Player International Launches GammonLife.com

Player International Ltd, the London-based founder and organizer of the first million-dollar backgammon tournament, today announced the launch of their new backgammon e-zine and community website at GammonLife.com.

A free resource for players, the editorial staff will be headed by backgammon guru Michael Strato Liberopoulos, a Canadian journalist and player of more than 35 years, who has been actively involved in the online/offline backgammon scene for the past decade.

Backgammon has grown in popularity since the advent of the Internet and is now being heralded as “the next big game”. Dozens of new play sites have popped up in recent years and the population of online players is growing at a solid pace.

GammonLife.com will support the increasing needs of players wishing to excel in Backgammon with quality content written by professional players – contributors include former World Champions Frank Frigo, Paul Magriel and Nack Ballard, voted #1 internationally for the last six years and François Tardieu, three-time Champion of Europe. In addition to basic information – i.e. Rules, History and a Glossary of Backgammon jargon - GammonLife will publish original articles on strategy by well-known columnists Walter Trice and Mary Hickey, a new series for Beginners by Paul Money, and tournament reports by Gregg Cattanach and other correspondents.

Stephen Pearson, Managing Director of Player International and Publisher of GammonLife, states that many casual Poker players are looking for a new challenge:

“Backgammon is an exciting game of skill complimented by the luck of the dice and the strategy of the doubling cube. In Poker, a player needs to beat up to nine opponents on a table and must ponder hidden information, i.e. cards in the hole, whereas Backgammon is a one-on-one game with no hidden elements; for every decision, all the information is visible on the board.”

Backgammon is the oldest game in the world, evidenced by relics unearthed in archaeological digs at the Burnt City in Iran in 2004 - the game existed some 5,200 years ago. Previously excavations in southern Iraq in 1926 show the game was also played 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia (the Cradle of Civilization) by the Sumerian culture, inventors of the wheel, and first written language and math system.

The first million-dollar Backgammon tournament is scheduled to be held at the famous Atlantis Resort in The Bahamas. The 128-player event will see 64 players buying in direct at $10,000, and similar to Poker, 64 others winning all-expense paid trips through online qualifiers.