What Do Emperors, Iranian Children And Tina Turner Have In Common?
Mortimer Collins wrote in 1874, “There are two classes of [player]: Those who are content to yield to circumstances, and who play whist; and those who aim to control circumstances, and who play chess.” What Mort did not acknowledge is a third class of player, one that enjoys applying their skills to the whims of circumstance. That class plays backgammon.
Backgammon is one of the oldest surviving games in the world. Unlike other games, it is an almost 50-50 blend of chance and skill. Likely it replaced the Royal Game of Ur as the common game of the civilized world and has been played in a recognizable form for nearly five millennia. Tristan Donovan, author of It’s All A Game, writes, “it is said that in Iran every home must have three possessions: a copy of the [Qu’ran], the collected works of the great Persian poet Hafez, and a backgammon set.” Called “nard” in the Middle East, “children are born with the game under their arm,” according to Iranian-born Chiva Tafazzoli, president of the World Backgammon Association.
In western countries, backgammon took more time to gain traction. Europe was first introduced to the game after the Moorish conquest of the Iberian Peninsula. When the caliphate broke apart and was driven out, backgammon went with them and did not return until crusaders, having learned to play whiling away time between battles, brought it home. European gaming was largely tied to gambling, meaning when card games became the preferred method of playing for stakes, backgammon fell out of favor with hustlers. “Circumstance controllers” had chess to entertain them, and backgammon was relegated to the “B-side” of checkerboards, a cheap way to add value to a board game by including a second. By the 1930s, American humorist Robert Benchley dubbed it “the spinach of indoor sports,” only played when recovering from illness or when young relations were in town.
Benchley was writing when backgammon was enjoying a resurgence due to the invention of the doubling cube, a die with 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 and 64 on its faces. When a player felt the game was going their way, they could pick up the cube and place it with the 2 face up. The other player now could pay the original bet and concede or double the bet and keep playing. If the original bet is $1 and player one sets the cube down and player two accepts, the bet is now $2. But if the game begins to go in player two’s favor, they can turn the cube to 4 and if player one accepts, the original bet becomes quadrupled, $4, and so on. The players could keep doubling after 64, infinitely.
The cube failed to give the game staying power. The Great Depression drove gambling underground, and it’s easier to smuggle decks of cards than game boards. Backgammon wouldn’t become popular again until the 1970s, after exiled Russian prince Alexis Obolensky pushed the game among his wealthy cohorts.
Once Obolensky held a backgammon tournament, it took off amongst the glitterati. Movie stars, business leaders, athletes, musicians, royalty and anyone with stakes to burn came to throw the dice. After the 1973 oil crisis, Middle Eastern oil magnates came to the tables with the attitude, “inshallah,” “if God wills it,” and doubling was always accepted. The money flowed like a tsunami, and backgammon became a symbol of high-society hedonism.
Backgammon tournaments were hot until professional bridge players brought their mathematical chops to the tables. Since the bridge players were making a living, losing mattered and wasn’t just part of a rocket-ride for people who can afford to toss money like confetti. Fast-paced drama was replaced by cold, tedious calculation. Lewis Deyong, a real estate millionaire who took over the tournaments, recalled a bridge player whose moves were so long in decision he would pull out crossword puzzles on her turn.
But no jetsetter can compare to the stakes Plutarch wrote about.
Emperor Artaxerxes II faced a challenge from his brother, Cyrus the Younger, backed by their mother Parysatis. Cyrus was eventually killed in battle, and his head and right hand were cut off as proof. This made domestic relations between Parysatis and Artaxerxes understandably tense, particularly because the matriarch was busy finding ways to force Artaxerxes to execute the people responsible for Cyrus’s death. She had whittled them down to one, the royal eunuch Masabates, who had dismembered her son.
Masabates was clever, keeping himself away from anything that could be an excuse for his execution. But Parysatis didn’t get name-checked by one of the greatest historians of the ancient world for nothing. She challenged Artaxerxes to a game of backgammon, as they played frequently, for 1,000 gold darics. Throwing the game, she pretended to be devastated and offered to play again for a eunuch. When she won handily, she left with the unfortunate Masabates, who she had flayed alive and impaled on three spikes with his skin hung in front of him so he could watch it in his final moments.
As backgammon teaches us, it doesn’t pay to interfere in family squabbles.
Tina Turner on the cover of Backgammon Magazine, 1979