

Kit Woolsey - USA

Kit Woolsey is a Backgammon guru and author of various excellent books on the strategy of the game. Kit has been on the Giants of Backgammon list since its inception in 1993, where he has since been ranked as high as #5 and never lower than #13.
Backgammon Writing and Editing
Woolsey was also the editor of GammOnLine, an online backgammon magazine where he plays an online match against his readers, who vote daily on the moves they make against Kit and learn from his comments on both theirs and his own plays. Plus the magazine has a very active backgammon forum, which is frequented by several other top players, a few of which have written articles for GammOnLine.
One of Woolsey's books, Backgammon: Master Versus Amateur is an actual transcript of the first online match Kit played against the GammonOnLine readers back in 1999. The book includes the daily votes and all of Kit's comments in that first 11-point match. To this date, some 30 other 11-point matches have been played between Kit and GOL readers.
Woolsey & Bridge
Woolsey is also a world class Bridge player who contributed to the bidding theory of that game with such improvements as the two-way, check-back convention and a defense system against opposing no-trump openings. Kit has also written books on Bridge and in 1977 won the Best Article on a System or Convention Award of the International Bridge Press Association.Since 1996, Kit and his wife Sally have financially supported the First Internet Backgammon Server (FIBS), helping to maintain it free of charge by paying for its connection to the Internet.
Backgammon Achievements
Amongst countless other victories, Woolsey won first place in the popular Nevada State Backgammon Championship in 2003 and again in 2005, the American Doubles Championship with Nack Ballard in 2007 and the Pro Am Doubles $10,000 entry event in 2005 with teammate Tami Jones of Indiana. He has also won Bill Davis' annual Backgammon On Board cruise event on several occasions.
In 1993, Kit wrote a book called How to Play Tournament Backgammon in which he first introduced a Match Equity Table he invented. The chart displays one's chance of winning a match from various scores. In 1996, Woolsey published New Ideas In Backgammon, a book he co-authored with Hal Heinrich of Canada, the 1990 World Champion, in which the two experts give valuable insights on a large collection of analyzed positions collected from live backgammon tournaments.




