I have searched the net, and made several posts to the USBGF FB Page regarding the current CT tourney, as well as some posts here, about prize pool info.

Is Prize Pool info considered "not for public consumption" in the Backgammon world ? Or is it simply not as big a part of the game as it is in Poker ?

I am not referring to upcoming tournaments where attendance is unknown, but instead tournaments that are either in progress, or already completed.

I am having a difficult time learning about prize pools in this gaming space, who some of the top all time winners are......what some recent tournaments have yielded for prize money etc......etc.....etc...

I am very new to BG, so please forgive my ignorance.

I know in the Poker World, the game is highly focused around money and tourney results.

Is this not true in Backgammon ?

Edit: I would also ask the question......which format is more popular in Backgammon today. Tournament play......or one on one matches for cash ?

It will be a percentage of the entries after rebuys. If you asked what the breakdown was you could probably get an answer that might satisfy you. Most people aren't going to know the amount till they get paid out or are in the money. These are rarely money added tourneys. Pot seems to be around 85% or 90% of the entry.

The tournaments generally post the breakdowns when they are taking entries.

Didn't we already explain this to you in the other thread you created?

Not really

I am not referring to upcoming tournaments where attendance is unknown, but instead tournaments that are either in progress, or already completed.

Yes Top Secret! Not even the CIA knows it!

But seriously, why ask these questions?
It is not hard to know how big the prizepool is:
(# of entrants) * (entry fee) = (prizepool).

The first rule of fight club is...

Because I am curious about the world of Backgammon.

Obv. one could gather up the # of entries, * entry fee = Prize Pool for a bunch of tournaments, but seems odd......or at least.....unlike the Poker Industry.....to not publish results of tournaments.

I was curious if there was a reason why, and still don't have an answer.

Do people who play Backgammon, prefer that info not be publicized ? That would be an answer.......but I don't know.......

Because nobody except the players in the money care and generally it's not all that much money if you paid for a hotel and air flight you would be very lucky to break even if you couldn't find enough money games with fish to make up the difference.

There are no advertising revenues, no sponsors, the same few hundred players have been playing each other for 20 years.

There is no global ratings system like chess nor is there a title. Monaco claims the name world championship but it is only a name.

The game is not entertainment to anyone but other players....

There are pockets of money in backgammon if you are a hustler and a grinder but even the most of the Giants do not make a full time living playing backgammon and most have full time professions. There are no million dollar pots.

Is that enough context for why the question doesn't matter?

The question matters to those who might not know the answer.

You had the questions answered twice

If your so busy an extra post in this busy Backgammon forum bothers you that much, feel free to ignore.

Troll.

Thank goodness there is an ignore list in this forum.

Your now on mine.

Feel free to reciprocate.

My guess is the prize funds are not publicized for tax purposes. No need to advertise to the authorities potential significant untaxed winnings.

Let me clear this up,

There are the hi profile Giants and tourney players, and yes some have been playing each other since the 70's trading $5 bills so to speak. Nice people having a good time.


Then.........


There are HUGE money game's played for NOSE BLEED stakes, some by SUPRISE, notable poker players. Ironic inst it?? The big $$ BG action isn't advertised or publicized but it exists. Does 8 figure and 9 figure $ get anyone's attention, it's amazing what happens on mega-yachts in Monaco, or mansions in Beverly Hills(where I live).

I'm a fish and have played other fish for almost 6 figure $ a session. And I'm just getting started. I like to lose, pm me if anyone wants to play.

Best

Fatboy

See ya at the pool room

The wolves dress as sheep dogs for these kinds of fish. That said somewhere a pair of oil sheiks are flipping coins for oil wells and laughing. Gambling as a vice is alive and well.

The Sport of Backgammon has crappy cash prizes and no sponsorship. Local pool tourneys can at least get a couple of cue manufactures and the local pool table stores to kick in some swag. You are playing for a cup and hoping to cover your travel expenses. Much of the problem is that for most people the game it is not accessible and on the television sort of boring. Matches of a reasonable length can not be televised without advertisers willing to buy spots. Even short matches have been tried but weren't able to grab people on those channels that have tried it.

Sponsorship and advertising dollars is almost entirely about how many eyes are watching the event. The ABT live streams to about 30 or 40 people simultaneously.

