Backgammon Tournaments- The Real Deal

Many casual backgammon players are surprised to discover that live backgammon tournaments actually exist and are held regularly at many locations around the world. Did you know that for more than 30 years now, a tournament has been held annually in Monaco for the ultimate title on the planet, that of “World Backgammon Champion”? In fact, there are many professional backgammon players that do nothing else but travel the globe playing in what is called the international backgammon circuit.

In recent years, the glamour and excitement of these events has been filmed and featured in new television programs such as the “World Series of Backgammon” (WSOB) and “Ultimate Backgammon - Celebrate the Game”.

Some people may think, “Well, so what? I am not that great a player; I just play socially or for small stakes, what chances do I have of going out and winning a backgammon tournament?” Other, perhaps more optimistic players might say, “Oh yeah! I am the best in the world; tell me where I can go to prove it?”

Well, tournaments are for everyone because they have divisions for different skill levels (beginner, intermediate and expert), and thus, players of a similar ability have about the same of chances of winning a tournament making luck an important factor in the contest.

How can you play in one of these backgammon tournaments if you have day job? Don’t worry, backgammon tournaments are usually scheduled over a weekend and there might be one happening close to you.

So if you want to get out and play against others over a real board, meet new friends who share a passion for our game, and perhaps win a little bundle of money, this article will tell you all about live backgammon tournaments - who runs them, when and where they are held, and how they work in regards to playing formats and rules, entry fees, prizes and more.

Backgammon Clubs and Tournament Organizations

In the USA there are backgammon clubs in many cities where players get together for weekly, bi-weekly or monthly competitions. Some of these organize small local monthly tournaments as well as larger annual events that are attended by players from all over the USA – those larger events are part of the American Backgammon Tour (ABT) and there is at least one or two of these annual tournaments happening every month, somewhere in the USA.

Backgammon clubs also exist in many other countries, especially in the United Kingdom and numerous European countries, and similarly are often associated with a national backgammon “association” or “federation”. For example, in the United Kingdom, you have the British Isles Backgammon Association (BIBA) and in Denmark there is the Danish Backgammon Federation (DBgF). Sweden, Norway, France, Greece, Turkey, Japan, Peru and Costa Rica are just some of the other countries that have an organized backgammon association or federation. These usually arrange weekly and monthly events, and most have one or more major national or international championships per year.

Then you have several organizations that are dedicated to arranging international backgammon tournaments that are attended by anywhere from 100 to 500 players. A few of the leading international tournament groups are the Partouche Gammon Tour (PGT), the Worldwide Backgammon Federation (WBF) and the World Backgammon Association (WBA).

Venues and Event Schedules

Backgammon clubs will usually have their weekly or monthly get-togethers in a local restaurant, pub, bar or small hotel facility – these events are played out in a single day (afternoon, evening). Many of the national associations and federations work in the same way for minor events but slightly bigger events will be held at a larger venue, such as a hotel conference room or banquet facility, or in a designated room of a land-based casino, and the tournament will happen over a weekend, usually starting Friday night – long holiday weekends are ideal for tournaments.

Major international tournaments are also usually organized in prominent hotel or casino facilities and can go on for between four to seven days.

• The venue of annual World Backgammon Championship is the Fairmont Hotel in Monte Carlo, Monaco and is a week-long long event held every July since 1978.
• The Danish Backgammon Federation runs their annual Nordic Open Backgammon tournament during the week of Easter. The event has been held for the past 20 years, in recent years its venue has been the Hotel Marienlyst in Elsinore, Denmark.
• The Worldwide Backgammon Federation holds their annual four-day European Backgammon Championships in Velden, Austria in either April or May. The WBF has also organized four or five other major annual events since 1986.

There are a number of websites that list upcoming backgammon tournaments around the world, which you can find through a Google using the search term “backgammon events calendar”. Similarly, you can search for “backgammon club” followed by the name of a city or country or the specific name of a mentioned association/organizer to find out when and where their competitions are held.

Before going to a backgammon tournament always phone or email the organizer to confirm your intention to play and to know the exact dates and starting times of the event as well as the tournament rules and other conditions that may apply.

When you get to the tournament you need to present yourself at the table set up by the staff where you fill out a registration form with your personal details and the division that you would like to play in. You will also have to pay entry and registration fees at this time. Note that registration has a deadline, so get there on time otherwise you will not be allowed to play in the Main competition if it has started and you will have lost the time and money spent in traveling to the event. However, you will be allowed to play in other side events that have not begun yet.

Entry and Registration Fees

The entry fee is an amount of money players contribute to the prize pool which is distributed to the winners at the end of the tournament. The registration fee is an additional amount that goes directly to the organizers to help pay for their expenditures in hosting the event, such as the rental of the tournament room, the salaries of the tournament staff, materials needed to run the event (boards, dice, bracket sheets, etc.) and marketing.

