Portland/Vancouver Backgammon

We had a great turnout for today’s monthly backgammon tournament – 16 players came out on a sunny and gorgeous first day of fall. People were split between indoors and the patio all day, and although I was inside I think the folks on the patio had the right idea.

In the “A” bracket, first round had Dave over Mark A, Larry over Leah (breaking her undefeated streak for the year, aww…), Cam over Kyle, and me over Bodger. In the final, Cam beat me down in 2 games – winning a single (that he could have cubed me out of much earlier than he actually did) followed by a doubled gammon win. Larry fought through to win the Consolation bracket, although somewhat by default, since Dave had to leave for another obligations and so conceded the bracket. Drinks on Larry next time!

In the “B” bracket, first round had Nathan over Stephanie (back after some years hiatus, and raring to go!), Joel over Ceci, Ed over newcomer Francesca, and Brian (back after some years hiatus, and tentatively committed to not waiting that long until the next one) over newcomer Dave G (who drove up from southern Oregon, winning the “longest commute” prize). In the final, Joel ended up winning over Brian. Nathan and Stephanie had a rematch in the final of the consolation, with (alas for Stephanie!) the same result.

There was a lot of excitement and discussion about the rapidly approaching Denver Open – at this point I believe 7 Portland based players will be in attendance, the biggest showing from our club at an ABT event ever! I am looking forward to it, for sure. To add to the excitement, I’m considering counting any head-to-head Portland matches from there towards the Player of the Year contest. Speaking of which, yes, Dave still has that almost on lock – he currently has a record of 28 wins/16 loses (I did not count the forfeit in the consolation today), giving him an impressive net 12 wins. Leah is still not far behind, with 11 wins/2 loses for a net 9, and Cam is right behind her with 12 wins/5 loses for a net 7. If Dave pulls off the three-peat, next year might have an exclusion clause added to the contest, or add a “Player of the Year Who Isn’t Dave” trophy as well…

It was a lovely afternoon of play, and I hope to see everyone back for our next tournament in a mere 2 weeks – for the rest of the year, the tournament is the FIRST Sunday of the month to avoid conflicts with any holidays.

We had a good turnout for the third championship qualifier – 15 people turned out for a long afternoon of backgammon.

As usual, Dave was there early, and we played  a short match ‘for his entry fee’, which he won. That one, sadly for Dave, does not count towards the Player of the Year competition, because it was the only match he won that day.

In the Men’s bracket, Tim was playing flawlessly, in spite of having eye troubles – he has a detached retina, which apparently prevented him from seeing bad moves. But when it came to the finals, Tim had to give way to Aggi, who – drumroll – is from Hawaii and is perhaps unlikely to make it back for the actual Championship. Aggi was in town visiting his son, Tyson, who hasn’t been to a meetup in a while but made a respectable showing himself at this event.

In the Women’s bracket, Leah extended her undefeated streak for the year, beating Andrea in the final, but nonetheless securing Andrea a spot in the Championship for the second year in a row.

So if you’re tracking this from home, in the Women’s, we currently have Julie and Leah, both with a first-round bye, and Andrea and Paola qualified, with 2 spots left to go. In the Men’s, we currently have Tim with a first-round bye, Joel and Bodger, and Aggi (from Hawaii) and Gary (did not leave his contact info). So on the Men’s side, I think I actually only have 4 spots filled. I do not know how I am going to handle that – who knows, maybe both Aggi and Gary will show for it… Time will tell!

I have been lazy with doing the tournament results the past few months – several people have asked me about that over the ToP. But to make up for it, here is a full summer recap for you all.

ToP #1 was a modest event – 7 people showed up at the Victoria. That was not quite enough to run 2 brackets, but somehow Dave and Steve finished their first round match in under 5 minutes, and so I had a re-buy to make two full brackets, which were won by Cam and Bodger. It was slightly too hot out that day, one of the other people visiting the bar had a dog who was laying out like it was being baked, which was an exaggeration to be sure. So not the strongest start to the Tour, but not terrible.

ToP #2 was more well attended – 8 whole players. This one was at a new place, the Hilt, which was a good location for it. Three additional people showed up but did not get into the tournament – a couple of guys who ended up playing casual against one another, and one latecomer who I played some heads up after crapping out early. Mark A and Joel won the two brackets for this one.

ToP #3 was the low point of the tour. Hinterland was nice enough, but the patio portion was very crowded, and it was legit HOT. Like, hot enough that Dave was complaining about the heat. We ended up playing a single bracket, in the small indoor (and air conditioned) space they had available. But this one did mark the return of Kyle to the playing field, which was great. Dave won the bracket. Leah showed up late, and a chouette broke out, so it was a fairly full afternoon of play.

ToP #4 was a smashing success. The Zipper is a good location, we’ll definitely have it on the Tour again next summer. 13 people came out for this one, and we managed 5 and 1/2 brackets (Jeremy & Dave played the half bracket, that is, a single heads up match, which Jeremy won). The full 5 brackets were won by Dave, Gary, me, Cam, and Tim. Aside from some arguments about whether the fried chicken sandwich could be beat by other places in town, it was a very congenial afternoon and a lot of fun.