So that leaves teaching, side games/side bets/sport betting/poker (which all assume you can either find people who you have a significant edge over OR that you can play the house and take a rake).

Teaching rates are amazingly low. You can be tutored by Giants for about the same price as an intermediate business analyst's hourly billable rate not terrible but not generally a full time income either.

What we need is more along the lines of Tom Cruise and Scientology. High Profile players doing incredibly stupid things in front of live audiences. A reality television show of the LA Chouette crew on the same night as mob wives kind of thing. Then tournament players might be able to sneak in through the back door.

Online backgammon for money has been a dismal failure. Personally I think this is more about the size of the rakes than the rampant cheating. No one wins except the house. It's bad business. It's really not that hard to analyze play for abuse with a bot. The difference between human play and bot play is fairly dramatic for all but a .000001% of the poplulation. Mochy might have to play some live games for them.

The **********s at tournaments and the work done by the USBGF crew has raised visibility significantly over the last several years in North America but the numbers don't seem to be increasing on most online play sites. If anything the opposite.

Asia Pacific seems like the land of opportunity comparitively the Japanese have taken to studying backgammon in a modern fashion and the tradition of gambling is deep. The Turks have arrived and are playing modern tournament backgammon and there is a bit of a resurgence in the middle east.

BG in north america could use a more inclusive rating and playing structure. The challenge here is at its heart backgammon is an extremely selfish game. It is about finding a weaker player and taking his money. It's an easy game to play until you play it with your own money. Many of the best gamblers simply shifted to poker when backgammon died 30 years ago. Some keep a toe in the water others have simply gone where the fish are more plentiful (poker).

Being the best player and being the best gambler are not the same thing but they are in the same general vicinity. Either way it is necessary to have enough money in the "sport" to carry a couple of hundred full time players for there to be a "pro tour" for amateurs to work towards. Today that infrastructure doesn't exist. As much as I respect the USBGF, BG is being treated much more like a seniors bridge club than a Professional Sport association in NA.

So prize pools in BG. The local tourney director takes a 15% rake for organizing it and likely does reasonably well for the week at a major tournament. The players mostly play for the glory . A couple pay for their airfare and one or two clean up in the chouettes and side games that they really came for.

Paul Magriel used to write a weekly article for the New York Times. All of these past articles can be found at the Backgammon Galore website.

You might be interested in this article, from 1978:
http://www.bkgm.com/articles/Magriel...column035.html

It mentions a recent amateur backgammon tournament in Las Vegas drawing 652 players. The grand prize was $180,000.00. That much money in today's dollars would be more than $650,000, according to a couple of inflation calculator websites.

It sure would be nice to see that type of prize money again some day. Alas, I don't think it will happen.

Imagine paying travel and lodging for say 30 tournaments per year.

Say you average 1500$ travel plus 500$ food and accommodation per event.

So you need 60k to annually to attend.
Add 1k per tournament for entries and requests. We are at 90k of after tax dollars.

Are you going to play chouettes?

Figure you need another hundred points cash in your pocket to not be when in the box. (what you are comfortable playing a point is on you but let's assume you budget for $50's then you had best have a $5k float.

Cash Flow well now shut happens. Assuming you are playing well and winning your fair share... If there are 64 entries and everyone has an equal chance to be in the money you should then you should win 1/64 * 90% of the prize money... If your average entry fee is 300$ you should lose the rake $30 per event.

So your gambling edge needs be about $100k over 20 tournaments where the average open purse is about 19k.

With most major tournaments having several player who will average under a 3 PR tournament play as an income source seems fairly irrational.

The amount of cash that would need to be spread around to support a base of professional tournament players would be pretty hefty.

I'm sure plenty of serious BG players have done the math and not given up their day jobs.

I'm not sure what your point is. If it's to indicate that it would tough to make a living playing backgammon, even with these types of prize pools, then of course I agree with you. For us non-professionals, however, who play for fun and who may only chooses to enter four or five or six large tournaments a year, it would still be fun to see these large turnouts and large prizes.

There's a tournament in Vegas later this month and I doubt seriously the prize fund for the amateur section will be anywhere near $650,000. I'd be surprised if it's more than a few thousand. (Speaking of Vegas, note that travel and food and accommodations for an event won't be anywhere near $2,000 if you live within driving distance of the event.)

