A personal vantage point on the gamble of the Abraham Accords: Dubai’s first international backgammon championship

With all those boxes ticked, the 2021 Oasis Championship was very much like any other top-tier global backgammon event. It featured the same old faces of the top professionals, committed hobbyists, well-heeled retirees, and the self-employed class who frequent the popular backgammon haunts from Copenhagen and Monaco to Cyprus and New York. The tournament was devoid of Emirati nationals as participants, despite the ministry’s approval, because the tournament backgammon scene is still unknown in the Gulf; however, UAE-based members of the Lebanese, Iraqi, and Syrian diasporas were joined by scores of players from the game’s traditional heartlands: the Southern Caucasus region, Turkey, Iran, Israel, and Russia.

As a frequent participant in international backgammon tournaments, I was surprised by how familiar the aesthetics of the Dubai tournament were. The tournament hotel, ballroom, boards, tournament staff, and draw sheets were interchangeable with those in Europe or even Michigan. Ditto for the participants’ attire, age, and gender demographics. Despite this feeling of “sameness,” the tournament was enhanced by some regional aesthetic flourishes. These aesthetic features are symbolically relevant as they showcase the ways in which the Middle East is becoming similar to everywhere else as it globalizes, while still retaining some local particularity.
 

 

The shared Middle Eastern aesthetics of backgammon have made it a regional cultural melting pot. For decades now, Iranians, Israelis, Lebanese, Armenians, Turks, and American Jews have all been playing backgammon together at tournaments in Cyprus, London, and Monaco. I spoke to an African-American woman who has been a stalwart on the tournament backgammon scene for 40 years. She said that to her knowledge an Iranian player has never refused to play with an Israeli player — as happens when governments are dictating cultural norms, like in the Olympics. Only once in her life, in the late 1980s, did a white South African refuse to play with her in Monaco. She believes that might have been the only time that race, religion, nationality, or political creed prevented a scheduled tournament match from transpiring.

The cultural fusion and tolerance at the Dubai tournament was in no way novel, but merely represented the formal codification of broader historical trends, just as covert governmental, person-to-person, and business dealings had occurred between Israel and its Gulf neighbors prior to the Abraham Accords. That said, humans are always afraid of what others might think, and some Levantine players made comments to me along the lines of: “Don’t mention in your article that there are Israelis at this event. I mean, personally, I don’t mind playing with Israeli players and I have a few Jewish friends, but I wouldn’t want to be listed as at an event with Israelis, as other people and the Lebanese intelligence services just won’t understand.” I see this as progress: Saying “I don’t want to play backgammon with a Jew” is no longer politically correct, even for an Iranian or Lebanese Shi’a, but the overall regional climate of surveillance still makes people feel potentially “exposed” to be seen doing anything publicly with Israelis.

Even this skittishness represents a trendline, because 20 years ago there would have been overt prejudice and hostility. On certain human-to-human levels, vast swaths of humanity are no longer differentiated by their regional cultural habits, since many now share a globalized culture. People are no longer fussed about playing backgammon with someone of a different skin tone, religion, or nationality; they do so online all the time. This is especially true for committed hobbyists — myself included — who often have more in common with their fellow amateurs of different nationalities than they do with their own countrymen.

The Dubai backgammon tournament was, therefore, a great metaphor for all the drama and humor of this process of cultural fusion, appropriation, innovation, happenstance, and renewal.

This glorious interplay was on full display in the final match of the Double Elimination Master’s segment of the championship. I had the honor of commentating it for the international audience tuning in to the live stream. As it played out, the final went to a decisive match (i.e. the second chance finalist defeated the undefeated finalist in the first match); then the decisive nine-point match went to a decisive game (called double match point); then that game might have been the longest and craziest I have ever seen (in terms of dramatic reversals, wild dice, major conceptual errors, and deft table feel); finally, despite one participant having achieved an over 97% advantage at one point, the match was decided by the very last roll of the dice. Backgammon is rife with wildly improbably outcomes, yet the final game of this Dubai tournament was truly a once in a lifetime event.

It contained all the wild swings of fortune of a Greek tragedy, combined with the throwback strategies of Middle Eastern nargile café-style cubeless Sheshbesh, yet it was played in the finals of a major tournament on the World Backgammon Federation tour by a seasoned professional tournament player pitted against a successful gentleman hobbyist. Its aesthetics encapsulated everything that is glorious about the contemporary Middle East in general and Dubai in particular. The winner of the tournament, the professional Turkish player Aykut Uzel, crafted a piece of “performance art” blending contemporary neural net-inspired backgammon logic with various throwback strategies emanating from his region. He has always been known on the circuit for his flair and showmanship.