Robertie is good at poker, and Dan Harrington was also a top backgammon player in the 1970s. Both were Boston-area expert/masters in the early 1970s, who improved at the Boylston Chess Club at it's old site at the Boylston Young Men's Christian Union in Boston. In the mid to late 70s, Backgammon became all the rage amongst rich celebs, and there was money to be made, so Robertie and Harrington fished in those waters as well.
The Mayfair Club in NYC, was the games club in the early 80s. Chess, backgammon and poker.
Brief Background. When I was a kid, my uncle taught me poker. It wasn't Texas hold-em. It was 5-card draw. Then when I was in Jr. High, my friends and I played nickel-dime-poker. Max of 3 raises. We were lousy, but we had fun playing all kinds of games and wild cards too.
About the same time in Jr. High I joined the chess club. I really didn't like the geek/nerd/propeller head reputation of being in the chess club, but I ignored it because the game was fun. I was a decent athlete, and "cool", and the other guys in the chess club were not decent athletes, nor all that "cool".
Then in the Navy, I got introduced to Backgammon. Man, that's a really fun game. And when I "retired" from chess, I enjoyed playing in some backgammon tournaments.
Then it was Fantasy Football. That's super fun too. Researching the players and coaching schemes and plotting against your fellow fantasy owners was very enjoyable.
So I like to play games, but after all these years away, Chess has come back to reclaim #1 spot in my heart.
A few days ago, or last week, I was reading a thread by someone who was a Russian (I think he was Russian) M.D. who won a poker circuit tournament, and wants to get good at chess to beat the hustlers in NYC. That made me think of Dan Harrington, who I think was a State Chess Champion, and won the World Series of Poker a couple of times. I don't know if he played backgammon, but that dude is great at both chess and poker.
Then there's Bill Robertie whose book Winning Chess Tactics is my first book that I read this year, and he's a backgammon champion.
I heard there's some other chess masters who's also really good in poker, but I don't know who they are. I just figure that since they're so good at calculating so speedily and accurately in chess, then they apply that successfully to poker too.
Backgammon requires some calculation, but it's just not the same as in poker or chess.
Anyways, as an aside, I wasn't too keen when computers beat Kasparov and the World's Best Backgammon players. And I've heard that computers might be programmed to beat the Best Poker players too.
So who's the Best Chess-Poker-Backgammon Triathlete that you can think of?