A subsequent article by Magriel mentions a record-breaking turnout of 700 players(!) for a Vegas tourney the following year, in 1978:

http://www.bkgm.com/articles/Magriel...column066.html

This amateur prize amount that year, however, is listed as "only" $130,000. Amazing.

Backgammon sure was big in the '70s.

I personally belive that backgammon deserves to be exactly like RobertFontaine described.

Anytime you talk about skill in bg as it is you say a true thing: on the long run we KNOW that bg is a skill game, but not as you may think. To be more precise let's divide bg players into cathegories such that a player of cat X beats the players in cat X-1 at least 75% on the long run.

Then you may find at best 5-7 cathegories in backgammon, because the game itself has a huge luck part and has a truly high variance. To clarify this let's take this example. A strong expert say a 1800 rating on GG enters a BG club and wants to play a quick game against an intermediate player with 1550 rating on GG. Then it's lol that the underdog still has a 33% winning chanches in a 5 point match, and you have to be like a 1900 rating to beat that intermediate at least 75% of the times.

It's lol that if a player has 1550 rating and another has 1700 a 5 point match outcome is basically a coinflip.

In chess you may find at least 20 real categories, and if you find yourself in a situation like the above you will see that the intermediate player wins around 0% games against a 1800 elo player.

We don't talk about go (baduk) because we want to be fair and gentle with backgammon.

So you may say that if you make longer matches the strongest player almost always wins. yes, maybe, but as Fontaine said if both players play at PR<6 the outcome of a match is more or less random and you can't put in significant edge to beat the rake and say 3 PR points.

Watch the organization of a BG tournament and watch how may times the finalists of the monte carlo main event are the same... almost never. Watch who is the world champion 2015, and tell me that it's among the strongest players in the world. Tell me why the semi finalist aren't always the backgammon giants.

Backgammon needs true heroes, player that wins the majority of the tournaments they play, player that has a mochy style. No random World Champions.

If you won't reduce variance in bg, then bg deserves to remain a niche game with crappy prizes and no real full time pro players.

Anytime people don't want to discuss and maybe introduce the less-variance game novariancegammon, (which is backgammon with the following rule: during each game of a match, for a maximum of 5 times, you may choose to re-roll your own roll or make the opponent re roll his roll to avoid serious jokers, and obv the same can do the opponent etc..) and anytime you want luck in the game to keep it fun (?) you deserve all bad things can happens.

And being a selfish game with no one wanting to teach beginners in local club, wanting to built a serious world backgammon federation, unanimously recognized with efficent ruling and elo rating and categories you deserve that.

I personally lost interest in BG after some years of relatively intense study and decent results because I understood that nobody respect cathegories and all people think (as in poker) they are the best in the world and you can't always smash their poor play because when you are about to punish them, they may hit a joker and say "stick bg theory in your ass!!".

I moved to go, and after three months of study I am about 10k on KGS, not that bad, and no more luck and variance to worry about. And finally some respect to my rank, that it's not that much high for the moment, but enough to smash the first beginner idiot that claim to be a good go player.

Fllecha:

You have forgotten one thing. Many people like backgammon expressly because of the variance. It adds flavor and reduces predictably, which some people find boring. Just yesterday I lost two 9-point matches on safe harbor to a cube maniac. On analysis he made multiple -0.5 and worse doubles and takes, my ER was much lower, but he won both matches. And it was fun.

It sounds like you don't like variance, to say the least. So you mostly stopped playing gammon; an entirely reasonable decision. From your last two paragraphs, it sounds like you are more interested in status than in playing the game.

Also your figures for chess are off. Difference of 200 rating points scores 75%. The rating range is less than 3000 points so the total "Fllecha levels" is about 13-14, not 20 or more.

Thanks, your're right not 20, it's 13-14, big difference.

Yes, basically I like more status than "having fun". But only because I like merit and logic outcomes than irrational results based on something outside my true skills. I want to lose only because I'm inexperienced, because I have flaws in my TP, because I made a blunder, because I made a mistake, because my opponent has more knowledge, because my opponent has worked harder than me. But not because bad luck or jokers or because he rolled better than me. That's inacceptable rationally, if you quietly accept it you are a gambler.