Entry fees vary significantly depending on the organizer and type of event and therefore the following figures are approximate: In the Main competition, Beginners might pay an entry fee anywhere from around $20 to $50 to compete, Intermediates between $100 to $200 and Experts from $400 to $1,000 or more (the Atlantis Million event in 2007 had an entry fee of $10,000).

There is often more than just the Main competition at a backgammon tournament – the others are called “side events” and are optional to play in (such as team, jackpots or blitz events) and these will have additional entry fees and prizes. Some organizers, such as the WBF, have free-entry warm-up events with prizes donated by sponsors.

As for registration fees, these also vary according to the organizing group, venue, skill level and type of event. Depending on which flight you play in, the registration fee for most events can be anywhere from zero (for Beginners) to $150. In a few very special events, the registration fee can oscillate between $150 and $500.

There are many different formats tournament directors use to run a backgammon tournament and these are usually announced well before the date of the event. Directors needs to choose a format that can be played out according to the amount of time (hours and days) the tournament will run so that it is completed on schedule. Probably the most popular format it what is called Single Elimination which consists of a Main flight with a Consolation and/or Last Chance flight. Other formats are Round Robin play and the two-out-of-three match format.

There are also many different formulas used to distribute the prize money and these will depend on the size and format of the tournament. Sometimes there is also added prize money from a sponsor which increases the amount of the cash that goes to the winners.

Here is an example of how prize money is distributed in a single-elimination tournament: 70% of the total amount of the entry fees will be paid to the winners of the Main flight, 20% to those in the Consolation flight and 10% to those in the Last Chance flight. Of the money assigned to the Main (meaning whatever the total of the 70% is), the first place winner gets 55% of it, the Runner-Up 25% and the two Semi-Finalists 10% each.

The payout in the Consolation will also usually have four winners and a similar payout (55%, 25%, 10% and 10%) but in the Last Chance, there will usually be only two payouts with 70% of the assigned money going to the winner and 30% to the Runner-Up.

This is a very general method of payouts and as we said depends on the type of tournament and number of participants. Smaller events might not have a Last Chance. In larger events with hundreds of players, such as the World Championship, there can many winners in each flight and the World Championship also runs a second Consolation.

If you intend to play in a live tournament the director can inform you about the payout details prior to his or her event.

Online Qualifiers

In recent years, some prominent organizers have been running online qualifiers to their live tournaments. Online qualifiers are tournaments in which many players pay a comparatively low entry fee to participate. The winner of the qualifier is awarded a package that will usually include: a return plane ticket to the venue, a paid hotel room for the days of the event, entry fee and registration fee for the tournament, plus as an extra sum of cash for daily expenses such as food and beverages. Online qualifiers are currently being held on the Play65.com backgammon server.

Travel and Accommodations

You can usually download or print details about a forthcoming major international tournament from a backgammon website. The information will usually appear in PDF format and will provide the name and location of the venue and how to get there by car, train or plane and list a number of hotels close to the tournament’s location that have offered special room rates to the backgammon players. The flyer will also show a complete schedule of starting times for all events of the competition as well as the entry and registration fees, the format, a link to the tournament rules published somewhere online and other related information.

Welcome Cocktail Party and Calcutta Auction

At large international backgammon tournaments, just a few hours before the start of play, organizers will sometimes invite the players and their companions to attend an elegant backgammon party with free food and drinks offered for by the host or sponsor of the event.

If the tournament has a Calcutta Auction, it would also be at this time that the auction is run. A Calcutta Auction is a lottery or raffle of the contestants in a backgammon tournament. Players bid for certain key players or a mixed group of players and the money collected goes into a pool which is distributed to those who bought the names of the winners of the tournament. It is an extra way to make money in a tournament and you can even buy yourself, or a percentage of yourself, in a Calcutta Auction.

Public Draw and How a Tournament Works

Once the Registration is over, it is time for the random public draw to determine which players will compete against each other in the First Round for each of the divisions of the Main event. There are many ways to make a random draw and sometimes they are done with a computer program. However, the most common practice is to write the names of the players on small pieces of paper, fold them and mix them together in a hat or cylinder (of some sort). Then, one of the members of the staff (or a guest not participating in the tournament) will pick them out one by one and announce the name on the piece of paper to other members of the staff who will then write the names onto the bracket sheet in the order they were picked.

A single elimination backgammon tournament uses a bracket sheet (or draw sheet) to keep track of the progress of the players. A bracket sheet is designed for 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128 participants (and so on 256 or 512, etc.) and the number of Rounds in the event will depend on the amount of participants.

