

Leo Fernandez - Argentina

Leo Fernandez is the most travelled and most popular of Argentine backgammon players and has an impressive history of money wins at international tournaments all around the world.
Fernandez won the Crowns Cup in June of 2007, a unique tournament that was filmed for television in a secret location in Germany. Fifteen other top backgammon players attended, and each was presented as a tough-guy champion accompanied by beautiful women. The tournament had a prize pool of $250,000 of which $150,000 went to the winner (Fernandez), $50,000 to the Finalist and $25,000 to each Semi-Finalist. There was never any online report about neither this event nor even the results posted anywhere - so who were the others winners? If you wanted to know, you had to see the TV show which was broadcasted in Europe in sixteen 50-minute episodes.
Lately, Fernandez has been delving into Poker; he was seen at the Pokerstars Latin American Poker Tour event in May of 2008 held at the Cariari Club in Costa Rica. Partial results from the 39th World Series of Poker happening in Las Vegas, also in 2008, show Leo Fernandez came in 13th in the June 16th $2,500 No Limit Hold'em and in which he won $19,086 that day. His Poker record shows that he also won money in two other events since 2005.
At the Atlantis Million event in 2007, Leo Fernandez and partner Christian Toth of Brazil came in second in the $5,000 Doubles event, losing to Lars Bønding of Denmark and Mark Teltscher of England.Other recent backgammon records show that in 2006, Leo won first place in Super Jackpot #2 at the 31st World Backgammon Championship in Monte Carlo, Monaco and that in 2004 he was a Semi-Finalist in the 64-player Super Jackpot at the Las Vegas Backgammon Open.
At the Riviera Challenge 2 Backgammon Tournament in 2004, Fernandez, representing Argentina with partner Veronica Dabul, came in second in the Nations Cup Challenge which was won by Malcolm Davis and Jose Farca representing Mexico.Fernandez has also made it to the money in other events such as 6th Tournament of the Americas in Cancun, Mexico in 1999, the Pro-Am Invitational on Turnberry Isle, Florida in 1998 and at the World Cup VI in Dallas, Texas in 1998.




