Is backgammon a game of skill or chance? Recently, a U.S. court answered that question in a decision that may affect backgammon players and promoters throughout the country.

The controversy started early in 1981 when police in Portland, Oregon, arrested the well-known backgammon tournament director and writer Ted Barr just before the finals of his Portland Marriot Open. Because the tournament offered cash prizes and required an entry fee, Barr was charged with promoting gambling. According to the statutes of Oregon, New York, and other states, gambling is defined as risking something of value upon the outcome of a contest of chance.

Instead of coping a plea, Barr decided to fight the charge. He hoped a court would rule again, as the Alabama Supreme Court had done in 1976, that backgammon, like chess or bridge, is a game of skill. For his defense, Barr enlisted the help of, among others, former World Backgammon Champion Paul Magriel, the game's most articulate authority.

The main point of the issue was the effect of the dice of the game. "Even after rolling, you may have as many as 30 or more options," Magriel told a packed courthouse early this year during his two hours of expert testimony. "The decision where to move your men after the dice have been cast - that is the essence of the game. Chance is not a material factor."

Judge Stephen S. Walker agreed. He found Barr innocent of promoting gambling, concluding that "backgammon is not a game of chance but a game of skill."

"It would have been a disaster if it had gone the other way," says Henry Wattson of American Backgammon Championships, promoters of the biggest backgammon tournaments in the country. "But now, the Oregon decision will make it easier to get sponsors and to go into places that are sort of hazy about whether they should have a tournament or not."

Wattson notes that when American Backgammon Championships considered running a tournament at Resorts International in Atlantic City, the New Jersey Attorney General's office ruled that backgammon is in effect a lottery and therefore that holding a backgammon tournament anywhere in the state would be illegal. "After the Oregon decision, we intend to fight that ruling in court," Wattson says.