Tim Holland (backgammon)  Tim Holland (March 3, 1931 – March 10, 2010) was a world-champion backgammon player, highly paid teacher of the game, author of three backgammon books and successful gambler who has won more major backgammon tournaments than anyone in history. Simeon Harold Holland was born in 1931 at Rockville Centre, New York, the only child of Simeon and Inez Holland. He learned to play bridge and golf very young and won a father-son and a mother-son golf tournament when he was seven. He was an outstanding player on his high school golf team, and golf became his preoccupation for the next twenty years. After graduating from South Side High School in 1948, he enrolled at Lehigh University, but transferred to Adelphi University after six months. The following year, he decided that Florida was the best place to play golf, so he transferred to the University of Miami. During his college years, he played a lot of golf and won most of his wagers, but still managed to graduate with a degree in business administration in 1952. He studied at the UM Law School for two years, but did not graduate. In the mid-1950s, Holland considered playing golf professionally, but the prize money at most tournaments was small—typically only $5,000. Most pros were in their late 30s or 40's, and the golf association discouraged gambling, so he abandoned the idea. At the time, the "La Gorce Country Club" in Miami Beach had over one hundred millionaire members and was, according to Holland, the "gambling capital of golf". For several years, he made his living playing golf for high stakes, but in 1958, he noticed several older members playing a board game in the clubhouse. He asked to play and got hooked on backgammon. It took several years and $30,000 in losses to achieve a mastery of the game, but once he did, Holland was dominant. Beginning in the mid-1960s, the popularity of Backgammon surged, in part due to the charisma of Prince Alexis Obolensky, who was known as “The Father of Modern Backgammon”. "Obe", as he was called by friends, co-founded the International Backgammon Association, which published a set of official rules. He also established the World Backgammon Club of Manhattan, devised a backgammon tournament system in 1963, and then organized the first major international Backgammon tournament in March 1964, which attracted royalty, celebrities, and the paparazzi.