Portland/Vancouver Backgammon

We had a nice turnout for this month’s regular tournament – 17 players made it in for an afternoon of backgammon. Before I get to the results, I’m going to digress for a bit on tournament structure & how the payouts work.

As most of you know, the tournament has an entry fee, and then 2 side pools. The side pools are completely optional, they exist for the sake of players who feel like putting a little more capital at risk for the event. Both the side pools are for the same amount. What I have been doing for the last year plus is, if you are in at least one side pool, you are put in the “A” bracket, which plays 5 point matches instead of 3 point matches. In order to build relatively even brackets, I then also sometimes pulled in people who were not in a side pool, but there was a “pay to play” element there. Put more at risk, you have a little more time in each match to let your skill cancel the luck element.

Anyway, before the tournament started, I was chatting about all that with Howard, and he asked what would I do if more than 8 people wanted to be in the side pools. I said that had never happened, but that I would cross that bridge when we got there.

So, yeah, I jinxed myself. Of the 17 players, 9 wanted to be in the side pool.

Running a 9 person bracket is fine, it basically means there’s one play-in round, and the way I structure things that’s not so hard to do. But on the spur of the moment, I decided to keep it simple; so I dropped out of the side pools to create an easy 8-person bracket for that one, and played in the 3 point match “B” bracket.

So, results: In the “A” bracket, round 1 had David R over first-timer Farhad, Mark H over Dave C, Howard over Tim (in the longest single match of the afternoon – about 90 minutes to finish!), and Larry over Joel. Because the Howard/Tim match-up ran so long, there was a good amount of waiting for later rounds, especially in the consolation bracket – I appreciate everyone’s patience. Anyway, in the final, Larry came out on top over Howard. In the consolation bracket, David R and Farhad had a re-match. I left the prize money with them and asked for a text reporting results, but as of press time I haven’t heard what happened.

In the “B” bracket, round 1, I won over Mark A, Jim won over Bodger, Cam over Steve, and Ed over visiting player Breeze (in for a vacation from Bali, sounds backwards?). Stan got the first round bye. The final had Jim over Ed, Jim’s third win in three appearances BTW. In the consolation bracket, I ended up winning over Stan, in what was also a re-match. 

The next tournament will be on March 29th, our first Championship Qualifier – RSVP today if you haven’t already. See you then!

-Mark

We had a fair showing for this month’s event – 13 players came out for the afternoon. Lucky Lab was extremely crowded, with a MTG tournament going on. But we squeezed in to the tables that were available and had a good time.

In the “A” bracket, round 1 had Larry over Nathan, Bodger over Joel, Kyle over Howard, and me over the bye. Honestly, I abused my director’s position to take the bye, so that I could eat my lunch – the table I was at barely held the board so I would have been holding my sandwich in my lap otherwise. But I then paid for it by losing my two matches in blowouts. In the final, Larry came out on top over Kyle, and Nathan took the consolation bracket over Bodger.

In the “B” bracket, we only had 6 players, and so it finished fairly quickly. Round 1 had Stan over newcomer Stephen, Tim over Mark A, and newcomer Jim B over Julie. Jim went on to win the bracket over Tim, and Stan (who claims to have never previously won a match) taking the consolation bracket over Stephen. 

All in all, a good day. There was a lot of discussion about the upcoming BMAB event, which is just around the corner now. If you are registered for it, you should get an email from me in a week or so with logistical information. If you’re not… well, time is definitely running out! 

-Mark

We had a nice showing for this weekend’s “Let’s Do a High Equity Event Because Texas ABT Got Cancelled” event. 7 people played in the High Roller, and 4 in the Low Roller, and it made for a busy afternoon of Backgammon!

I arrived at Lucky Lab about 5 minutes before noon, and found 6 people standing around waiting for me. So yeah, people were eager to play. 

For the Low Roller, since there were only 4, I went with a Round Robin structure, so each player got 3 matches. Bodger and Nathan each went 2-1, and split the prize money; Kyle and Larry you should be able to guess their records. The format worked well, though, and everyone told me they enjoyed it. 

For the High Roller, we went with the double elimination Swiss approach. In round 1, Dave got the bye, which did not count as a win, but did count as a not-loss. I had my one win of the day, somehow coming out over Paul; Max beat Howard, and Tim beat Jeremy. In round 2, Paul got the bye, and the winners were Dave, Tim, and Howard. Round 3 had Dave versus Tim in the undefeated face-off, and Paul and Howard took Max and myself out. Tim beat out Dave, and so we went into the critical round 4.

