German player takes down richest ever Backgammon prize
Tuesday 30th January 2007
33-year-old German Andreas Maertens is celebrating after winning the inaugural PartyGammon.com Million at the Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas at the weekend taking home the title and a cool $600,400.
Maertens beat Dane Lasse Hiorth Madsen 23-22 in a nail-biting final. Both players qualified online at www.PartyGammon.com in a field that contained no fewer than 10 former World champions.
The total prize pool exceeded the guaranteed $1 million and hit over $1.2 million. Maertens qualified online for $440, while Madsen reached the tournament from a $35 online satellite.
“We saw the huge rise of the Internet qualifier in poker and, remarkably, at the very first attempt we have seen online qualifiers compete and beat the world’s best players at backgammon. Like poker, the entrance of the online aces promises to change the game of backgammon forever” a PartyGammon.com spokesman said.
“This tournament has taken backgammon to a new level and taken a previously unknown community into the mainstream.”
Maertens, from Bielefeld, Germany, has form in both backgammon and poker, winning the German Backgammon Open in 1996 and regularly playing on the poker circuit. He was blown away by his win, “It doesn’t get much better than this. How am I going to top this? I certainly didn’t count myself as the best player here.”
PartyGammon.com is a popular member of PartyGaming Plc’s growing suite of online games that includes PartyPoker.com, PartyCasino.com, PartyBingo.com, PartyBets.com, Gamebookers.com and EmpirePoker.com.
