Frank Frigo

If you come to one of our tournaments, you will see the most beautiful custom made backgammon boards.

And there's something about the sound, the touch, the feel that adds to the whole experience.

I think it's, yeah, I think it's the greatest game out there.

I've heard something like 300 million people play globally in some countries where it has a long, deep history.

You see backgammon or tavla or sheshbesh, however they want to call it in particular culture, is played everywhere.

So what I see, even in the United States, is that there's multiple tiers.

There's the social component of it.

Then there's the casual tournament player.

Then you have the more serious tournament player.

There's a big spectrum.

Okay, so...

Each site has 15 checkers in a particular starting arrangement, and the game is essentially a race.

Your pieces or your stones, as they would have called it way back in the day, you're trying to get them around the board and into your home board.

There's four quadrants.

You try to get those checkers into your home board and bear them off as quickly as possible.

But along the way, there's a lot of contact and those checkers interact.

If you land on a spot where your opponent only has a single checker, we call that a blot.

That blot has to go back to the beginning.

So while it's a race, it's not that simple.

Sometimes you're trying to slow yourself down.