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Carol Joy Cole was formally renowned as the first lady of American backgammon after championing the 1st US Backgammon Open, held at the beginning of June 2009. Cole, who has been playing backgammon seriously for over 30 years while running the Flint Area backgammon club, represents an indifferent approach to being a woman in the seemingly masculine field of pro backgammon.

Carol Joy Cole can be hardly found playing ladies backgammon tournaments (which are anyway rarer in the US comparing to Europe) and she often gets to play heads-on against top backgammon masters. At the final match of the US Open Backgammon Championship she played against Joe Russell, who won the Monte Carlo Backgammon Championship of 1989. In an interview to the local news site Fenton Press following her national title winning, she admitted being the underdog in that crucial match, yet did not underestimate her strength and stated that " I didn't win just on luck".

Biography

Carol Joy Cole, an American with Japanese origins, was born in the 1940s in internment camp in Salt Lake City, raised and spent all of her life in Flint, Michigan, where her famous backgammon club makes its weekly meetings every Thursday for over three decades. She started playing backgammon in the 1970s, when backgammon craze was at its peak, thanks to her children, who were tutored by their then babysitter.

Why Backgammon?

"The game itself is very dynamic, no two games are alike. There's always a different challenge." Cole said in the same interview, and described the backgammon game as a combination of chess and poker, borrowing the strategy element from one game and the gambling aspect from the other. In addition, she particularly enjoys the sociable part of the game.

The Backgammon Club

Flint Area Backgammon Club was founded by her in 1978, and the club still operates in the same format of weekly tournaments and zero membership fees. The only drastic change is in the number of participants. If in the late 70s and early 80s the average tournament capacitate about 50-60 players, now the number dropped to 20, even though backgammon popularity was "resurged with the birth of the Internet in the 1990s." Perhaps the inaugural achievement of the backgammon club director would increase the number of its members. Either way, Flint Area backgammon meetings take place every Thursday at 7 pm at the Days Inn on Bristol Road.