I remember learning to play backgammon when I was in high school back in the 1970s. My buddy Bosco and I had been playing checkers and when he flipped the board over onto its back we saw that it had lots of pointy triangles down the sides. “What the heck is backgammon anyway?” one of us asked, and we proceeded to read the brief instruction sheet. About the only thing we absorbed from the instructions was the part about “the one who gets all his checkers off the board first, wins the game.” Of course at that point, checkers went flying across the room in every direction! I think Bosco may have “won” that first game.

After that first quick game, we learned a bit more about the game.  “Hey, it says here something about using dice!”  That aspect did seem to make the game a bit more interesting, along with the concept of taking “turns” playing the game.  No more free-for-all, the game was starting to make more sense.  We learned to play, and we invited our friends to play too.  By the late 1970s, I was off to college and it seemed like just about everyone was playing backgammon!  Clubs were popping up everywhere and backgammon strategy books were HOT.  I remember reading “Backgammon for Blood” and thinking I really had the edge on everyone.

That was how I got started playing backgammon. Who would have guessed that a couple of geeky high school kids would be responsible for starting such a worldwide craze?  Well, at least that is how WE saw it.  But then something happened in the 1980s.  People gradually stopped playing so much.  I had a career blossoming and played less and less.  Oh sure, I would play with my Dad and brothers when I went home to visit at Thanksgiving, but for the most part, the backgammon game was retired, snoozing in the back of the closed like some Rip Van Winkle.  The 1990s flew by like a blur, virtually gammon-free.

Then, one day out of the blue, Bosco sent me an email “invitation” to play a game of backgammon online.  I thought it was kind of a joke, but I Accepted, and soon we were playing at “It’s Your Turn”, a turn based board games website.  It was kinda fun, even if it did seem slow, playing one turn and then waiting — an hour, a day, a week or maybe longer — until the game came back to me to play another turn.  After awhile, it actually became fairly addicting.  I had dozens of games “in play” at any given time, with players from around the world!  We played in ladders and tournaments, gaining fame and notoriety in the virtual world of online backgammon.

A couple years later, it was again Bosco who sent me an invitation to play at a new site, “Daily Gammon”.  This one had a really cool twist, where it predicts your opponent’s next move and allows you to enter another move — sometimes several moves — before sending the game back to the opponent to move, allowing you to still play at your own pace but to also get a bit more “momentum” going.  That turned out to be a really nice way to play, so we kept playing there.

After playing online for several years, I did have a desire to play some live in-person games, but I didn’t know anyone who really understood the game and liked to play, so I started looking for local places to meet other players.  Through the Meet-Up network, I found a small group that was playing once a month at a local coffee shop, so I gave them a visit.  I was really impressed!  They had about six to eight players that showed up monthly, and we had a great time.  But as the months progressed, some people moved out of the area, another had a baby, others lost interest, and gradually the group was disbanded.

A couple of years went by and then I got a note from Paul, one of the players from the previous Meet-Up group, saying he was interested in getting back together to play.  Well that made two of us.  We met at the old coffee shop, only to discover that it was out of business.  So we drove a couple of blocks down the street to the next coffee shop, Kean Coffee, and we have been meeting there monthly ever since.  We get an occasional visitor or two to join us now and then, but we would really like to grow the group and get more games, or even small tournaments, going.

Last week, one of our occasional visitors asked about how we are promoting our group.   We have static listings on some of the game related websites, with contact info.  And from time to time, I place ads on Craig’s List inviting people to join us.  As we chatted a bit, I realized, “Hey, I could put together a blog/website for the group!”  I have been playing around with HTML lately and learning a bit about how to put together a website.  I already had a web hosting service provider, and had been playing around with the blogging software as a hobby, so it was pretty quick and painless to put together a site.  And that is how I became the Webmaster and OCBackgammon.org was born.

There were a few key events along the way that got me here.  If Bosco hadn’t looked under the checker board, that whole 1970s backgammon boom thing might never have happened!  As we inaugurate this new website, I look forward to the potential it has to foster a new Orange County Backgammon community that will grow and bring people closer together for years to come.

By the way, even though we live on opposite sides of the continent, Bosco and I continue to play backgammon nearly every day.  So to that I say, “Thanks Bosco, I probably wouldn’t be here if not for you!”