Backgammon & Wax
Roll dice, hit blots, and bear off with an all-vinyl soundtrack at London’s hottest all-welcome games night.
Wasting time is my biggest fear. When faced with idle activities, I meet a surge of anxiety and dread. It seems to me a modern condition, a capitalist condition, rooted in the same mire as ‘hustle culture’, burnout, and Stephen Bartlett. In a typical week my time to relax – or, more pointedly, to do absolutely nothing at all – is at best fleeting, and more commonly non-existent. And even with time set aside deliberately in pursuit of nothing, it’s in those precious quiet hours that The Fear sprouts, fruits, and sheds its spores.
Quickly, the quiet is displaced. The body is on red alert. Stephen Bartlett’s on his second glass of wine. Something must be done. And something is done: writing, editing, perhaps; a refinement of next week’s plans, the ones already stacking the calendar; maybe it’s an extra gym session, a walk, a trip to the shop. It turns out that the time-aside-for-nothing was set aside for nothing: I’m back on with the need for productivity. Sometimes, if I’m lucky, and if it’s sufficiently cerebral or culturally significant, perhaps I can allow myself to be sated by entertainment: a book, a film, an album. What about a game?
Backgammon is one of the most ubiquitous ‘tables games’, with a history dating back millennia. It’s accessible to newcomers through a reliance on lucky dice rolls, with just enough strategy piled in to allow those with experience to prosper more often than not. On a balmy Tuesday night, among two-dozen strangers on a rooftop in central London, I was learning the rules for the first time.
The thing with games – most games, at least, and certainly tables games like backgammon – is that they are intrinsically something in pursuit of nothing. There is no grander meaning beneath their ostensible frivolity. So can I, someone who struggles so much to relax, someone who struggles to do anything in pursuit of nothing, find satisfaction in it? For backgammon specifically, beyond its longevity there is no real claim to cultural significance. Beyond the gameplay tactics and light mathematics, it’s not particularly cerebral. So what does it offer?
The event I’m at is Backgammon & Wax, created and hosted by actor, rapper, and comedian Doc Brown, and podcast host Jeremy ‘Uncle Vibes’ Newton. It started as a one-off at Soho’s Century Club, but now pops up across London, on multiple nights in any given month.
‘It’s a game about luck, but it’s luck you can influence.’ says Ian, a guy from East London, whom I met on the way in. I couldn’t find the door, embarrassingly unfamiliar with any sort of member’s club, and Ian enlightened me. He’s enlightening me further on his own introduction to the game. ‘Me and a group of friends picked it up in lockdown,’ he says, ‘and a few of us have kept it up. When I’m bored with work, and because a knee injury keeps me out of football, this is a good way to scratch the competitive itch.’
Tonight, Ian’s come on his own, but you wouldn’t know it. Other attendees – other competitors – hug and shake hands enthusiastically. There’s a woman, surname Gammon, who’s back at the event after a good performance in the tournament last time. She’s in London now but has lived across North America (her birthplace), the Philippines, and Norway. She talks me through some of the basics, and tells me to keep an eye out for Nat, whose all-night parties are legendary, and Calliope, the octogenarian expected to wipe the floor with all comers before the night is through.
There’s a sociocultural hierarchy to games and gaming. Some games are thought of as exclusively the domain of children. Others are only for the elderly. Some games are the reserve of middle-aged mums on the train and others will have you tagged as a card-carrying ‘nerd’ before you’ve even rolled a die. But such constructs are fabricated, and those in attendance tonight are proof of it.
As I grab a drink attention is drawn to a screen at the front, where Uncle Vibes is tapping a microphone. Hasan, another of the organisers, has put together an app of sorts, brand new for tonight, to manage the tournament process. ‘Unc’ runs through the groups for the opening stages. Off to the side, tonight’s deejay pulls out a stack of vinyl records (the ‘wax’ portion of proceedings).
Among the Group 5 cohort, Leela is the youngest of us. In her early twenties and only recently across to London, she hails from ‘the middle of Wales’. She sits opposite Ian, and they each begin racking up their pieces into the game’s starting position. After some opening moves, I watch as Ian rolls two threes, permitting movement of four separate pieces in his turn. A rough start for Leela. ‘Back home,’ she says, ‘I played a lot with my family’, an experience which seems common across the group. ‘When I came here and heard about this, I thought it’d be a great way to get playing again, as well as to meet new people.’
The aim in backgammon is to move your pieces around the board to your ‘home’ corner, and then ‘bear off’ to remove them one at a time. Each piece can be moved according to the number on a rolled die; the strategy comes in when considering the relative positions of your pieces versus those of your opponent. Together, you share the 24 spaces (called ‘points’) of the board. ‘Hit’ a ‘blot’ (that is, move one of your pieces to a point occupied by just one of your opponent’s pieces), and that blot is removed from the board proper to the centre bar, and may only return to an unoccupied position as far as possible from its home corner. As Ian said, it’s luck you can influence.
Leela talks through her strategy, and her chances of victory as Ian moves his pieces around the board. A favourable roll brings her back into contention and, after a couple more turns, the tide is turning in her favour. ‘I think I’ve got him, here,’ she says after another double, and Ian seems in agreement. ‘Call it?’ he asks. They shake hands, and the game’s done.
‘Sometimes they’re pretty quick,’ Leela says, ‘over in five minutes. But then other times you can get locked up and they’re twice that length, or more.’ A quick check of the schedule, and the competitors move tables. I take a moment to observe the whole group. The deejay’s in full flow, now, and beer bottles are lining up next to gin glasses on the bar.
I share one with Unc. ‘It’s about connection, really’, he says, echoing the copy on their website. ‘We have a lot of regulars, now, people who might not come every time, but come once a month or when we’re in their area.’ A community has grown out of this connection, in parts transient, new and fresh at each event, and in parts permanent, around the regulars, the locations, and the game itself.
Largely a spectator so far tonight, it’s my turn to give it a try. I set up and roll the dice. I move pieces. My opponent, a regular, talks me through optimal strategy, potential pitfalls, and how to think about the game. I roll some more. I move some more. I hit blots. I bear off. And as the black and white pucks move around the felt, The Fear is nowhere to be found.
Intro game finished, I return to Group 5 with a game about halfway through. ‘I’m not doing so well this time,’ Leela says, Calliope silently bearing off pieces opposite her. It seems like tonight might be another of those that belongs to her, the de facto matriarch among the regular attendees. As more games wrap up and we move through the tournament stages, the crowd thins. Those who leave have had their fill, if not a cash prize this time.
At the final table, it’s Ian vs Gammon, back for another chance at the money. After some shrewd play from both sides, and rolls that are either lucky or unlucky depending on the colour of your pieces, it’s Gammon who shows Ian the door. Celebrations are shared. Drinks are clinked. Goodbyes are said with warmth. Promises are made to right wrongs next time. There’s a hint at another of Nat’s legendary gatherings, but nothing set in stone. Tonight is about tonight, and nothing more. I set out to find if I could do something in pursuit of nothing. What I learned is that doing nothing, deliberately, is itself a pursuit of something. We just have to do it together. ⚭
Dan JohnsonBackgammon & Wax hosts regular events across London. Website
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