UKBGF – The Future

Dear Backgammon Player,

The newly elected board of the UKBGF (the “Board”)  has agreed a set of objectives that we want to achieve over the next two years. These are reproduced at the bottom of this post.

We will not be able to achieve these objectives without your support.

We have begun to work on our membership proposals and hope to ratify these at our next board meeting scheduled for February. Once ratified we will very quickly be putting these out to all potential members. This will include a very special offer for founding members that will only be available for the first three months. I do hope that you will take the opportunity to join the UKBGF at the highest level that you can afford. It is only with your membership fees that we can grow the game that we all love for the benefit of us all.

The UKBGF will once again be running the UK Open. This will take place at the Ricoh Arena in Coventry from the 4th to 6th of September 2015. This superb tournament is not to be missed and will become the most prestigious event in the UKBGF calendar. Please put the dates in your diary now.

The UKBGF has voted to run a 2015 Clubs Tournament in the style of Phil Tutching’s superb and much missed club events. We will send details out about this in due course.

The Board is also putting together a draft plan for radically increasing the number of active backgammon players in the UK. We hope to publish this in February when we will invite everybody to provide their ideas and support. The Board considers this to be one of the most important things that we are trying to achieve and we will be radical in our proposals.

Another critical area that the Board is looking at is a universal rankings system. Key to this is maintaining an accurate list of all matches played and the results. We aim to record the results of every match played at an affiliated club or tournament in the UK.

I am pleased to announce the following appointments have been made by the Board:

• Sean Williams has been appointed the Chairman of the UKBGF
• Peter Bennet has been appointed the Vice-Chairman and Treasurer of the UKBGF
• Jon Barnes has been appointed as Youth Ambassador of the UKBGF
• Eric McAlpine has been appointed as UKBGF Online Team Captain
• We will be making more appointments in due course and particularly welcome volunteers to help us in achieving our aims and objectives.

There will be much more to report following our board meeting in February. In the meantime I would love to hear your ideas and views and would particularly welcome offers of help and assistance with achieving our mission.

You can contact me at: sean@ukbgf.com.

United Kingdom Backgammon Federation Objectives 2015 – 2017

By 2017 we will:

• have 250 members
• be financially viable
• have run successful UK Opens in 2015 and 2016
• have coordinated a 2016 UKBGF UK Backgammon Tour
• have UKBGF affiliated events running across the UK
• have run successful UK Clubs Tournaments in 2015 and 2016
• have robust governance arrangements in place
• have positive partnerships with other stakeholders
• have significantly grown the game and introduced many new players to the UK backgammon scene
• have every backgammon club and league in the UK affiliated to the UKBGF
• maintain a public database of every backgammon match result from every UKBGF affiliated club and tournament
• maintain an up-to-date register of UK backgammon clubs and increase the number of these clubs in the UK
• have a world-class, regularly updated website including specialist content for members such as annotated matches
• have a world-class social media presence
• have a compelling membership package that offers excellent value-for-money to potential and existing members
• be working positively with European and World backgammon bodies to promote the game more widely

Update

The board are pleased to announce the appointment of Julia Hayward as Director of Communications. Julia will be working as a volunteer alongside the Board to manage the UKBGF’s web and social media presence and grow their readership, to provide interesting content and to promote local clubs.