An evening with the Lesbian and Bisexual Backgammon League in New York

New York City is full of urban legends. There are alligators that supposedly stalk the sewers. There’s the pirate who allegedly buried treasure on Liberty Island. And then there’s the Lesbian and Bisexual Backgammon League.

“I’ve been hearing rumors about this game for so long,” says 35-year-old photographer Kate Owen. For a year she wondered where the mysterious tournament was held and who exactly was behind it. Then on Valentine’s Day she saw an Instagram post from the queer collective GayJoy calling for “a few more artsy gays to play backgammon that evening.” At 7:30 that evening, she optimistically made her way to the third floor of Bortolami, the contemporary art gallery in TriBeCa, where she was led after responding to the post. “I wasn’t sure if this would be the case the game,” she says. “But as soon as I walked in, I was like, ‘Oh yeah. This is it.'”

A few dozen women, along with a handful of men and non-binary people, milled around the airy space, drinking wine and rolling dice. Candlelight illuminated rows of backgammon boards atop long tables; Kylie Minogue and Destiny’s Child played in the background.

The Lesbian and Bisexual Backgammon League – simply called LBBL – was founded in 2017 after Ellen Swieskowski, 35, the founder of the gallery guide app See Saw, started a conversation with Hester Hodde, 36, an interior designer, in the West. Village lesbian bar Cubbyhole. Swieskowski had been introduced to backgammon the previous summer and had the zeal of a convert; Growing up, Hodde played with her family on ski trips. “It was a nice and funny idea to bring people together,” says Swieskowski.

Over the years, the competition has grown to include a range of figures from the art world, as well as start-up founders, architects and people from other creative industries. Each mega-gallery in New York is often represented by at least one employee at the meetings, which are organized via WhatsApp and typically held every five or six months. Artists Jennifer Packer, Jenna Gribbon and Sable Elyse Smith are regulars. (During an LBBL session last summer, the room was buzzing with the performance of then newly coupled artists Nicole Eisenman and Ambera Wellmann.)

In the highly layered art world, LBBL is refreshingly non-hierarchical. It’s the kind of place where influential art consultant Amy Cappellazzo, 56, could compete with the receptionist of a Chelsea gallery. Or where Kel Burchette, 26, the gallerist Larry Gagosian’s former second assistant is taking on prominent art dealer Stefania Bortolami, 57. “There are so many parties and events in the art world – we all dread them, but we have to do them anyway,” Bortolami says. “This is a way for people to socialize and there’s no pressure whatsoever.”

Backgammon, the rules of which are explained below, is one of the oldest table games in the world. In 2004, archaeologists discovered the earliest known version – complete with an ebony board and bone dice – in southeastern Iran. King Tut was buried with a precursor to the game. In the 12th century, the Crusaders brought a version to Europe, where it became a favorite pastime for clergy and nobility. It enjoyed a revival in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s, when Hugh Hefner held backgammon parties at the Playboy Mansion.

“There’s Turkish-style backgammon, there’s Italian,” says Ellie Rines, 35, the founder of gallery 56 Henry and co-organizer of the latest event (there is no official host among the group and responsibility rotates on an informal basis) . “What straight men find really funny is the idea that lesbian backgammon is another playing style that they don’t have access to.” Although there are actually no special rules for lesbian backgammon, Rines claims that it is “kind of a perfect lesbian game – it’s very empathetic. You match the energy of the person in front of you and respond to their movements.”

The hosts: The evening was co-hosted by two friends who happen to be exes, Rines and Bortolami; they dated between 2017 and early 2020. In the early days of the league, Rines says she brought Bortolami to LBBL tournaments “as part of my courtship process.” On Valentine’s Day, Bortolami – considered one of the league’s most formidable players – stood back to let a handful of original members steer the evening. After someone blew the whistle to get the crowd’s attention, venture capital investor Nicole Ripka, 31, laid down the rules. Players marked their progress on a printed bracket taped to the wall.

The gear: Backgammon boards come in all shapes and sizes, from fabric versions designed to be rolled out on the beach to large wooden ones. (Burchette says she “impulsively bought a $400 board from Jonathan Adler” after winning her first game.) The board consists of four quadrants, each with six high triangles, or “points,” in alternating colors. The two players each receive 15 checkers, called “pips”, as well as two dice and a dice cup.

The rules: You do not do that to have to be queer to attend LBBL (Rines makes it clear that she is “not a lesbian anymore” and heard another guest say that she was “too poor to date women now.”) To participate in the tournament, all you need is an invite from someone in the group and $30. The game is part luck and part skill, making it ideal for newcomers. The goal is to move all 15 pieces around the board, into your home quadrant (the part of the board closest to you) and then disappear from the playing surface completely. The first player to remove all their pieces from the board is the winner. . You can move two pieces per turn and you roll the dice to see how many points each piece can move forward; if you roll two of the same number, you can play each die twice. Players must move their pieces to an “open” point – a point not already occupied by two or more opponent pieces. A certain level of gaming skill is required: for example, it is possible to block your opponent or knock one of his vulnerable pips against the central bar between the two halves of the board, a kind of purgatory.

The bets: In the most recent tournament, the center pot was worth $570. But there are plenty of side bets. During the early days of LBBL, Bortolami won an upgraded subscription to Swieskowski’s app See Saw worth $500. On Valentine’s Day, a backgammon neophyte, who wished to remain anonymous, asked Hodde, one of LBBL’s founders, to sweeten the pot . Hodde agreed to provide free interior design services, but if the first visitor lost, she had to buy her a new pair of shoes. “We both agreed, as New York City girls, that all shoes cost about $1,000 right now — if you go to Bergdorf,” says Hodde. She won.

The location: Bortolami hosted the meeting on the third floor of her gallery in TriBeCa, which is decorated with work by artists she represents. A mounted piece by Brooklyn-based sculptor Virginia Overton, made from two halves of a willow tree trunk, filled one wall; a striped composition by French conceptual artist Daniel Buren occupied another. The sophisticated setting is a far cry from the league’s original gathering place: the back of the now-closed East Village dive bar RPM. When art market figures like Bortolami and Cappellazzo came to the tent with the sticky floor, Swieskowski recalls, “Hester should talk to the bartender beforehand and say, ‘Hey, there’s some serious people coming tonight, if you have a chance, guys clean the bathroom a little?’”

The food and the beverages: When it comes to livelihoods, Bortolami says “opportunity” is the key to the game. On Valentine’s Day, tortillas from SoHo tapas restaurant La Boqueria and bread from TriBeCa farm Rigor Hill were on hand to fuel alcohol and keep the players focused. There were popcorn and chips available to nibble on, while mezcal, La Croix, natural wine and kombucha flowed freely. Although the space is generally well-stocked, the evenings are technically BYOBBB: bring your own drink and backgammon board.

The finale: The recent tournament featured four people: Ripka, Swieskowski, Bortolami and the architect Koray Duman, 46, one of the few attendees, who grew up playing backgammon in his native Turkey. In a cruel twist of fate for LBBL, the man won, but he promised to spend at least some of his winnings on buying drinks for his lesbian friends. Speaking on the phone after the event, Rines shared a theory about why backgammon is so beloved in the art world, or at least in this corner of it: “It’s a bit like the art business,” she says. “It’s about risk, placement, trying to project into an unknown future. You can travel with it easily. It includes money. It’s fast and sexy.”