New on MOB

• Mary Hickey Wins 2nd US Backgammon Open
• Bob Wachtel reports from Velden Open
• Notes from 2010 Nordic Open
• WSOB Prague Pictures
• New Backgammon World Champion!
• Blind Backgammon

Before becoming the second woman to win the second US Backgammon Open, Mary Hickey did not like to emphasize her being a woman backgammon player. "I used to get annoyed when people would make a big deal about my being a woman player", she said in an interview to the backgammon site Play65 after her winning, "but now I recognize this is a legitimate question and agree people should ask it."

Playing Backgammon

Mary Hickey, who started out as a chess player, also did not like to play in Ladies Tournaments, and always attended the main competition. "I learned the game in 1977 or 1978, on a business trip to Texas. I then slowly became more involved with the game, but attended only one big tournament "back in the day" (in Las Vegas in 1980). I gave the game up entirely for many years, and then restarted playing once or twice a month at the end of 1995. I gradually added more tournaments to my schedule, and plan to play five or six a year from now on."

Since her return to backgammon, Mary Hickey had won the Ohio Masters 2002, 2003 and 2006, the last Indy 300 Masters event held in Indianapolis, the Ohio State Backgammon Championship in 2009, finished second in Wisconsin State Backgammon Championship the same year and won the Las Vegas Open backgammon blitz in 2006. Hickey is also an active backgammon author and teacher, who has recently collected her GammonVillage columns on chouette to a book on CD called Chouette and More: The World's First and Only Backgammon Sci-fi Soap Opera.

More Women in Backgammon will Change the World

"I think it is good for the game that women are winning titles. I think Carol Joy Cole and me winning the US Backgammon Open may encourage more women players to make a bit more effort to improve, and discard cultural issues that says that playing backgammon is difficult for women than for men. There are still many pockets of prejudice against women everywhere, even in the supposedly liberal democracies of what we call "the West", that perhaps a few more wins and achievements by women in backgammon and elsewhere will help eradicate. And who knows, as the bias against women fades in backgammon and also the wider world, maybe other forms of hatred, fear, and prejudice will also be recognized as the maladaptive qualities that they are. "