International Backgammon Federation

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Who helped make backgammon fashionable? In the early 1960s, Alexis Obolensky set out to make backgammon more popular — not by changing the game itself, but by changing the way people saw it. He promoted backgammon in fashionable social circles and helped develop organized tournament play. One important milestone came in 1964, when Obolensky and Bindy Banker were behind the idea for an international backgammon tournament on Grand Bahama. The event attracted members of the international jet set and received coverage in Sports Illustrated. By 1973, TIME described a clear three-step approach behind this push: build social prestige, develop a tournament circuit, and expand the audience. By the early 1970s, backgammon had become a fashionable social phenomenon in the United States, increasingly visible at parties, clubs and in celebrity circles. Obolensky did not invent backgammon. But he played an important role in its 20th-century revival and popularization — which is why he is sometimes referred to as the “Father of Modern Backgammon.” A traditional game, reintroduced to a new generation.

BACKGAMMON BEYOND THE BOARD Backgammon has lived far beyond the playing board. Across centuries, backgammon — together with earlier games from the tables family — found its way into paintings, illuminated manuscripts, decorative arts, furniture and even public sculpture. From medieval manuscript scenes and Renaissance paintings to Arts and Crafts design and a modern monument in Yerevan, these works reveal how deeply the game became woven into social life and visual culture. Sometimes it appears as a quiet contest between two players. Sometimes as part of friendship, conversation and everyday life. And sometimes the game itself becomes a subject worthy of being preserved in art. Together, these ten examples tell a wider story: Backgammon was not only played. It was painted, carved, recorded and preserved. Swipe through ten remarkable examples of how backgammon and its predecessors became part of cultural history. Which one surprised you most? #Backgammon #IBF #InternationalBackgammonFederation #BackgammonHistory #CulturalHeritage #ArtHistory #BoardGames #BackgammonCulture

We continue sharing more details about the tournament in Tajikistan 🇹🇯 We are publishing the conventions for each discipline — check the information and get ready to compete. Registration will open very soon! Stay tuned and follow the updates — more important information about the Asian Grand Prix is coming soon 🎲

😜😖🤗😣🥵🥰😤😣 October 4 — Registration day 12:00-20:00 registration for all disciplines October 5, October 6, October 8, October 9 — Late registration days

We continue sharing more details about the tournament in Tajikistan 🇹🇯 We are publishing the conventions for each discipline — check the information and get ready to compete. Registration will open very soon! Stay tuned and follow the updates — more important information about the Asian Grand Prix is coming soon 🎲

THE INVISIBLE POSITION Strong players see more than checkers. Every backgammon position contains information that is not immediately visible. The visible arrangement of the checkers is only the surface. Beneath it lie threats, timing, connectivity, flexibility and the potential value of future rolls. Before choosing a play, look beyond the current move: Threats — What can your opponent do immediately, and what attacking threats are developing? Timing — How long can each side maintain its structure before being forced to break an important point or change the game plan? Connectivity — Do your checkers support one another, or are some of them isolated and difficult to use effectively? Flexibility — Can the position handle a wide range of future rolls constructively, or does it depend on one specific roll? Future rolls — Which rolls improve or preserve the position, and how costly are the rolls that do neither? A position is not just the current location of the checkers. It is also a network of possibilities, risks and relationships that will shape the next phase of the game. The board shows the checkers. Strong players read the relationships between them. Which of these elements do you evaluate first?

Five cities. One game. Different places. Different cultures. One shared passion — backgammon. Yerevan. Dubai. Tashkent. Tbilisi. And now, Dushanbe is next. The journey continues. Asian Grand Prix 2026 Dushanbe, Tajikistan October 5-11

SAME PIP COUNT. DIFFERENT POSITION. Pip count is an important part of evaluating a backgammon position. It tells us how much total distance the checkers still need to travel before they can all be borne off. But the same pip count can appear in positions that look — and play — very differently. That is why the number itself is only part of the picture. When comparing positions, it can also be useful to consider: Checker distribution — how are the checkers spread across the board? Contact — can opposing checkers still interact, including through hits? Positional structure — are there anchors, primes, made points, or vulnerable blots? Flexibility — how easily can the position adapt to different future rolls? In a pure race, pip count can be especially informative. In positions where contact remains, other positional and tactical features may also play an important role. The same distance to go can come with very different positional features. Pip count gives us one useful measure. The rest of the position helps put that number in context. #Backgammon #PipCount #BackgammonStrategy #IBF #InternationalBackgammonFederation #BackgammonEducation #CheckerPlayу

Guaranteed prize fund and number of players 🤩 The total guaranteed prize fund for the Asian Grand Prix in Tajikistan is 💵500,000 (after tax deduction). Please note that a 15% tax will be withheld from the prize money in accordance with Tajikistan’s legislation. We look forward to seeing you at our tournaments 🎲

👨‍⚖️ IBF is conducting a survey to form referee teams for future tournaments If you speak English or several foreign languages and would like to join the IBF refereeing team. 📥 This is your chance to apply, please complete the form by September 21: https://forms.yandex.ru/u/6a87e22f49af472be3dff260 *This survey is not an application for a specific tournament. It is being conducted to create a database of international referees who may be available to travel to IBF tournaments.

