The ICGA organized in 2002 the Bitmap of Computer Olympiad 2002 7th Computer Olympiad in Maastricht (Netherlands). If Chess, Go and other programs compete, why not Backgammon?
Together with Achim Müller of the GnuBG project we thought who could be involved too and so we contacted roughly a dozen programmer. Sadly only BGBlitz and GnuBG went to Maastricht, but the quality of the opponents promised a high level match.
We agreed on a best of five 13-pt match. As expected the level of play was high, BGBlitz got the better dice and finally won the match 3-1. It was exciting until the last moment, the atmosphere was inspiring and the whole event was an awesome event.

The match in numbers
BGBlitz 1.0.5 vs. GNU-Backgammon 0.13
13 - 9
4 - 13
13 - 7
13 - 6
Here are some photographs from Maastricht 2002:
Photo of Achim and me Atmosphere in Maastricht
Achim and me in good mood The atmosphere at Maastricht
Photo of Achim and IM Hans Boehm Award ceremony in Maastricht
Achim watching International Chess Master Hans Boehm playing against BGBlitz The award ceremony at Maastricht with Prof. v.d. Herik
You can download the matches as mat files or view them online:
match 1 , match 2 , match 3 , match 4 .