In fact many people/players still thinks that BG is basically a luck game, and the fact itself that I - a strong intermediate or a weak advanced player at best - can beat in the short run a bot that plays near perfection speak for itself. I remember that during a week of training where I played around 9PR against XG2 (which performed near 0 PR) at max level in cash game I was about 50 points ahead thanks to a streak of embarassing favorable dice and gammons and backgammons and it's sick, really sick.

Try to make a similar result playing against shredderchess or Rybka (chess programs) at max level. Just try, tell me the outcome. Try to win ONE game, just ONE game.

I simply say that if backgammon wants to get out from his niche it has to be changed in the direction of variance reduction.

Simple as it stands. More and more skill than what is needed, and less crappy players that won important tournament, more serious players that wins tournament like chess GM, less irrational result and hence more credibility.

If you like varance, and you like won game tourned around by jokers, you like when mochy is eliminated by a 8 PR player in a 15point game, feel free obv.
If people like that too, keep playing as it is, the selfish way possibile

But if bg is then considered serious as "snake and ladders" or "crap" by the vast majority of people and hence at best good for seniors club to spend time.. well I quit and move to more stimulating games.

I dont like to study for days and hours, putting in efforts and thoughts to reach say 8 PR and maybe get beat by a beginner in near 30% of my games saying "ok, you won but remember BG is a skill game, in the long run i'll beat you...." while he is laughing and saying "Oh..yes yes... true story"


And don't get upset if the scenario is like the one described by Fontaine. Don't feel sad if you connect on GG and you find 5 players (the same every night) that play with you if you are a weak intermediate. Don't feel embarassed if there are no basically full time pro players because they mostly play poker, like Robertie. Don't get angry if you reach a tournament and you know that you basically play to breakeven with expenses and you have to look for fish that play 50$ a point to get some profit. Don't be shocked if you are outside denmark, greece and USA and you cant find no BG clubs outside big big big city. And if you find one you collect 4-5 presence sometimes and some night with players that basically throw dice and roll cubes at 16 and dont know what they are doing.

Good luck, I play to learn, to improve and to get respect for that because one has to see the difference ANYTIME AND ANYWHERE between playing for fun and playing more seriously.

I like any game I have better than a 50% edge in, sure fish win, that's cool. Keeps the action going.

The trick is how to work with what ya have, some places there's next to no BG so why bother? Like pool these days where I live. I ain't playing because there's so little action ain't worth the effort.

If there are good BG games(action) playing then makes sense, if u enjoy it.

It's a circumstantial thing, tournament BG that's social. It's fun not +EV

I would say the niche you want gammon to move to is already occupied. Chess, go, and bridge are all there already.

Honestly it sounds like the main thing you want from a game is for other people to say: oh yes how good Fllecha is! And when that does not happen you get angry and maybe rant about it on forums.

Yes, I think for you that is best. Good luck. Maybe I will see you on KGS sometime.

actually the most popular game by far - poker has also by far the most variance, so I think you have it completely backwards

This.

Too much skill, or not enough luck, is exactly what drives gamblers away from a game. The unskilled run out of money too quickly. There is a reason that age old casino games such as blackjack, roulette, craps, etc, favor the house only slightly. Gamblers need to feel they have a chance. This is why backgammon does not have the big following: it is not that there is too much luck, but that there is too little!

Even for poker, it is the advent of the tournament format, with its greater luck factor, that brought the boom in popularity. In the (now old fashioned) limit style games, bad players went broke too fast for the game to sustain a following.

And even among nongamblers, most people prefer a healthy luck factor because developing skill is too difficult, or too much work. The reality is that people who prefer/enjoy skill-heavy games are much fewer.

Well put. I actually think backgammon has almost an ideal balance of skill and luck, and it also has a tournament format that allows the balance to be adjusted. If you want to run a tournament with more skill, just lengthen the matches. If you want less skill, shorten the matches.

Filecha's problem is simply that he's playing the wrong game. If your main goal is always to beat players who are clearly worse than you, then you want an (essentially) all-skill game. Plenty of such games already exist: chess, go, checkers, contract bridge, etc. You don't need to destroy backgammon in order to create yet another.