Does the study and analysis of backgammon destroy the fun of playing the game? If you ask Nakamura Junko, 2008 Japan Open winner and the first female backgammon champion in the land of the rising sun, the answer is yes. "I’m sorry to say", she said in an exclusive interview with Play65 blog, "but as I study the game and become stronger, I have less "simple fun" feeling."

Nakamura Junko, who have been playing backgammon competitively for about 20 years, said that she never thought of backgammon as a masculine game, although in her homeland, exclusive backgammon tournaments for women (as common in chess) are "very well organized". Her experience in the international backgammon circuit (she played the Nevada State Backgammon Championship, the Nordic Open, and two Monte Carlo World Backgammon Championships) that women backgammon players "are usually assertive and blithe" and seeing how internet helps spreading backgammon to young men and women, she believes there is a good future ahead.

Women in Backgammon

 Nakamura Junko is one of the not too many women backgammon pros. Among her most famous female colleagues are the American Carol Joy Cole, the director of the Flint Area Backgammon Club in Michigan and the co-champion of the New York Doubles in the 2009 New York Metropolitan Backgammon Open; Dane Pia Jeppesen, the champion of the Backgammon & Poker on Board IX; Bulgarian Maria Krancheva, who has reached the final four at the 2007 WSOB UK Masters but disappeared from the backgammon map in the last couple of years, and probably many others. If I forgot to mention someone, please do not hesitate to add her name and short list of achievements in the comments.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 26th, 2009 at 8:32 am and is filed under Backgammon Players, Backgammon Tournaments, Playing Backgammon. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.