We can now announce the dates for three headline events in 2016 – two at their established venues and one on the move.
The UK Open will move to May 20th-22nd 2016 and return to the Ricoh Arena, Coventry following its refit as a Hilton venue.
The London Open will be August 27th-29th 2016 at the iconic Hippodrome in Leicester Square.
And it’s the turn of the north to host the UK Clubs Championship, which will be on August 14th 2016 at the Grosvenor Casino, Didsbury, Manchester. They are familiar with backgammon having held qualifiers there last year, it’s a very accessible location by road and rail with many restaurants and bars on site. We hope you will enjoy it as a venue! If there is enough demand, an event will be held on the Saturday night for players who want to stay over the night before. Please let us know if this is of interest to you!
We have tried to provide the best possible offering, considering both the members’ survey earlier in the year and the venues available to us. More details of the individual events will be available nearer the time, and stay tuned as we complete the calendar for 2016 – it’s going to be a busy backgammoning year…
Seems a shame to have two so close together; the first of these, the UK Clubs, will also doubtless suffer from some players unavailability due to holidays.
Hi Colin,
The two events (the Clubs Championship and the London Open) are very different. We certainly would not have wanted the UK Open and the London Open spaced only two weeks apart. We will no doubt lose some players for one or both events due to holidays as you point out, but we were governed to a large extent by venue availability. (Rick Janowski made a similar but more detailed comment, but this has been removed at his request.)
Having the three UKBGF events spaced at exact 4 month intervals is never likely to happen(!) – but perhaps that might be the target? I’m sure that scheduling can be a complex process, and those two events are indeed very different, but it still seems unfortunate to have them spaced only two weeks apart, and in the holiday season.