Monday Club

Monday evening sessions at the Bristol County Sports Club (a k a Sportsmans) started at the beginning of 2008, in the hope of encouraging new players into the fold in a low key welcoming environment.
Newcomers would be given whatever attention they desired from experienced players, in the hope of furthering both recreational and competitive play.
The presence of a clutch of experienced players also demanded the staging of some low key competition -- easily contained within the typical 7pm to 11pm session -- and a decision on what form that would take would be made on the night.

In a bid to give these competitive elements more meaning, they were pre-advertised as specific formats, and bound together by a mini grand prix points system. Hence the "Monday Club" idea, which came into being on Monday September 1st, with a pair of four player 3-point round robins.
Three four-monthly grand prixs, the Spring Grand Prix (January to April), the Summer Grand Prix (May to August), and the Autumn Grand Prix (September to December) were born.

In each grand prix the winner and the top intermediate gained prizes. And the decision was made in May 2012 to reward multiple "top intermediate" winners with Premier Status from the year immediately following the achievement.
It was also decided that, solely for the purposes of the various Monday grand prix series, intermediate status would be lost as soon as Premier Status had been granted.

Starting in 2014, Roland Herrera decided to sponsor the Monday scene by boosting the prize money won by intermediates, with this scheme.
Then in 2015 Drew Caudwell came up with the idea to create a mini-grand prix series out of the Monday Nackgammon events.
And for the second half of 2016 John Curran added to the sponsorship of intermediates by rewarding the best intermediate performer in each of the four Monday disciplines.
Then, in 2017, John and Roland combined their sponsorship around the previous format of John's sponsorship.
When the pandemic hit us in 2020, Monday play moved online, and all financial considerations were temporarily abandoned.
For 2021, with the availability of round robin software on the Backgammon Studio Heroes website, Monday competitions were revamped.
There were now quarterly Grand Prix competitions -- Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn -- typically comprising ten sessions each, and a year long Nackgammon Grand Prix.
And John Curran continued to sponsor these events right up to 2022.
From September 2021 sessions were run in parallel, both live at Sportsmans and online at Heroes, but the live sessions were abandoned at the start of 2024 due to lack of numbers, and replaced by live education sessions.



Autumn Grand Prix
Past Monday Club competitions
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