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.
The Mind Sports Organisation (MSO) is an association for promoting mind sports including Contract Bridge, Chess, Go, Mastermind, and Scrabble. Since 1997 it has annually organised in England a multi-sport competition, the Mind Sports Olympiad.
The Computer Olympiad is a multi-games event in which computer programs compete against each other. For many games, the Computer Olympiads are an opportunity to claim the "world's best computer player" title. First contested in 1989, the majority of the games are board games but other games such as bridge take place as well. In 2010, several puzzles were included in the competition.
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.
The 400 metres, or 400-meter dash, is a sprint event in track and field competitions. It has been featured in the athletics programme at the Summer Olympics since 1896 for men and since 1964 for women. On a standard outdoor running track, it is one lap around the track. Runners start in staggered positions and race in separate lanes for the entire course. In many countries, athletes previously competed in the 440-yard dash (402.336 m)—which is a quarter of a mile and was referred to as the "quarter-mile"—instead of the 400 m (437.445 yards), though this distance is now obsolete.
Gustav Hansen is a Danish professional poker player from Copenhagen, Denmark who has lived in Monaco since 2003. In his poker career, Hansen has won three World Poker Tour open titles, one WSOP bracelet and the 2007 Aussie Millions main event, and was the season one winner of the Poker Superstars Invitational Tournament. Before turning to playing poker professionally in 1997, Hansen was already a world class backgammon player and a youth tennis champion.
Hans Jack Berliner was an American chess player, and was the World Correspondence Chess Champion, from 1965–1968. He was a Grandmaster of Correspondence Chess. Berliner was a Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. He directed the construction of the chess computer HiTech, and was also a published chess writer.
The Racquet and Tennis Club, familiarly known as the R&T, is a private social and athletic club at 370 Park Avenue, between East 52nd and 53rd Streets in Midtown Manhattan, New York City.
Paul David Magriel Jr. was an American professional backgammon player, poker player, and author based in Las Vegas, Nevada.
MSN Games is a casual gaming web site, with single player, multiplayer, PC download, and social casino video games. Games are available in free online, trial, and full feature pay-to-play versions.
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.
Joseph Russell is a world class backgammon player from Memphis, Tennessee. He is a founding sponsor and the chairman of the board of directors of the U.S. Backgammon Federation. He organized and directed the first national collegiate backgammon championships on behalf of the U.S. Backgammon Federation. He was a teacher/coach for the UCLA backgammon team that won the national collegiate backgammon championship in 2011.
The Mind Sports Olympiad (MSO) is an annual international multi-disciplined competition and festival for games of mental skill and mind sports. The inaugural event was held in 1997 in London with £100,000 prize fund and was described as possibly the biggest games festival ever held.
Tim Holland was a world-champion backgammon player, highly paid teacher of the game, author of four backgammon books and successful gambler who has won more major backgammon tournaments than almost anyone in history.
Sport in Azerbaijan has ancient roots, and even now, both traditional and modern sports are still practiced. Freestyle wrestling has been traditionally regarded as Azerbaijan's national sport, however today, the most popular sports in Azerbaijan are football and chess. Other popular sports are gymnastics, judo, futsal, weightlifting, and boxing. Azerbaijan's mountainous terrain provides great opportunities for the practice of sports like skiing and rock climbing. Water sports are practiced on the Caspian Sea and in inland waters. Competitively, Azerbaijan has been very successful at chess, weightlifting, and wrestling at the international level. Azerbaijan is also an active member of the international sports community, with full membership in the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA), Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), European Athletics Association (EAA), International Olympic Committee (IOC), among many others. It has also hosted the first European Games and 2017 Islamic Solidarity Games.
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.
Etan Ilfeld is a London-based entrepreneur and the founder of Tenderbooks, Tenderpixel gallery, Watkins Mind Body Spirit Magazine, Watkins Wisdom Academy, PlayStrategy.org, co-founder of Repeater Books, a venture partner at Remagine Ventures, and the owner and managing director of Watkins Books, Watkins Media, and the Mind Sports Olympiad. Ilfeld is the inventor of Diving chess and the author of Beyond Contemporary Art, co-author of Duchamp versus Einstein and the creator of the Synchronicity Oracle. He is also the host of the Etan Ilfeld Podcast.
Dario De Toffoli is an Italian board game designer, gamebook author, and games player who founded the games company Studiogiochi and established many games events. Born in 1953 Venice, after an early career as a chemist he entered the world of games. Winner of over 60 medals at the Mind Sports Olympiad. He won the 2002 and 2012 Pentamind Competition for the best games all-rounder in the world. In 2006, he won a special award for his contribution to games which includes contribution to all aspects of games.
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.
Tim Holland 
Luigi Villa 
Walter Coratella 
Jacques Michel 
Phillip Marmorstein 
Hal Heinrich 
Peter Jes Thomsen 
David Ben-Zion 
David Nahmad 
Jerry Grandell 
Jon Kristian Røyset 
Philip Vischjager 
Jorge Pan 
Scarlett Serrero 
Masayuki Mochizuki 
Zoe Cunningham 
Vyacheslav Pryadkin 
Ali Cihangir Çetinel 
Alexandra Knupfer 