The dice - the main object - was made by creating a simple box, subdividing it several times and applying rounder on it. I then reduces the polys to a really low value, making it edgy, like a hand made wooden dice. I then solid drilled away the markings and created beveled rough markings. All was randomly jittered to make it less symmetric (thus more realistic)

The back gammon table was made by creating a jagged flat polygon and making slightly beveled markings (barely visible, but adds to the overall unsymmetrical feeling). The frame was some flat polys beveled with round corners. I also added some hinges, made by cylinders, later on.

I then started making some props, to add to the natural chaos. The leather part of the hook is, as allways, a subdivided box, jittered and fractalized to make it rough. I then reduced the polys.

The hook is a cylinder extruded along a curve. At the end I beveled it rounder. To make it more realistic i moved around some parts slightly with the magnet tool to make it look used and bent.

The coin was simply beveled into shape.

The background objects then..

The ceiling is a simple box with a small window like rounded and non symmetric hole to make some shadows.

The table was made by some frozen curves, beveled roughly into shape.

Because this contest was about realism, I had to make a whole lot of texturing (see the box to the right). I'll try explain every surface briefly:

DICE:
I've always found wood texturing hard to do with procedurals, so I had to use an Image instead. For the dice I used a image created by Richard, found at CGTextures for the main coloring. I then added irregularities to make it less uniform. I also added dust and scratches applied to all channels for variations. It took a lot of test renders.

BACK GAMMON TABLE:
Made the similar way as the dice, with the same Image as texture, but with other procedurals and values.
The markings was the same textures, but slightly modified values. Especially the coloring.

GAME COINS
With a whole lot of procedurals and gradient applied to color, diffuse, specular, glossiness, reflection and bump I came up with a copper like rough surface. I copied this and modified it to make the white coins.

HINGE
Not very visible, but I copied the texture from the dice markings, inverted it and modified it. It's not very visible in the final render though.

ARM HOOK:
Made similar way as the others. a whole lot of layers of adjustments, especially with color and bump. The metal part is low reflective and made worn and scratched with bump and diffuse procedurals.

BACKGROUND TABLE:
The background table uses another image from CGTextures for coloring, displaced and modified to become more natural and worn.

The scene was set up this way. The lights are two area lights to cut the rendering time, instead of using radiosity. The one behind the camera is only at 5%, with a fallow to avoid highlighting the background. There's also one above the ceiling att 100%, casting shadows at the window like mesh, to make some more natural shadows.

All objects are setup with some natural chaos; rotated and moved to less symmetrical positions.

I also added a filter to blur out the background slightly, but it didn't become visible with AA turned on.

The final render traces only shadows and reflections (slightly). To smooth out the jagged textures I used adaptive sampling and medium AA. The reconstruction filter was set to Box (sharp).

I don't know how long the render was because I let it work over night, but probably ~5-6 hours.