run out of time you forfeit the match. This can lead to some interesting tactics towards the end of matches. As an example, a player whose opponent is very short on time will try to play a complicated games with a large number of moves in order to use up his opponent’s remaining time.

Summary

Tournament play is the very pinnacle of backgammon. Good money players don’t always make good tournament players. The converse is also true because some players who excel in tournaments can’t cope with the financial pressures of high stakes money play (particularly chouettes). In a tournament once you have paid your entry fee you are free to play with no additional financial pressure.

To re-iterate a key point – the score dominates all other aspects of tournament play and as we progress we will see just what an influence that can be on play and doubling decisions.