Backgammon Tournament Play

Home, online, regional, and international backgammon tournaments

Backgammon tournaments are usually played to a higher match score and sometimes to a time limit. By playing to seven points or 17 points instead of a single winner-take-all game or best of three, superior players are more likely to come out ahead. And that's the biggest appeal of backgammon tournaments (apart from the money, of course): they attract the world's very best backgammon players.

Home tournaments

Home backgammon tournaments are usually too small to require consolation play. If your tournament is small, it could feature a round robin (each player plays every player once) and playoff. If it's larger, then head-to-head elimination leading to quarter- and semi-finals is probably best.

Set your match point limit based on the time available. Backgammon is generally a fast game, so playing a 9-point match or even more should be feasible. Award one point for a single game, two points for a gammon, and three points for a backgammon. Use of the doubling cube is optional, though we recommend enforcing the Crawford rule: when a player is one point short of winning, no doubling is allowed in the next game. If you use a time clock, allow a player 15 seconds to move before deducting from his or her allotted time.