So for round 4, we had Tim (3-0) facing off against Howard (3-1). This set up a couple of very different outcomes that were possible. If Tim won, he would be 4-0, and Howard would be eliminated. But if Howard won, they both would be 3-1. Meanwhile, Dave and Paul were both 1-1 because they had both had a bye, so the winner of their match would have a 2-1 record and the other would be eliminated. This made the outcome of the Tim-Howard match have a significant impact on the payout of the Dave-Paul match! It made sense to pay out either 2 or 3 places for the main, but I planned to only pay 2 places for the side pool, so if Howard won, he and Tim would split the side pool; but if Howard lost, 2nd in the side pool would go to the winner of the Dave-Paul match. Everyone follow that logic? Good, good.

Dave and Paul had a heck of a match. Repeatedly, Dave ended up hitting Paul during the bearoff, to either save the gammon, or to even win the game. They went back and forth, going all the way to DMP, and Paul turned the tables on Dave, hitting him during the bearoff! But Dave was able to recover, and ended up winning!

Meanwhile, Tim took an early lead over Howard. Leading 3-0, Tim made a dubious decision to take a 4 cube. I assume it was a dubious decision, anyway, because when I wandered over to look, Tim was holding the 4 cube with 2 on the bar… But he somehow saved the gammon, and was suddenly the trailer. Howard took another couple of points, and suddenly they were in the Crawford game. With his back against the wall, Tim rallied, and then they were playing a post-Crawford game, Howard holding the cube, leading 6-4. At this point, all the rest of us were hovering around the table, watching the action. It was an intense game, went right down to the wire; but Howard pulled it off and handed Tim his one defeat of the day!

We also did have a good number of spectators show up, some intentionally, some by happenstance. There was a very large social event going on through the afternoon, and a couple of people stopped by to watch and chat. Thanks to Dave for playing ambassador and to Tim for giving a little tutorial to folks watching his matches, I think we might end up picking up a couple of new members to the club… Also Jan, who was in town for the weekend and who I’ve got a current match against on Dailygammon stopped by, which was cool. Backgammon – bringing people together. It’s a beautiful thing. See you at the next one!

-Mark

We had a really nice turnout for our first official tournament of 2025 — 22 players! There were a good number of new players as well — 5 first time participants, including a posse of ringers but I’ll get to that…

The day started a little frantically for me – Howard and I were playing a couple of money games to warm up, but as the second game progressed, people were arriving, so each roll was separated by a minute of taking money, making change, verifying skill level for the newcomers, taking pre-payment for the upcoming BMAB in a few cases… I ended up having to go back and check on a couple of different registrations technically after the draw was done because it got to be an overload. Plus, the minute I finished the draw, one new person arrived, I got a request to add the side pool, and I realized I had left one person out entirely. After some last minute juggling, we got it going across 3 brackets — 2 full 8-person ones and 1 6-person one.

In the “A” bracket (made up entirely of people who entered at least one side pool this month), round 1 showed Tim E over Larry D, Dave C over Howard, Dave R (one of the newcomers) over me, and Bodger over Nathan. Dave R was teasing about it being a pain playing the director, since we got interrupted fairly regularly through the match. He, Ben, and Jim were 3 of the first-timers, and have been playing a running chouette for some time, but just learned about our group. Anyway – turns out he’s a decent player — he went on from beating me to winning the bracket, putting Bodger in 2nd. I managed to fight my way back to win in the consolation bracket, defeating Howard through sheer good luck in spite of at least one monster blunder.

In the “B” bracket, round 1 had Ben (see above) over Mark A, Jim (see above) over Mark H (yes, we had 3 Marks at the tournament), newcomer Alicia over Joel (in part thanks to his effective coaching on how to use the doubling cube, it should be noted), and Stan over first-timer Tim Y (who did come to observe at the Championship last week, but first-time playing). Ben and Jim went on to play for 1st/2nd, with Jim taking the top spot. So the 3 ringers who have been playing a $2 chouette just waltzed in and cashed in everything their first tournament… we’ll probably see them all again. Mark A came back to win in the consolation over Mark H (so all 3 Marks were in consolation matches…)

In the “C” bracket, round 1 had Leah over Ed, Mary over Julie, and Rich (not first-timer, but first time in over a year) over Matt. Rich got the second round bye, and Leah won over him in the final (starting out the year undefeated, again). Ed came back to win the consolation bracket over Matt.

