Backgammon Tournament Tips

One of the big benefits of playing backgammon online is that there are always backgammon tournaments available for you to enter. This can not only win you some great prizes, but also provides great practice for the real world tournaments that you play. Here are some backgammon tournament tips.

The format of most backgammon tournaments is a series of knock-out or elimination rounds, leading to quarter-finals, semi-finals, and the final. There is often a plate event which first round losers can fall into, allowing them to continue playing in the tournament, albeit for smaller prizes. This at least gives you a chance of making the most of your tournament entry even if you lose your opening match. Matches comprise a series of games where the aim is to reach a specific score before your opponent. The first player to reach the required points tally wins the match. As the doubling cube is used, progress towards these points can be pretty quick if the game value doubles a few times.

This leads to the first of our backgammon tournament tips - be very careful when using the doubling cube. In normal match play you will still have time to catch up to your opponent if you concede a large number of points in a single game due to an ill-considered double. If you're playing for money for money and have set a time limit to a match, you can catch up to the opponent within this time - in a tournament, where you're playing to reach a certain number of points, you don't have this luxury, and the entire match could hinge on a single high-scoring game. So be extra careful when doubling your opponent early on, thus yielding control of the cube.
The next tip may sound obvious, but we'll say it nonetheless - get used to playing in both directions. In a tournament you can't always control which way you play, and it can be very disconcerting to have to play in a direction that you normally don't play in - this immediately gives your opponent an advantage that is easily avoided.

One of the best backgammon tournament tips I ever received has nothing to do with backgammon itself - it's simply to have fun. Sure, you're playing to win, but to win a tournament requires skill, some good luck and a favorable draw. You're not going to win every tournament you enter, but you can enjoy every one. And if you're enjoying yourself you tend to play better anyway.

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