The Online Charity Challenge is an annual event for online players, open to everyone – not just UKBGF members! Enjoy playing top class opponents and raising funds for a truly deserving cause. The winner will not only get a unique trophy, they will have the right to nominate a UK charity for the 2021 event. Tournament director and sponsor: Julia Hayward
Current Standings
The main tournament draw will be available here once we get started.
Past winners
This is our fifth Charity Challenge, and we’re delighted that we’ve got bigger each time!
- 2019: Gaz Owen
- 2018: Steve Waller
- 2017: Simon Morecroft
- 2016: Gaz Owen
Registration
Registration is open to anyone. Games will be played on Backgammon Studio Heroes, so you are advised to ensure you have an account and can run the software before registering. Draws will be sent out by email including contact details for other players, and the draw will also be available to view – a link will be published here once we get started. To register, you will need to contact Julia by email, who will send you the details of how to pay.
Register now and support Helping Homeless Believe
Entry: A £10 donation gets you five lives (see below). There will be trophies for at least the top 3 finishers.
Side pool: We have an optional £10 side pool, paying 70%/30% to the two who progress furthest in the tournament.
Please make sure you include your name and Heroes nickname with your donation so that we know who you are!
Make even more for charity!
If we get a hundred players in the tournament then our sponsor will add a hundred pounds into the charity pot! Tell your friends and get them to sign up too!
STOP PRESS: we’ve had another anonymous sponsor who will add a further £1 per player in to the charity pot, regardless of how many sign up!
Format and Schedule
This year, following the success of the multiple-elimination UKBGF Online Championship, we’ll be adopting a similar format. Each round involves an 11 point match. The first two rounds will start with random draws on November 9th 2020 and you’ll have five weeks to play those matches. Lose a match, lose a life! After that, we pair people up with opponents who have similar numbers of lives left; everyone still with lives intact gets another opponent every two weeks until we are left with just the one champion.
Charities
The 2019 Charity Challenge will benefit Helping Homeless Believe (nominated by Gaz Owen, 2020 winner)
We see men and women who have experienced trauma within their early years. Many have grown up within the care system and lost contact with friends & family. Everyday these people are fighting to survive. Helping Homeless Believe provide emergency response to anyone spotted rough sleeping within Bristol & South Gloucestershire. We will offer them a survival pack of basic essentials to keep them alive along with signposting to services that may be of help.
“There is no exercise better for the heart than reaching down and lifting people up”. – John Holmes
Each survival pack costs £55.00. These consist of an army style sleeping bag that keep people warm in minus temperatures, a foil emergency blanket, a set of thermals, gloves, hat, socks and a sixty litre rucksack.
Past years:
- In 2019 and 2018 we supported the Alzheimers’ Society
- In 2017 we supported Bristol MIND
- In 2016 we supported Cancer Research and Ashanti Development.
Get your favourite cause up here! Do you have a charity that means something special to you and you’d like to help? The winner of the 2020 Challenge will earn the right to nominate a charity for 2021, and the tournament sponsor may nominate another. Charities must be registered with the Charities Commission in the UK and be non-party-political/non-religious to be eligible for nomination.
Additional rules
Games will be played on Backgammon Studio Heroes, except by mutual agreement, with pip counts ON. You are expected to be reasonably understanding should disconnections occur mid-game. Tournament matches will be ratings-optional – that is, you are free to play rated (and we expect most will) but a player who wishes to play unrated takes precedence. You can find our generic Online Tournament Rules here.
Deadlines: will be strictly enforced unless you contact julia@ukbgf.com in good time to make an arrangement to defer a game. If I haven’t heard from either player by the cutoff time, then you both lose a life.
Online matches will count towards the UKBGF Online Rankings. Finalists will be required to inform the Tournament Director of the agreed date, time and location of the final game in good time so that prospective spectators can be informed. The final game must allow spectators to watch. We will be happy to announce other games in the later stages should players wish to have spectators present. Forfeits will only be awarded as a last resort, at the TD’s sole discretion and generally only if evidence of one of the following can be provided:
- lack of response to emails,
- failure to appear on one occasion without good reason, or two separate occasions for any reason,
- deliberate in-game disconnection or other inappropriate behaviour
Gift Aid – sadly we are not able to reclaim Gift Aid on any donations, as under UK tax regulations they are strictly defined as “payment for services”.
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