I did record my matches, and might get them up onto YouTube eventually – if you didn’t know I have been posting there for a while, it’s perhaps not as inspirational as watching Mochy’s videos, but it’s more entertaining because I make more mistakes. Check them out…

Dave C and I were having some back and forth about how “Player of the Year” is determined. I still haven’t fully worked out how I want to handle it this year, but the rough idea is close to what I did back in 2021 (when Bodger won it) versus the “wins-losses” formula that I’ve used since (when Dave D won it 3 times in a row). The problem with the “wins-losses” formula is that it is really biased towards whoever is crazy enough to show up for the almost every event (that is, Dave C (and to be fair, Tim E, Bodger, Julie, Joel, and Ed)). Last year, we had 87 people come to at least one tournament, but only 23 people who came to three or more. I still want the field limited to people who come pretty regularly, but whatever that threshold works out to be for 2025, PotY will go to whoever has the best win percentage. Right now we have a 22-way tie for participation and a 3-way tie for win percentage, so it’s a pretty tight race…

By the way, keep an eye out for a likely last minute, “Super Bowl” weekend event. With the Texas Backgammon Championship tragically cancelled for this year, a number of us are grumpy about not getting to lose significant amounts of money on Backgammon, so I’m working on a “high roller/low roller” event.

-Mark

We had a fun afternoon of backgammon yesterday at the 2024 Women’s Championship/2024 Men’s Championship event – here’s the blow-by-blow:

In the Women’s Championship, we unfortunately had a low turnout. Julie reached out ahead of time to let me know that a last minute homeowner’s issue was going to prevent her from making it. I don’t know what happened with Paola or Nicki, but neither of them showed either. So, it was a 3-player field. In round 1, Andrea faced off against Kashic. They had a drawn-out match, over two hours long, mostly single point wins, and going down to the wire. Ultimately, Kashic came out on top, and after a short break, sat down to face Leah in the final (Leah, of course, had a first-round bye from winning two of the qualifiers…)

And it was another drawn-out match, well over two hours again, with mostly single point wins. I was able to come spectate for the last few games, as everything else had wrapped by then. Trailing 4-5 in the match to 7, Kashic offered Leah a cube in a complex mid-game position. Leah (I strongly believe correctly) took, and came damn close to turning it around. With 3 of Kashic’s checkers on Leah’s bar point, and the rest brought in, Leah broke anchor off Kashic’s 3-point with a 64, 22/18 22/16. But Kashic replied with a 65, and hit, 18/7*! Leah re-entered quickly, somehow escaping to her mid-point; then Kashic hit again with a 63, 18/9*! It looked like game over, but Leah saved the gammon with 66 and they moved on to the Crawford game. 

Crawford game was Leah’s going away – she was playing very well, and had Kashic on the bar with a closed board. With just a single checker on the roof, the gammon was unlikely, but Kashic had a difficult time entering! Leah had cleared 3 points before Kashic could come in, and it was looking like Leah would get the upset gammon to win the match, when Kashic hit 66 to save it!

Now tied at 6-6, they began the DMP game to decide it all. Once again, the game looked like it was Leah’s going away. Kashic’s board was crunching with two checkers still trapped back on Leah’s 4 point, and Leah had a substantial racing lead as she brought her final checkers around. But then Kashic rolled 66 to escape the back checkers, followed by 33 and 55 on their next two rolls, while Leah was throwing small numbers. Suddenly Kashic had the advantage, with most of their checkers on the 1-4 point, a gap on the 5, and a small stack on the 6, while Leah had a nice even spread across her board. It was all up to the dice at this point, but Kashic kept rolling big and Leah kept rolling small. Nothing you can do at that point – congratulations to Kashic for winning the 2024 Women’s Championship!

In the Men’s Championship, we did also have some absentee-ism. Somewhat as predicted, Aggi did NOT fly in from Hawaii to play. The draw would have set him against Paul, so Paul ended up with the first round bye. Dave and Bodger faced off, as did Joel and Gary. Both Dave and Joel won those matches. In round 2, Dave faced off against Paul, and Joel sat down against Tim (who, of course, had a first-round bye from winning two of the qualifiers…) Dave and Paul were at the table next to me, so I was able to watch the score going up as they played, and Dave came out on top! Meanwhile, Tim squeaked out a victory over Joel, and so Tim and Dave went on to play the final! Ultimately, Dave came out on top, and so congratulations to Dave for winning the 2024 Men’s Championship AND 2024 Player of the Year!

