Barbados Aims to Host 2025 World Championships of Dominoes

Barbados is hoping to make a major slam by hosting the 2025 World Championships of Dominoes.

This was revealed by Rodney Inniss, team manager of Bajan Travellers, which will be taking a 41-member contingent to Colombia to participate in the international tournament from October 15 to 22.

Inniss, a former president of the National Domino, Whist and Hearts’ Clubs Association, told Barbados TODAY they would be making a bid to host the World Championships on the island in the next two years.

“We have some bigger plans of bringing the tournament here in Barbados in the coming years, in a couple of years.

“We are now looking to secure the bid when we travel to Colombia for this year’s competition and we’re looking to bring the 2025 World Championships here for the first time ever,” said Inniss, who is also the secretary for English-speaking countries on the Federacion Mundial de Domino Board of Directors.

Inniss said while next year’s Championships were scheduled to be held in Puerto Rico, it would me a major feat if Barbados was awarded the 2025 Championships as several international teams featured in the competition.

He revealed that for this year’s tournament, over 500 players from 16 countries were set to compete.

“This is international dominos, a different format of dominos, but certainly we’re taking a team of 41 persons there to take part and we’re hoping to do very well.

“For me this is about my 12th year of attending and what we try to do is try to encourage a lot more Barbadians to go and to participate. There was a time when we only had three persons, then we had four, then we had 10 and I think up to last year we had 20 and now we have 41, so every year it is getting bigger and bigger and the enthusiasm is there,” Inniss said.

He disclosed that the members were hoping to improve on their highest ever placing in the individual section, which is 18th.

Inniss said for a country like Barbados to place that high was outstanding, as sometimes they were as many as 700 players participating.

“So anytime little Barbados can have a representation of only a few persons and still place as high as 18th, that is an outstanding achievement.

“But this year we are hoping to do a lot better because our numbers are greater and our chances are better,” he pointed out.

Inniss explained that even though the effort was not spearheaded by the National Domino, Whist and Hearts’ Clubs Association, the majority of the team was made up of members from the association.

He explained that the international competition was played with different rules, with the first person reaching 200 points being the winner, as opposed to the ‘six-love’ format which is featured in local competitions.

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