Where in the USA and in the world is backgammon popular? I live in Northern California and would be interested in learning if there were people who I could play against around me. Please let me know!

In Greece it is like a national sport. You will always see people playing in every coffee house.

Backgammon is most popular in the middle-east and around it ; the area from Greece to Afghanistan.

Regarding the US in general I don't know, but for your place http://www.bgbythebay.com/bgbb/
is probably a good starting point.

Have a look at http://www.chicagopoint.com/ for clubs and tournaments.

I live in the Netherlands, in the city Groningen. In our country a variation called triktrak is often played, but its a lot more luck than backgammon. As far as i know backgammon is played in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and cafe Atlantis in Groningen.

plm is right. Backgammon by the Bay is the best place to get introduced in the San Francisco Bay Area. The last time I was at one of the many tournements it sponsors, threre was a $2/point chouette that ran for hours.

http://www.bgbythebay.com/

Very popular in Romania .

Backgammon is big in the Arab world and Turkey.

In my office over lunch hour.

As a lot of people have said Backgammon is popular in the Middle East and near by parts of Asia. But you will find quite a few variations from country to country as to how the game is played.

In Europe you find clubs in the larger cities but it is rarely seen in Universities. One of the poker channel started showing backgammon in the UK - but the popularity never seemed to grow greatly.

There are several internet sites that offer play for money - but you might be best going on to one of the free play sites and asking there first. The problem with the sites is that there tend to be a lot of hustling which is not found with poker. I know one person who is 6 figure € but it takes up a lot of his time.

It can be difficult to learn to use the cube properly and I would prefer tournaments to cash games as I know many players who quickly play for stakes higher than they should.

I am sure that there are regular tournaments in US and probably low stakes fun games too. In the UK where I live there are fewer backgammon clubs due to the gaming laws. The only place I ever see it played in the UK is at the Mind Sports Olympiad or between friends but I know there is still a tournament scene.

The best source for tournament listing is Carol Cole's. Go to www.flintbg.com. She covers both American and world-wide listings, and updates regularly.

http://www.backgammoninlondon.com/

I have played online at Play65.com and I see a lot of Turks playing there.

NYC there are clubs.Eric Sidel/ Gus Hanson all got there starts playing here

That's true, though the doubling cube is pretty much unheard of down here.