Additionally, we did have a handful of players who had not qualified show up for the knock-out jackpots – plus Bodger joined in after his first-round loss. Congrats to Kyle, Steve H, and Bodger for winning one each of those.

First regular tournament of 2025 is coming up in just a week – see you there!

-Mark

We had a great turnout for today’s event – 23 players. When I was setting out to do the draw, there were 21, and so I pressed Nicki (Howard’s daughter) into playing so that we would have an even number. 8 minutes later, the 23rd player arrived, just as I was finishing the draw. But a 7 person bracket pays better than a 6 person bracket, so no harm done.

There were 8 players who took at least 1 side pool, so we had a full “A” bracket. In round 1, Tim beat me (lucky bastard), Larry beat newcomer Brandon (who I then played in consolation, very good player), Howard took out Ed, and Bodger defeated Dave. Howard went on to win the bracket over Tim, with Larry winning the consolation.

In the “B” bracket, Mary won in the first round against Julie, Nicki took out newcomer Celia (who was there with Stephen as part of his birthday celebration), Mark A beat Nathan, and Leah defeated Brian. In the end, Mark A triumphed over Mary in the final, with Celia coming back to win the consolation.

In the “C” bracket, round 1 had Joel winning over Stan, Stephen (the newcomer and birthday boy) beating out Steve (returning after an extended medical leave), and Jeremy (like me, fresh back from Miami) over newcomer Mark H. Matt got there late, and got the bye. In the end, Jeremy won over Joel, with Steve taking the consolation in a rematch against Stephen.

Many questions were asked about when the next event would be, and I promise to get an update about that out soon.

WordPress is giving me issues with adding pictures, so I won’t show you the position from my match against Brandon where I ought to have doubled (and he ought to have passed), but instead I played on. Worked out for somebody… 

-Mark

I spent last weekend across the country, at the inaugural Miami Open backgammon tournament. Jeremy (who appears to be going to every ABT event, anywhere) was also there; but Paul (who could have turned it into a combo family reunion) was not. Anyway – this was by far the largest backgammon tournament that I have ever attended, with well over 200 players. That was quite amazing.

There were a few other things that made this different from other ABT events as well. The director was Arda, who runs most of the biggest tournaments in Europe, including the Monte Carlo World Championship, and we used his rules (no dice on checkers, “responsible moves” instead of “legal moves” (aka you do not have to tell your opponent if they play illegally in a way that benefits you)) instead of the standard USBGF rules. Also, for some reason, they were not using the USBGF OTS to manage, so no automatic text messages when your opponent was set, etc.

Given the size of the event, and the fact that it was the organizer’s first ABT, there were significant hiccups getting things started. Jen came with me for this one, on grounds that Miami would be a nicer destination than most ABT events, and we took a red-eye flight, landing Thursday morning. The last entry time for the jackpot was supposed to be 11:00, but it took until closer to 1:00 for me to get registered and into the drawing. Friday morning, with the start of the ABT, was a repeat of the day before. Round 1 did start sort of on time, around 11:00, but they were supposed to have rebuys playing by 1:00 and they did not get them started until after 3:00, which set everything back by hours. I won my first round (against Tommy Tallarico, winner of the Intermediate in Monte Carlo and eventual winner of the Miami Intermediate as well, meaning I gave him his only defeat of the weekend…), and so ended up waiting until 7:00 for round 2. In a case of “ice the kicker”, I then lost two in a row, dropping myself into the Last Chance, which did not start until Sunday.

Saturday we went and did some tourist stuff, although I did go back in late afternoon/early evening and get a couple of matches in (losing both). Jeremy was waiting around for his first round opponent in the Juniors event, which had a cut-off of 55. At some point, the director made a call for anyone who wanted to take the spot of Jeremy’s opponent (whose no-show was holding up the whole bracket), and no-one accepted. She then asked if anyone who was 56 wanted it, and I jumped up. Yes, she checked my ID. There were a bunch of jokes about getting fake IDs for the purpose of BG tournaments. Anyway, Jeremy smoked me in that match, and I gave up for the day.

