Backgammon tournaments for beginners - Part 2

In Part 1 of this article we established and explained the importance of tournament play for a beginner backgammon player. In this second part we’ll evaluate the various tournament options and look at their value both to your skill and earnings progression. Finally, we lay down a tournament roadmap for a beginner backgammon player that has helped many beginners quickly to become good players.

Note - if you are not yet familiar with the various backgammon tournament types go have a look at our Backgammon tournaments article.

Plenty of tournaments to choose from

So you’ve got those grand size tournaments where the winner gets thousands of dollars. You’ve also got smaller, but highly popular few thousand dollar or whatever currency tournaments accompanied by slightly smaller, but still lucrative tournaments where the prize pool sits anywhere between $500-$2,500. Then you have got all kinds of Knockout and Swings Sit & Go tournaments, satellites, regular and freeroll tournaments, rating limitations, etc.. It can be confusing, no doubt about it.

The easy way to start would be just to take a head dive and grab the first attractive tournament. You could get lucky and play a great tournament, that’s one of the beauties of backgammon: every now and then even the novice player can beat the champion. But nobody is lucky for long and because clever players as we are we obviously want to get the best value for the buck. So we keep our long-term goal in mind and evaluate the available options before getting started on the road that lies ahead.

Tournament lobby

Play65 offers currently the most extensive selection of backgammon tournament options and therefore is a great place for anyone to start his backgammon career. The tournament lobby in Play65 is most of the time pretty busy, so let’s have a look what we’ve got there.

Sit and Go tournaments

Sit and Go tournaments are apart from the “real” tournaments. It’s not that Sit and Go’s aren’t tournaments, but apparently Play65 wanted to make a distinction between the the quick Sit and Go tournaments and the regular daily and other periodical tournaments. And it’s not a bad thing at all, because Sit and Go’s are further subdivided into Knockout and Swing tournaments. Look at picture 1.

Knockout tournaments work just as any regular tournament. You either advance to the next round or you are out. In a Swing tournament you play along as long as you have chips to play with. The winner is the one winning all the chips. Both have own lobbys for low rating and high rating players as well as a lobby for everyone interested (regular).

Knockout Sit and Go’s are often short tournaments, normally with a match length of either 1 or 3 points. Swings can last longer because of the nature of the game, but both are very good ways of getting started. Low buy-ins, quick games but still multiple players provide a good and solid environment for learning about backgammon tournaments.

Regular tournaments

Next to Sit and Go tournaments you’ll find the regular tournament lobby. This lobby has large variety of tournaments to choose from.

Regular daily tournaments are the backbone of any online backgammon site and you’ll find plenty with different buy-ins and prize pools.

• Stars freeroll tournaments are tournaments you can join for free - sort of a bonus from the backgammon site for playing at their site. Good prizes and definitely attractive tournaments.
• Satellite tournaments can be very interesting at best and they attract players with high numbers of all rating levels. You can often see players with very low ratings trying their luck in satellites, for many satellites are the only way to big prize money events.
• Special tournaments are really what backgammon is all about. That’s when hundreds of players get together to alongside with the rich and famous, the winners’ names are displayed all over the internet and where all players eventually want to be. But before you should seriously even consider participating in one of those Special tournaments there is some work to be done.

The roadmap

You want to start playing in tournaments that teach you well but don’t cost you too much. Once you have learned the basics you can move on to some more serious tournaments to gain experience, practice the various backgammon strategies, see how you react on increasing pressure when the stakes get higher and learn from it all. And when the time comes you will be joining big prize money tournaments and even fighting for the victory.

Below is the outline how you should be advancing from one tournament type to another. Naturally you don’t have to follow this outline as if your life would depend on it. Go and play one-off live matches every now and then and try what it’s like to play against players with rating much higher than yours. See what it’s like in freeroll tournaments when you’ve got a chance. As long as you keep focus on the types of tournaments you should be playing all is good - that’s when you learn most.

