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Tournaments -- Attendance and More (Probably Much too Long)

Posted By: Strato
Date: Monday, 4 June 2012, at 4:00 p.m.

In Response To: Tournaments -- Attendance and More (Probably Much too Long) (Bob koca)

Hi Bob,

Why is it an anti-incentive to the majority of players? How do you know that? Why not just say why it is not an incentive to you?

As for international players, yes you are right, so like I said you adjust my suggestions and maybe you make it that they have to attend at least two events.

There are many foreign players that have a lot of money and a lot of time on their hands and will go anywhere to play backgammon for a weekend.

There were dozens of players doing this at the beginning of the last decade, many of these considered themselves to be “professional backgammon players” (I can provide names) - they came to the USA from England, the Caribbean, Greece, Mexico, Costa Rica, Brazil, France, and so on, though mostly to Vegas and New York (and Texas – I think it was in the late 1990s). If they know they’ll be 100 players participating at an entry fee of 500 to 1,000 bones, they’ll come to take a shot at it.

The internationals I refer to were people that were retired or no longer needed to work because they had a small fortune. So even if you only get 5 or 10 per tournament it increases attendance, the prize money and the interest in general. But you have to give them a reason to want to come. I met many of these players in tournaments I reported from in Paris, the Czech Republic, Monte Carlo, Cannes, Nice, Velden and St. Maarten.

There are thousands of backgammon players in every major city in the USA and Canada, but maybe only 1 in a 100, or maybe it’s 1 in 500 or 1,000, will play backgammon for money. Problem is that in certain parts of North America you might not want to advertise too loudly in the local media that you’re having a tournament because the legitimacy of such is a “gray area”. So you are limited to doing it in the backgammon community, which does work.

I have promoted and advertised many backgammon tournaments on my Backgammon Magazine, GammonLife.com, and in the past have given ABT tournament directors free ad banners or if I did charge something it was nominal, to cover my work for designing them an ad banner and the uploading of the banner to all the pages. I don’t get requests for that much anymore and when I have offered it to some, they simply don’t have a budget for it or think they’ll be okay with the “traditional” way of getting the word out – problem with that is you might be only reaching people in the community that already know about the event.

I understand that weekend ABT events have time restrictions and the trip for most is pure backgammon play because they have to get back to work on Monday or Tuesday, but I think that in some cases, and to some people, that if there was something else to do, whether personally or as a group, before, during, or after the tournament, a meal, an activity (golf), a show, a sight-seeing tour, this would attract some players that once went to tournaments or want such activities when they go to a tournament. Some TDs already do this, and it is more work for the TD to research or even organize such extras but if he or she does the research, they should advertise it in the marketing of their tournaments.

Finally, why does Britain have over 700 distinct types of cheese, France and Greece over 400? That because just like with everything, everywhere in the world, people don’t agree on what’s best - totally normal. You’ll get, not enough equity, I don’t like the hotel, I don’t like the format, and so on and so on. If most could put all that aside (and I know most can’t or just don’t want to) and just said, I am going to the tournament because I love backgammon and want to support backgammon in my country, then the world would be perfect, which it is not and which it will never be.

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