Sunday, I did have a good run in the Last Chance. I won up until the semi-final, when I once again got hit by “ice the kicker” – there was an hour and half delay between my next-to-last and last match, because they had told my opponent that it didn’t have to start until 4:00, and no-one had his contact info. But, we hedged, and so I got at least part of my entry fees back.

 

Overall, no regrets – Miami was a beautiful spot to visit in November, and I am counting this as my first “international” tournament. 🙂

We had a mixed turnout for the 4th and final 2024 Backgammon Championship Qualifier — 11 men came out for the Men’s division, and (initially) 0 women came out for the Women’s. Part of the idea behind these events was and is to encourage more women’s participation in competitive backgammon, and so I was a little disappointed in that. But, I reached out to Kashic and let her know that if she stopped by, that she would place into the Championship by default, and she hoofed it over as quickly as possible. And then by chance Nicki was dropping off her father for the Men’s event, and I asked her if she also wanted to win by default. So we will, at least, put out a full field in the Women’s 2024 Championship.

In the Men’s, with an odd number of players, I had a first round bye and a third round bye – Howard got the first round one and Dave got the third round one. Among the matches that got played, here’s what went down:

Round one had Paul (looking to defend his 2023 title) against Joel (looking to get a bye since he already had a spot), Andres against Gary (also looking to get a bye), Dave (not content with his near lock on Player of the Year) against Larry, Bryan (second event in a row!) against Mark A, and me against Phillip (first event in like 2 years!). In each pairing, the first player listed won. By weird coincidence that is actually the order that everyone is listed on the scoresheet… Anyway, flush with my success in round 1, I immediately crashed and burned in round 2. Round 3 had Howard against Paul, in a closely fought and much watched match – Paul took the lead early, and Howard almost came back; but in the end Paul and Dave sat down to finish the bracket off. I left around this time, but it was reliably reported to me that it was a wild match with a lot of back and forth, getting to DMP and coming down to a few crazy swings in that game. Congrats to Paul on the win and to Dave on getting into the Championship.

Here’s a fun position that came up in my first game of the day. Score is 0-0 in a match to 7, and I am thinking about cubing from the bar!

It’s always fun to cube from the bar, but it’s not always right. Running the position through XG++ came up with it as a No Double — by -0.001. Roll-out says it is a double, though. In other words, it’s darn close on whether it was right or not from the bot’s perspective, but that makes it a slam dunk genius fun double from the human perspective. It is, of course, an easy take, and in fact my photo of the position has a blur of Phillip’s hand snatching it up. It did end up working out for me, too.

Anyway, the 2024 Championships are being scheduled – I have already heard back from 5 people with their availability, and will get it on the calendar once I hear from the rest. The players are:

For the Women’s Championship: Julie (with a bye in round 1), Paola, Leah (with a bye in round 1), Andrea, Kashic, and Nicki.

For the Men’s Championship: Bodger, Tim (with a bye in round 1), Gary, Joel, Aggi (will he fly back from Hawaii for this? time will tell), Paul, and Dave.

As with last year, there will be a concurrent non-Championship event, so it should be a good time. Look for the event to appear on meetup sooner than later!

-Mark

We had a good turnout for this month’s regular tournament – 19 players converged on the Lucky Lab for an afternoon of backgammon. 

I ended up splitting the group into 3 brackets – originally 6 each, but I did put the straggler into the “C” bracket with a first round bye, so that’s how it rolled. 

In the “A” bracket, a/k/a the bracket where most people put up for at least one side pool, in round 1, Mark A won over Ed, Dave beat out Bodger, and I won over Larry D. Mark and I ended up playing for first, leading to some joking about “may the best Mark win”. Whether that happened or not is arguable. Larry ended up winning the consolation bracket.

In the “B” bracket, in round 1, Nathan beat Matt H, Mary won over Francesca, and Kyle got past Julie. Kyle ended up winning the bracket, with Mary (who says she hasn’t played since the Denver ABT, that is the 2022 one…) coming in second. Francesca won the consolation bracket, not bad for only her second tournament…

In the “C” bracket, round 1, Tim won over Brian (back for the first time in a year+), Joel beat newcomer Matt S, and (in an unfortunate chance of the draw), newcomer couple Sue and Larry G were pitted against one another. In the end, Joel won the bracket over Tim, with Brian taking the consolation bracket.

