MIKE Hirst won the seventh staging of the Strawberry Hill High Stakes Backgammon Tournament in style by defeating William Mahfood, 15-14, in a thriller on Sunday to retain his title.

Hirst walked away with the $400,000 first prize, while Mahfood took home $200,000.

Mark Roberts defeated Kynan Cooke for third and pocketed $120,000, while Cooke received $55,000 for fourth.

The Backgammon tournament sponsored by ATL Autohaus through its brand Audi and Scotia Investment, saw a record 32 entrants.

Ruddy Armstrong won the Lost Souls section by defeating Mark Mahfood and collected $100,000.

Hirst, the back-to-back winner, joins Alastair Macbeath (2007 and 2009) as the only players to win the event twice.

Judith Denton, ATL Automotive’s marketing and communications manager, said the turnout was great and Audi will be there for another year at least.

“We always look at the three Audi mandates: is it sophisticated, is it sporty and is it progressive and certainly, we believe backgammon meets those three mandates,” said Denton.

“We had a great turnout for this year’s backgammon and that was very positive. Audi has traditionally been a sponsor of this particular event and we would like to be back here again,” she added.

Meanwhile, Andrew Issa, one of the organisers of the event, said this year’s event saw a record number of entrants, 32, participating.

“We had a fantastic weekend, the weather was great and everybody had a wonderful time.

“We also had a lot of newcomers making it to the final 16 and final eight, so that goes good for the tournament and looking for a great tournament next year,” he told the Observer.

Backgammon is a game for two players played on a board consisting of 24 narrow triangles called points. The triangles alternate in colour and are grouped into four quadrants of six triangles each.

The quadrants are referred to as a player’s home board and outer board, and the opponent’s home board and outer board. The home and outer boards are separated from each other by a ridge down the centre of the board called the bar.

The points are numbered for either player, starting in that player’s home board. The outermost point is the 24 point, which is also the opponent’s one point.

Each player has 15 checkers of his own colour.

The initial arrangement of checkers is: two on each player’s 24 point, five on each player’s 13 point, three on each player’s eight point, and five on each player’s six point.

Both players have their own pair of dice and a dice cup used for shaking. A doubling cube, with the numerals 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, and 64 on its faces is used to keep track of the current stake of the game.

But this sport is not so popular locally and Issa has plans for its growth in Jamaica.

“We are in process of starting an association and we are going to start having two Tuesdays every month where we will be teaching the game and getting more people involved,” he revealed.

Meanwhile, Monique Todd, Scotiabank’s vice-president of marketing, public and corporate affairs, said her organisation will continue to support the growing sport.

“Once the backgammon continues to be executed at the level that it is then, Scotia Investments will definitely come on as a sponsor; it is very important in terms of supporting another sport,” said Todd.