1. Sit and Go, 3-point matches, rating limit <1600

Start off with Knockout Sit and Go’s, preferrably with 3-point matches. 1-point matches are very short to learn much from them in the long run. Play mainly against players with a rating under 1600, if you play against too skilled players in the beginning you’ll be pretty much butchered and you go away with little gained experience.

Swing tournaments are also just as good as Knockouts, sometimes even better because you are likely to play more matches in one tournament. The downside with Swings is that they are predominantly more expensive than regular Knockout Sit and Go’s. Try sticking to tournaments with max. $5.00 buy-ins both in Swings and Knockouts; $1.25 - $2.30 buy-ins should be enough in the beginning.

2. Sit and Go, 3-point matches, no rating limit

Once you have accumulated enough experience move on playing Sit and Go’s against all players. Now you’ll be getting tougher opponents and increased challenge but also more educative matches. There is no need for you to go play in higher buy-in mathces quite yet.

3. Regular daily tournaments

Unless you are a real backgammon talent your rating will be gradually dropping from the very beginning of your tournament career. You could drop below 1400 but don’t let it bother you. Once you start noticing a slight continuous increase in your rating, you can start making a gradual transition from Sit and Go’s to daily tournaments.

Prepare to spend considerable amount of time on this level, this is where you’ll be laying the foundations for those big money tournaments in the future. Again, play first in rating limited tournaments so that you get used to the new settings and once feel confident enough start playing against tougher opponents in daily tournaments without rating limit.

Note: By this time you might’ve lost a considerable amount of money, but don’t let it disturb you. Keep the long-term goal in mind. If you have read Part 1 of this article you know that although you are becoming a better player your earnings will not reflect that at first. That’s because you’ll be gradually playing against tougher opponents and it is a conscious decision to pay for the increasingly tougher matches. But you are well on your way of turning loss into profit.

4. Combine tournament types

Once you have accumulated a good amount of experience and you can take a good control of a backgammon match your rating will be somewhere around 1700. Note that the ratings are relative. While someone might’ve been playing one-off live matches against low-rating players and got his rating to 1700, your 1700 rating is in fact a much stronger 1700 rating. Nevertheless, once your rating reaches around 1700 it’s time to start combining the various tournament types.

You should be playing Sit and Go’s again, evaluating yourself against others in bigger tournaments such as bigger Satellite tournaments and possibly attending a larger prize pool tournament. Sure, you’ll probably see many lower rating players in those bigger prize tournaments but most of them are just wasting their money and time because they don’t have a real chance of even advancing to a round where they win back their buy-ins. So it’s not quite yet the time to attend all bigger tournaments. However, now it IS the time to go for slightly higher buy-in tournaments. Look at tournaments with buy-ins anything between $5.00 and $20.00. There will normally be more experienced players against you and the stakes are also higher, ensuring that your development as a playe will not slow down.

5. From loss to profit

If all has gone according to plan soon you should see more money starting to flow into your account than you deposit. This is also the time when you should be careful to stay focused and not to get too confident. If you enroll to a big money tournament, concentrate more than normally. Chances are that you will advance to later rounds and that you’ll be playing against real professionals of levels you haven’t yet met before. Be too confident and you can find yourself knocked out prematurely before you won back your buy-in fee.

From this point on it makes little difference what tournaments you play. There is only one rule you need to obey: don’t make the mistake of regularily playing against weaker opponents. That’s like shooting yourself in your own leg - it will degrade your own game in the long run and you’ll be taking steps backwards. Both as a player and financially.

Conclusion

Backgammon is a great game in the sense that even a novice player can beat the champion every now and then. But when you play for money you want to ensure that you will be winning in the long-term. The best way to accomplish that is like in everything: by following a clear practice programme. In this case it means gradual progression towards more challenging online backgammon tournaments. The tournament progression roadmap we have outlined in this article is a good and a working one for beginner backgammon players to follow.