I recorded my matches, but I have not transcribed them yet- I’m saving that for Tuesday night, so I have something to do at a time when, as I understand it, nothing else is going on. I might be misinformed on that. Fingers crossed, we’ll get through that and get to all play together again soon – maybe at the final Women’s & Men’s Championship Qualifier, coming up on the 17th. We’ve been getting around 18 players per Qualifier all year, and I expect this one to be about the same – should be exciting!

-Mark

We had 6 players from the Portland Metro Backgammon Club attend the Wild West Shootout in Denver, Colorado this year – the most Portland representation at an ABT event ever, I believe. In addition to myself, people attending included Paul Swain, Dave Cohen, Jeremy Krieger, Bodger Millerd, and Leah Nash. 

People arrived on different days, and most everyone was there before me. On Wednesday, Paul took part in the BMAB event, placing 7th on PR, a decent showing. Paul and Bodger both also took part in the Early Shootout.

On Thursday, Leah got her first ABT experience in the Annie Oakley Shootout, getting a couple of matches under her belt. 

Friday is when I got in. After an early flight, I grabbed lunch at the airport and was getting the text message for my first round opponent in the Gunslinger Jackpot as the Lyft pulled into the parking lot of the hotel. I went straight to the playing room, and lost my first round match against Sabine, who went on to win 2nd in that event. After that, I got checked in, and then Leah and I signed up for Doubles. We did pretty well, making it to the round before cashing, and hedging at that point so we got our entry fees back. Our opponents recorded the match, and we did actually outplay them, but that’s backgammon for you.

Paul and Jeremy played in the Bison Jackpot, and Bodger and Dave were also in the Gunslinger. Leah played in the Warriors Jackpot, so we had the full field covered. Most people made it further than me, but this ended up being Paul’s best event of the weekend – he ultimately took 2nd in the Bison Jackpot, facing off against Brandon Macklin, who came in 2nd in the World Championships earlier this year. Well done, Paul!

Saturday the main events started, with Paul and Jeremy covering the Bison, Dave, Bodger, and I covering the Gunslinger, and Leah in the Warriors. Round 1 saw Paul knocked down to the 2nd bracket level, but everyone else still undefeated. Round 2 saw Dave and Bodger take their first losses, and then they were pitted against one another in the Main Fighter’s bracket. I was having incredible luck – in two different matches I won a doubled backgammon for 6 points (in a race to 9). At the end of the day, both Leah and I were still undefeated in our brackets, meaning we were guaranteed at least cash!

Sunday, I was a bit of a wreak. Sleep deprived and over caffeinated, I played a few 5-point Blitz matches, losing all of them. Eventually, I decided I needed to not be playing for a while. I watched the stream of Paul’s final in the Bison JP and periodically wandered back to the playing room to watch the score on Leah’s final. She was playing Mary, who we had faced off against in the Doubles Thursday night, so at least a known quantity. I know it makes her nervous to have people watching, so I didn’t want to join the small crowd hovering around that one. 

Finally, the Fighter’s bracket resolved and I got to face my opponent – Ron Bruns. I’ve played Ron a half-dozen times at different events, and so I knew his style, which helped settle my nerves. While I was about half-way through the match (there was a lot of back and forth), both Paul and Leah were wrapping up. Leah ended up taking 2nd, which is a great showing for her first ABT event! Congratulations, Leah!

And in the end, I did pull off the win. I was, of course, recording the match, and Ben (the tournament co-director) had asked me to promise to post it to YouTube, which I said of course. But sadly, the camera died somewhere about 70% of the way through the match! I have no record at all of the last 3 games. Very frustrating. What I did have recorded was some damn sloppy backgammon play – both Ron and I were running on fumes at that point. 

Still, a win is a win, and I am pleased – not just with how I did, but with how the club overall did. It was great to see the mutual support throughout, and I think we really made an impression on the other attendees as Portland having a strong club. 

Dan, the Denver producer/co-director, will be coming to Portland in March for our BMAB event, and so stay tuned for more information on that!

Oh, I almost forgot to mention – Jeremy ended up winning the After Tourney. So between the 6 of us, we took home cash in 4 events – plus Paul and I happened to pick up the Bison winner in the Calcutta. Dave has expressed his regrets about not getting an equity swap set up. But at least he got paid out on his Calcutta buy-back due to my win. You’re welcome, Dave. 🙂

-Mark