John O'Hagan - USA

John O'Hagan was born in Springfield, Illinois in 1955 and currently lives in State of Indiana where he works as sales agent for a Valparaiso cable television company. He learned to play backgammon at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana and has been hooked on the game ever since. He is a superb backgammon player and an all-around super nice guy.

At the Monte Carlo Backgammon World Championship

In 2005, at the Monte Carlo World Championship in Monaco, O'Hagan made it to the final of the 238-player Championship Main where he was defeated by fellow American Dennis Carlston. O'Hagan came as close as you can get to being a World Champion. In the 25-point match, Dennis Carlston was leading 24-22 but O'Hagan fought back like a wolverine winning two single games in a row to bring the score to DMP at 24-24, and in the final game, when it looked like O'Hagan had the upper hand, Carlston rolled a beautiful 6-6 to run home and win the race.

That final was filmed as part of High Stakes Backgammon, a made-for-TV series filmed by 8mm Productions and its Producer/Director Andy Bell, who is currently the Producer of the World Series of Backgammon (WSOB). Some of the episodes from High Stakes Backgammon can be view on YouTube.com.

In Monte Carlo, the following year at the 31st World Championship, John won the TrueMoneyGames Tournament and earned good money as a Semi-Finalist in the main Super Jackpot, in which 64 players paid $2,000 each to participate.In the 2008, O'Hagan showed his expertise again by making it to the final of the New York Metropolitan Open in Jersey City, but was defeated by Mike Senkiewicz, current BG Giant #18. John also reached the final of the Super Jackpot at the 32nd Michigan Summer Backgammon Championships in 2007, which he did won, beating Nack Ballard, the then #1 Backgammon Giant.