BACKGAMMON IN CINEMA Backgammon has appeared on screen in very different ways — sometimes as a quiet domestic detail, sometimes as part of a character’s world, and sometimes as a genuine dramatic device. In The 400 Blows (1959), the game appears in an intimate everyday moment, giving the scene a brief sense of normality. In Modesty Blaise (1966), backgammon becomes part of the film’s stylish, playful visual language. In The World Is Big and Salvation Lurks Around the Corner (2008), it carries much more weight: the game connects generations and becomes tied to memory, identity and the relationship between chance and choice. And in Octopussy (1983), the board turns into a psychological battlefield — a contest of nerve, deception and control. Four films. Four very different uses of the same game. Backgammon on screen is rarely just background. It can reveal character, shape atmosphere and even carry part of the story itself. Which of these scenes do you remember? #Backgammon #IBF #InternationalBackgammonFederation #BackgammonCulture #Cinema #FilmHistory #BackgammonInCinema

Dushanbe Tour for Asian Grand Prix participants 🇹🇯 📆 October, 4 🕙 10:00 📍 Meeting point: 10:00 Hyatt Regency Dushanbe, 26/1 Ismoili Somoni Avenue ❗️Registration will be opened soon Don’t miss the opportunity to discover Tajikistan together with IBF!

From official registration to a growing international stage — in less than two years. The International Backgammon Federation was officially registered on 19 July 2024. Since then, IBF has steadily expanded its international activity, bringing together players and national communities across a growing series of events. The first major milestones followed quickly: Armenian Grand Prix 2025 — Yerevan 16 countries • 150+ participants • $50K added prize fund Arabian Grand Prix 2025 — Dubai 36 countries • 200+ participants • $70K added prize fund In December 2025, the IBF Congress in Dubai marked another important stage in the Federation’s development with the election of Umar Kremlev as President of the IBF. In 2026, the international calendar continued to grow. The Asian Grand Prix brought together 500+ participants representing 52 countries, while the World Longgammon Championship & Georgian Grand Prix gathered 500+ players from 60 countries across 12 disciplines. The World Longgammon Championship became a particularly important milestone — the first championship of its kind within the IBF program and another step toward bringing longgammon onto a truly international competitive stage. Today, IBF continues to expand its global presence, develop international competition and build a broader sporting system around backgammon. A short history — and only the beginning.

A match can end — but the learning doesn’t have to. One of the most useful things you can do after playing is return to the decisions that were difficult, unclear or costly. Modern analysis tools can help turn those moments into focused study. eXtreme Gammon and GNU Backgammon can be used to review checker play and cube decisions, compare alternatives and return to positions that deserve another look. For more difficult decisions, rollouts can provide a deeper comparison of the available options. But analysis is only part of the process. Backgammon Studio can help turn specific types of positions into structured practice, allowing you to focus on the areas of the game that give you the most trouble. The goal is not simply to memorize which move an engine prefers. It is to understand why one decision is stronger than another — and to recognize the same type of situation when it appears again. Play. Analyze. Revisit. Investigate. Practice. A difficult position from your last match can become the starting point of your next training session. #Backgammon #IBF #BackgammonTraining #BackgammonAnalysis #InternationalBackgammonFederation

WHY DOES IBF USE A BAFFLE BOX? A baffle box is a simple piece of equipment, but it plays an important role in live backgammon. At IBF tournaments, the use of a baffle box is mandatory. Both dice are dropped together from the hand directly into the box. They pass through the internal baffles and then come to rest on the playing surface. The purpose is not simply convenience. The baffle box helps make every roll more consistent and transparent, reduces the possibility of dice manipulation and supports fair play for both players. For this reason, baffle boxes are part of the standard equipment used at IBF tournaments. One simple device. One clear principle: every roll should be fair. #Backgammon #IBF #InternationalBackgammonFederation #BackgammonTournament #BackgammonRules #FairPlay #BackgammonEducation

LEARNING FROM SCRATCH: HOW TD-GAMMON LEARNED BACKGAMMON In the early 1990s, IBM researcher Gerald Tesauro developed TD-Gammon — a neural network that learned to play backgammon through self-play. Rather than being given a complete expert strategy, the program repeatedly played against itself and improved through temporal-difference learning, or TD learning. In its basic version, TD-Gammon received only a raw representation of the board position, with no built-in expert strategy. Starting from that limited information, it learned from experience and reached a fairly strong intermediate level of play, outperforming conventional commercial backgammon programs of the time. Tesauro also observed that some of the network’s hidden units appeared to discover useful features of the game on their own. When hand-crafted backgammon features were later added to the input representation, the program improved further. By 1993, TD-Gammon was estimated to be playing at a strong master level, extremely close to the world’s best human players. Later versions became even stronger. In Tesauro’s 2002 paper, he reported that TD-Gammon’s positional judgment without lookahead rivalled that of human experts, while adding shallow lookahead allowed the program to surpass even the strongest human players. What began with a raw board description and self-play became one of the most remarkable demonstrations of how neural networks can learn complex strategy from experience. Gerald Tesauro, IBM Research — 1992, 1993, 2002. #Backgammon #IBF #InternationalBackgammonFederation #ArtificialIntelligence #MachineLearning

Which board do you like better?

🌟 ASIAN GRAND PRIX 2026 VENUE Asian Grand Prix 2026 will take place at one of Dushanbe’s most impressive venues, the Kohi Navruz Cultural and Entertainment Complex. 📅 October 5–11, 2026 📍 Kohi Navruz Cultural and Entertainment Complex 14/2 Ismoili Somoni Avenue, Dushanbe, Tajikistan Located in the heart of the capital, Kohi Navruz is one of Tajikistan’s landmark attractions. The five-story complex covers approximately 40,000 m² and showcases traditional national architecture. Its halls feature wood and stone carving, mosaics, painted ceilings, mirrorwork, and the craftsmanship of Tajik masters. The venue regularly hosts major international and state events. In 2021, Kohi Navruz hosted a meeting of the Council of Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, and the complex was included in the “8 Wonders of the SCO” project. Very soon, players from around the world will meet here. A new country, a new venue, and a new chapter in IBF tournament history.

One of these statements is wrong — can you spot it? Three are correct. One is not. Swipe to check the answer and test your backgammon basics.