Broadcaster Rick Edwards: I love backgammon even if I lost 20 times at the Great Wall of China
Backgammon is really all about human connection
by: Rick Edwards
22 Jan 2026
Image: BBC / Naomi Vance
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A few years ago my best friend Lenny and I went out to Copenhagen to play in a big backgammon tournament. It was open to anyone and had various levels of competition. We entered the intermediate tier and did… OK. It’s the taking part, right?
The real highlight for us though was not the participation, it was joining the small throng of people surveying the elite players. Grandmasters, people who earn actual money from their command of the stones (‘stones’ is just gammonese for checkers). It was like watching a totally different game.
After a match finished we overheard a conversation between two of these top guys where one of them was bemoaning the terrible run of luck he’d been on recently. He finished by muttering “But you know what they say, if you don’t like it – go and play chess”.
He spat the final word out with such glorious contempt. I’ve never really played chess but as I understand it, if you play someone who is better than you, they will beat you 10 times out of 10. That’s not the case with backgammon because of its delicate balance between skill and luck. If I play 10 games against a backgammon grandmaster, I – let’s be honest, a deeply average player – still might win a game.
And that is the beauty of it. Anyone can play anyone, enjoy it, maybe even pick up a point or two. As one of the top players, Marc Olsen, says of winning the world championships, “If you are a decent or advanced player, you have a shot.”
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Backgammon has a very long but disputed history. It’s first antecedent likely emerged about 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia, but there are easily six or seven nations that would vehemently claim it as their own. Whatever its ultimate provenance, its long evolution means that any wrinkles have been ironed out – and the game is now pretty much perfect.
It has a deceptive simplicity because the rules are so straightforward. You can learn the basics in half an hour. Beneath the surface the hidden complexities mean that mastery remains elusive. And yet you’ll seldom meet a backgammon player who doesn’t think they’re terrific. It’s possible to genuinely believe this because chance masks poor play. When you win, it’s down to skill, not good luck; when you lose, put it down to bad luck, not ham-fistedness.
My personal love affair with backgammon began when I was 21, which I guess makes me a late starter. Part of me definitely wishes I’d found the game earlier. I was introduced to it by a family that I was tutoring for (maths and science, since you ask) and became hooked almost immediately. Not least because I couldn’t figure out why I was losing the whole time (I now know it’s because, like most novices, all of my moves were painfully short-termist).
Edwards at a Backgammon and Wax night in London
I then discovered that my mate from uni – the aforementioned Lenny – also played, and we have battled each other consistently now for over 20 years. We know each other’s games intimately well so our contests are tight.
We rarely go anywhere without a travel set. In fact the scene of my worst-ever run of luck was while we were travelling around China in the summer of 2013. Did we play on the Great Wall? You bet we did.
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One morning we went to see the terracotta army – an amazing site, literally thousands of clay sculptures depicting the armies of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China – just outside the city of Xi’an. Having had our fill of relics, we found a picnic table and settled down for a session. At this point I was significantly up in our trip-long tally.
In the blazing midday sunshine I think I lost 20 games on the bounce. A crowd of Chinese tourists gathered to watch and take photos of these two mad Westerners. Especially the idiot who got quite serious sunburn on one side of his face (that was me – it really was a bad couple of hours).
Much as I adore playing Lenny, the only path to improvement is finding fresh opponents. You can always learn from the way someone else plays. It gives you new perspectives and strategies.
Obviously I know that backgammon is at its heart mathematical, a game of probability and risk, and as such there are now neural networks that will allow you to calculate the ‘right move’ in any scenario – but that stuff leaves me a bit cold. I like going on feel. Even if that feel is often catastrophically wrong.
Whenever I’ve tried playing online, I’ve found the experience quite flat. Which is why I was so excited when I stumbled across Backgammon and Wax, a new regular night put on by the rapper/actor Ben Bailey Smith AKA Doc Brown (a man who owns over 20 backgammon sets!) and the DJ/promoter Jeremy Newton AKA Uncle Vibes. Two people who make me wish I had an AKA.
Jeremy has been obsessed since uni: “We would play all night and the scores would be 100-98 or something crazy like that.” Ben was taught by a friend and describes it as “inclusive and manageable – love at first sight”. Now these guys take over great venues and run competitions, usually with 32 players, cash prizes, and live DJ sets. It’s magic, and it’s growing.”
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As Ben says, “The whole thing was born of a desire for actual human connection. I underestimated how many more people out there wanted the exact same thing!” And if you don’t like it – go and play chess.
Rick Edwards is a TV presenter, journalist and host ofFighting Talk on BBC Radio 5 Live
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