For example, in a 32-player event, the names of the players will be written on 32 lines below the first or “Round 1” column on the bracket sheet, according to the order they were picked in the random draw.

Player 1 will play against Player 2, Player 3 against Player 4, and so on down the list, thus giving you 16 matches in Round 1. The winners of Round 1 matches go to Round 2 and the losers go to Consolation flight, which is posted on a different bracket sheet.

Therefore, under the second or Round 2 column, you will have 16 players’ names that will compete in 8 matches with the winners going to Round 3 and Round 2 losers added to the Consolation sheet. And so forth, Round 3 will produce four winners, Round 4 two winners and Round 5 will be the final round of a 32-player bracket with one player emerging as Champion of the event and the other as Runner-Up. (A 64-player bracket will have 6 rounds and a 128-player bracket 7 rounds and so on.)

When the amount of participants in a division is not enough to fill a bracket sheet, “byes” are assigned at random to some players. A bye is a free pass to Round 2 without having to play in Round 1. For example, if there are only 30 players in a competition, a 32-player bracket sheet will be used but two players will receive a bye. During the public draw, the byes will usually go the first two players who were lucky enough to have their names drawn first. Thus, Player 1’s name will go on the first line under Round 1, and the word “Bye” on line 2, the next name drawn will go on line 3, with “Bye” on line 4, and the draw continues with the names of the remaining 28 players marked, as usual, on the next 28 lines.

In this way, tournament organizers can run a balanced tournament for any number of participants. For example, in a tournament with 111 players, a 128-player bracket sheet will be used but 17 players will get free passes (byes) to Round 2 according to the random draw. Some tournament organizers prefer to eliminate byes by allotting extra time to Round 1 and allowing first-round losers in to “re-buy” a second entry in the same Round 1.

Match Lengths

The number of points in the matches of each Round varies widely according to the division of competition and the number of days the event will run.

Here is a typical scenario of match lengths for 32-player brackets of the three divisions for an event that will be played over three days.

	Round 1 match length	Round 2 match length	Round 3 match length	Round 4 match length	Round 5 match length
Beginner	5 points	5 points	7 points	7 points	9 points
Intermediate	11 points	11 points	13 points	13 points	15 points
Expert	17 points	17 points	19 points	19 points	21 points

Match lengths in the Consolation and Last Chance flights are shorter, and often have fixed lengths throughout all the Rounds. For example, the Expert-level Consolation flight will probably have 11-point matches in all Rounds its Last Chance flight 5-point matches throughout.

Consolation and Last Chance

If you lose in the Main flight, you fall into the Consolation flight which begins on the second day of the tournament and continues throughout the days of the event and if you lose in the Consolation you fall into the Last Chance flight which will usually begin anywhere from the third day to the final day of the event.

Consolation and Last Chance flights give players the opportunity to always have some backgammon action every day of the tournament and with an ongoing chance of winning some money and a trophy.

During the days of the tournament you can also play in other events even if you are still in the Main, Consolation or Last Chance. There are usually Jackpots going on all the time – jackpots will consist of 4 or 8 players who pay anywhere from $20 onwards to play in a mini-tournament. There are also Super Jackpots often with 16 or 32 players, and entry fees from $500 to $2,000 or more. Blitz or 1-point tournaments are very popular and have small entry fees, of $5 or $10, with re-buys, and thus can have 64-player to 128-player (or higher) bracket sheets.

Many tournaments also have a Doubles tournament, in which two-player teams compete against each other, and there are also three-player and four-player team events such as the annual Fortis Team event at the World Championships or the Nations Cup tournament in Cannes, France.

Clocks are being used more and more in recent years at backgammon tournaments but they are not obligatory at all events yet. Clocks help to keep a tournament running smoothly and on schedule, but at tournaments where clocks are not used, if you play too slow, the director has the right to assign a clock to your match in order keep the Rounds on time.

The final matches of all divisions, and some side events, will usually be played out on the last day of the event. These are very exciting to watch and at a few major events, the finalists play in a private room while the rest of the players watch the final on a big screen in another room. Often, a top pro player will be on hand and will comment the plays of the finalist on a loudspeaker for the audience.

Awards Ceremony and Money Prizes

After the champions of the tournament emerge, the winners will be paid their cash prizes and be presented with their trophies in an Awards Ceremony. This is a great opportunity to have your photo taken with your trophy and it might even be published in an article in an online or print backgammon magazine along with the entire list of winners.

Some awards ceremonies are also accompanied by more free food and drinks and a few also have a full-course supper such as seen at the WBF’s European Backgammon Championships in Velden, Austria.



We hope this article has provided you with enough information about live backgammon tournaments and we encourage you to get out and play backgammon on a real board soon.