The Squad

We hosted our second Squad Backgammon Tournament at the swanky RAC Club in Pall Mall, on 25th November. This is a major fundraising event for us with an amazing total of £7,484.95!

We were here thanks to our fabulous trustee, Sidi Shatku, who is an RAC club member and backgammon enthusiast.

After a delicious brunch, guests were given an overview of the charity by our Chair Nick Morris and shown a video filmed by our Juniors Club.

There then followed an auction with some fabulous lots such as a week's rental of a luxury villa in the South of France, educational consultancy, a year's gym membership, meals, shoe vouchers - and backgammon lessons from experts.

We were lucky enough to be joined by two members of our Vets Club accompanied by club leader, Ivana Orsinova, and volunteer Eleni Skaliotis. The members were able to give our guests a real flavour of what The Squad’s all about. They chatted happily to many of the tournament players as they went round selling them raffle tickets. And what a raffle! We had some fantastic prizes which had been generously donated by Squad trustees, volunteers, members and parents and other well wishers. Not only were the odds great but so were the prizes: vouchers, bottles of wine, tickets to the London Transport Museum, Experience Days vouchers and much more.

We rounded off the day by congratulating our Main winner George Jacobs, who beat Rod Hanreck in the final. The consolation tournament was won by Peter Bennet, who beat Jackie Stevens in that separate final.

We are very grateful to Peter and to Sidi for doing the main organising of the tournament for us; as well as to Richard Hartigan for directing the tournament on the day with his trusty spreadsheet!

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The UK Backgammon Federation also covered this tournament on their Facebook page.