The Backgammon Tournament Story

1977

A True Story

Written 3/2011* 1,611 Words*

By Howard Yasgar

It was in late 1976, when my partner Don and I started manufacturing tractor electrical parts in Miami Florida.

One day, we received a visitor, his name was Avi.

Avi said he was the president of a company that was exporting tractor parts to Central and South America.

He said that he lived in Miami, but his company’s office was located on 5th Avenue in New York City.

As it happened, my partner and I were just planning a trip to New York the next week, so we took Avi up on his invitation to visit him at his New York office.

My partner Don and I were very curious about Avi, because we had never dealt with a customer that had offices on 5th Avenue in New York, it just wasn’t common in our type of business for a company to have such a distinguished address.

When we arrived in New York City and we saw Avi’s company office, we were very impressed.

The office was in a very large building that not only had several business offices in it, but it also had quite a few high-end apartments as well.

Avi told us you never knew what actor or actress you might meet when getting on the elevator.

After our afternoon meeting with all of Avi’s employees, he invited us to have dinner with him at his private club.

It turns out, Avi’s private club was not just a simple private club, it was also a very exclusive Backgammon Club.

At the time, my partner and I knew that Backgammon was a very popular parlor game, but other than that, neither of us knew anything about Backgammon.

However, once we were at Avi’s club, we found out that Avi was an international Backgammon player, and he had recently won $80,000.00 at the Backgammon championship in Monaco.

That evening Avi told us that we were very fortunate, because the world champion Backgammon player, who also happened to be the president of Avi’s Backgammon Club, was in town, and because he knew Avi, he had agreed to sit at our table and teach us his secret strategies on winning at Backgammon, and Avi said it was to be done at no cost to us.

After more than an hour of neither my partner nor I, not understanding one word of what the Backgammon champion was talking about, our lives were saved by the club’s chef, who announced that dinner was being served. So, we thanked the world champion Backgammon champ for the free lessons, and we all went to eat.

Several months later, I received a call from Avi. He said, he was putting together a group of people to attend the next International Backgammon championship, which was to be held at the Britannia Hotel, located on Paradise Island in Nassau the Bahamas.

As soon as my partner Don heard the word Backgammon, he immediately made up a phony excuse as to why he couldn’t go, but I accepted the invitation, I thought it would be a real adventure to go to the Bahamas with Avi.

Avi told me that he had also invited two of his friends to go along with us, both were Backgammon players and Backgammon enthusiasts.

I felt that Avi must have assumed I was also going to become an enthusiastic Backgammon player as well.

On the appointed day we all met at Miami International airport for the short flight to Nassau

in the Bahamas.

Once we were on the plane, Avi introduced me to his two friends. It appeared that they, like Avi traveled all over the world to play at high stakes Backgammon games. And I think they assumed I did the same.

Once we landed in Nassau, we all took a cab over the Paradise Island bridge to the Britannia hotel.

When we got there, I found that the entire hotel Britania lobby was loaded with newly arriving guests.

You could see by their manner of dress and jewelry, that these were not poor people that were arriving.

Also, it appeared they all of them seemed to know each other, and as I listened to parts of their conversations, I realized all these people were serious Backgammon enthusiasts who were flying in from all over the world.

I watched closely and listened to them as they all shook hands and hugged each other.

Avi said we should all meet at the Britannia Hotel restaurant at exactly 6:PM so as not to be late for the grand opening ceremony that would be starting at exactly at 7: PM.

So now I had plenty of time to walk around the Britannia Hotel, and that’s when I realized how immense the place was. I found that underneath the hotel lobby, there was a large convention center.

The official opening ceremony started promptly at 7: PM.

In the underground convention center, a giant room had been set up with lots of tables, with each table set to accommodate around ten people.

Our table was the exception, because there were only the four of us sitting there.

All around the room, there were several hundred metal folding chairs set up, most with people already sitting in them. Also, there were at least another hundred or so people that were just standing and talking to each other.

I asked Avi who all these people were, and he said, the people sitting at the tables like us, were going to bid on buying Backgammon teams.

He said that the people sitting and standing all around the room were mostly bookies and money people that had flown in from around the world to handle the millions of dollars in bets that would be placed the next day.

When the auction started, Avi said, if a table bid on a team and the team won, they would share in any winnings.

That sounded reasonable to me, until I saw them auction the first team for $15,000.00, and Avi was also bidding on them.

Had Avi won, I personally would have been obligated to put up my share which was $3,500.00 which I didn’t have.

Eventually, at the very end of the bidding, Avi did win a team, and it was for only $1200.00, so my share, thank God was only $300.00.

Avi said unfortunately our team was considered the worst of all the teams that were playing, but he said that when playing Backgammon, you never knew what could happen.

Avi said the official legal prize for winning the Backgammon tournament was only $3000.00, but many millions of dollars would be spent on side bets, and that was the reason for all the bookies being there.

The next day I started watching all the official Backgammon matches that were going on.

I noticed that each game had official and non-official score keepers, as well as many enthusiasts and gamblers that were watching very closely.

I observed that many of the people sitting there could memorize and analyze each Backgammon move and then compare it to a Backgammon move that had been made by someone years ago in a faraway place.

I tried to figure out what the hell was going on, but it was all the way over my head.

To look like I knew what I was doing, I started following Avi around. That way, if anyone asked me a Backgammon question, Avi would answer, and I would nod in agreement.

Fortunately, Avi knew just about everyone there and I think he introduced me to most of them.

I think they all assumed I was a friend of Avi’s and a big Backgammon bettor as well.

That afternoon at lunch, Avi had me sit next to an elderly millionaire book publisher, he was from New York City.

Avi then asked him how it felt to lose $39,000.00 that morning?

He said, “I don’t like it a bit, but it won’t change my lifestyle”, and to this day, I will never forget what he had said.

By the end of the day, Avi announced that, believe it or not, our team won some money, and our share of the winnings was to be $1300.00 which covered all our cost of buying them, thank goodness.

It was several years later when Avi again called me to tell me there was a Backgammon championship to be held at the Turnberry Iles hotel in Miami, and he was already entered in it.

I asked Avi what ever happened to the elderly millionaire publisher I had met in Nassau, the guy that didn’t mind losing $39,000.00 betting on a Backgammon game.

Avi said, the publisher thought the rent they were charging him to park his Mercedes in his building in New York was too high, so he moved the car and parked in a cheaper place that was a few blocks away, and the next winter he died of Pneumonia because of walking so far to his car in the cold.

My wife and I did attend the Backgammon tournament at Turnberry Iles in Miami, but we parked close by, it was just so we could escape, in case Avi wanted me to bid on a Backgammon team.