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Nordic Open Qualifier wins World Backgammon Tour Soren "Carlsberg" Larsen of Denmark is the winner of the Grand Finale of the 1st World Backgammon Tour (WBGT). Larsen was qualified for the €32,000 16-player closing event by winning the 2010 Nordic Open, the tournament that opened the tour. Stepan Nuniyants of the US won the 8th French Backgammon Open Masters, the event that preceded the Grand Finale. Eli Roymi of Israel and Kenji Shimodaira of Japan won the 6th European Doubles Championships.
The World Backgammon Tour was planned to finally unify international backgammon tournaments under one roof. The tour has begun last April at the Nordic Open in Copenhagen, Denmark, then crossed the world to San Francisco for the 2nd US Open continued for the Swedish Open in Stockholm, the 2nd London Open, the 16th Japan Open in Tokyo and the 8th French Backgammon Open in Enghien-les-Bains (near Paris).
The Grand Finale, then, brought together backgammon players from three different continents, winners of the former tour stops, live qualifiers in Japan, Turkey, Denmark and Peru and online qualifier (on Play65 backgammon website), with slight advantage to the Danes and Japanese players. The Denmark-Japan battle was overpowered at the Grand Finale when Dane Soren Larsen has defeated backgammon giant and last year's world champion Masayuki "Mochy" Mochizuki.
The World Backgammon Tour will not celebrate its second year apparently, as its initiators and organizers - Chiva Tafazzoli of the World Backgammon Association and Steen Grønbech of the Danish Backgammon Federation – decided to depart and to fulfill their unified backgammon tour separately. The French Backgammon Open tradition, held in the Parisian suburb of Enghien-les-Bains for the past eight years, has also ended with this event.
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