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Katie Scalamandre became World Backgammon champion in 2000 [1] on defeating Thomas Holm of Denmark. [2] Her husband Gino is a noted backgammon player as well. [3] She was ranked 62nd on a list of "100 of the Best Backgammon Players." [4]
Backgammon is a two-player board game played with counters and dice on tables boards. It is the most widespread Western member of the large family of tables games, whose ancestors date back nearly 5,000 years to the regions of Mesopotamia and Persia. The earliest record of backgammon itself dates to 17th-century England, being descended from the 16th-century game of Irish.
Tables games are a class of board game that includes backgammon and which are played on a tables board, typically with two rows of 12 vertical markings called points. Players roll dice to determine the movement of pieces. Tables games are among the oldest known board games, and many different varieties are played throughout the world. They are called 'tables' games because the boards consist of four quadrants or 'tables'. The vast majority are race games, the tables board representing a linear race track with start and finish points, the aim being to be first to the finish line, but the characteristic features that distinguish tables games from other race games are that they are two-player games using a large number of pieces, usually fifteen per player.
Hypergammon is a variant of backgammon.
The First Internet Backgammon Server (FIBS) began operating on July 19, 1992, allowing users to play backgammon in real-time against other people. It was hosted on the Internet, and could track player performance using a modified version of the Elo rating system.
Paul David Magriel Jr. was an American professional backgammon player, poker player, and author based in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Tavli, sometimes called Greek backgammon in English, is the most popular way of playing tables games in Greece and Cyprus and is their national board game. Tavli is a compendium game for two players which comprises three different variants played in succession: Portes, Plakoto and Fevga. These are played in a cycle until one player reaches the target score - usually five or seven points.
Lexiko was a word game invented by Alfred Mosher Butts. It was a precursor of Scrabble. The name comes from the Greek lexicos, meaning "of or for words".
Kit Woolsey is an American bridge and backgammon player. He was inducted into the ACBL Hall of Fame in 2005.
The first moves of a backgammon game are the opening moves, collectively referred to as the opening, and studied in the backgammon opening theory. Backgammon opening theory is not developed in as much detail as opening theory in chess, which has been widely studied. This is because following the first move in backgammon, there are 21 dice roll outcomes on each subsequent move and many alternative plays for each outcome. Therefore, the tree of possible positions in backgammon expands much more rapidly than in chess; by the third roll there are about 25,000 different possibilities.
William Gerard (Bill) Robertie is a backgammon, chess, and poker player, author and teacher. He is one of several backgammon players to have won the World Backgammon Championship twice. Besides the World Championship wins in Monte Carlo, Robertie's major tournament victories include Boston, Las Vegas, the New York Metro Open, the Bahamas Pro-Am (1993), Istanbul (1994) and the Isle of Man Super-Jackpot (1984). In chess, Robertie won the 1970 U.S. Speed Chess Championship.
Marc Brockmann Olsen is a Danish professional football (soccer) player and Backgammon Grandmaster.
World Series of Backgammon (WSOB) is a major televised live tour. The television shows capture the match action, jeopardy and background around some of the world’s largest backgammon tournaments, and have broadcast throughout Europe on Eurosport 1 and 2 whilst being distributed worldwide by ESPN International.
Robert Eighteen-Bisang was a Canadian author and scholar who was one of the world's foremost authorities on vampire literature and mythology.
Paul Adrian Lamford is a Welsh gaming and gambling expert, author, publisher and company director. He is a three-time Welsh chess champion, 1993 and 2001 British backgammon champion, and a Grandmaster at bridge and a poker player. During the 1990s he was editor of Games & Puzzles magazine and has been editor of Chess magazine and Bridge magazine. He appeared several times on Radio 4's Puzzle Panel.
The following is a glossary of terms used in tables games, essentially games played on a Backgammon-type board. Terms in this glossary should not be game-specific, but applicable to a range of tables games.
Irish or the Irish Game was an Anglo-Scottish tables game for two players that was popular from the 16th to the mid-18th centuries before being superseded by its derivative, the "faster paced" backgammon. In its day, Irish was "esteemed among the best games at Tables." Its name notwithstanding, Irish was one of the most international forms of tables games, the equivalent of French toutes tables, Italian tavole reale and Spanish todas tablas, the latter name first being used in the 1283 El Libro de los Juegos, a translation of Arabic manuscripts by the Toledo School of Translators.
Backgammon is a 1988 computer version of the strategy board game published by Atari UK.
The World Backgammon Federation (WBGF), formerly the European Backgammon Federation (EUBGF) until 2018, is the international body established to support and promote the tables game of backgammon worldwide.
Tawula is an historical tables game once popular in Asia Minor and Egypt. It is sometimes called Turkish backgammon in English, however this is misleading as there are fundamental differences; for example, both players move in the same direction in tawula, whereas in Backgammon they move in opposing directions.
Fevga is a popular Greek tables game for two players. It is usually played as one of three different games in succession – the others being Portes and Plakoto – in social gatherings or coffee shops. When played in this way, it is known as Tavli. Very similar games, with slight variations, are Turkish Moultezim, Russian Narde and Egyptian and Lebanese Tawla 31 or Maghribiyyah.
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