ToP #5 was a return to APEX, which I slightly regretted – the extra travel time and the relatively scarce parking had me grousing about not doing it there again. And we won’t – turns out they are closing shop at the end of the month! I regret my churlish attitude. The event started out with shade being at a premium, and ended with a short cloudburst making us think better of starting a chouette. But it was another very well attended event – 13 players again, with 5 full brackets, which were won by Kyle, Steve, Jeremy, Dave, and Nick.

Here’s a position which came up in my match against Paul (in what looks like his first tournament appearance of 2024? Paul, were you not at the Portlandia at least? Oh right, Chicago…) – we played a one game match, which, naturally, means the cube decisions were important (which, naturally, they usually are). First position that I took a picture of was here, where Paul (having taken my cube fairly early in the game) had definitely turned things around, and offered to keep playing as long as it was for 4 points:

So I’m on the bar, he’s about to either make another point or flood the outfield with checkers so that I will have a hard time bringing the straggler home. But – that’s all I have to do, is bring a straggler off the bar and around. It’s a really big double. Is the take correct? I honestly don’t know. XG says it is a pass, GnuBG and BGBlitz say it is a take, even on roll-out for all three bots. XG sees a lot more gammon losses for me than the other two (17.4/15.7/12.9% respectively), they more closely agree on the win percentages (74.2/72/70% respectively). So if I was playing XG, I should definitely drop. But I was playing Paul (which is close to the same thing but friendlier), so I took. Which is a blunder against XG on roll-out.

From there, things just got silly, the way single checkers trying to move around the board can do. Paul ended up volunteering a shot bearing in, trying to prevent me getting out and correctly realizing he’d have no trouble re-entering if hit. But he was hit, then I was, then he was, and when the dust settled, we got to this position, where I had to stop and consider raising the cube to 8:

One way to think about this one is, what rolls leave me too good? Double 6 and 5 get me all the way in the clear, which is a lot to hope for. Double 4 is blocked, as is double 2 (partially). Double 3 and double 1 both are improvements. Then there’s just a lot of numbers that leave me in my outfield, dodging a single shot to be winning. I went for it, raising the cube to 8. Turns out this was the moment – very close double, huge take. I proceeded to roll a 21, Paul somehow missed it, I came around, he missed me again, and I pulled off the win. Short match, but exciting!

For the rest of the year, we’re moving back to Lucky Lab, starting with the Championship Qualifier #3 on September 14th – hope to see you there!

-Mark

We had a fabulous turnout for this special tournament — 15 players showed up for the High Roller, and 12 for the Low Roller event. The majority of players were from Portland, but we had a good turnout from Seattle, Bellingham, Eugene, and even further beyond.

I got to Lucky Lab about 10 til noon, and found at least a dozen people already waiting for the place to open. Registration took until about 12:15, then we got off to the races. I’m not going to run through the whole brackets, but it was amazing to see basically the whole room taken over by backgammon boards.

The High Roller ended up being dominated by Seattle players, in an ironic reversal of the Seattle Winter Classic, where Dave and I took 1st/2nd. In the Portlandia, the winner was Alex, with Molly taking second. In the consolation bracket, Dave redeemed Portland, keeping Pete from sweeping the prize money for the bracket.

The Low Roller was dominated by locals, but because of the byes, it ended up with a number of people sitting around a long time between matches. Bodger ended up winning the bracket over Julie, who was nonetheless happy after clawing her way back to a 9-7 loss from an 8-1 deficit. In the consolation bracket, Buzz won out over Nathan, playing in extended overtime — I left as they got started a little after 7:00 pm. So it was a very long day of backgammon!

I recorded most of my matches, although the camera randomly died partway through the last one. However, I vividly remember one position from the last game, which did not manage to get recorded. This was my match against Pete in the consolation bracket. I dominated the first few games, and was leading 4-0 in our match to 7. Pete doubled me early in the last game, and I took, and managed to turn it around to get to this really dominant position.

There are a few things that can go wrong from me here – but 22 out of 36 rolls for me are amazing. 85% of the time, I win from here, 67% of the time I win a gammon. But just in case, I figured I should just go ahead and cash. But Pete took the cube, and threw it back to me on his next turn…

Obviously, if you take this cube, you’re going to give it back. I should have thought harder about offering it. This was a fun one — the technical analysis of my action was “Too good to redouble – take”. I then rolled a 65, leaving a return shot. Pete recubed me to 8, and I took (properly). Pete then did the critical thing, of rolling a 4. He proceeded to close out his board, and win the game and the match.

All in all, a great day of lots of backgammon – and we’re doing it again in just about a week with the Championship Qualifier #2 on Sunday June 2nd. Hope to see you there!

-Mark

We had a great turnout for this month’s regular tournament – 19 players came out to play. It’s an odd number, so there was a little bit of creativity involved in setting the brackets – especially because one person showed up late… But we made it all work!

I arrived a little after noon, to find about a half-dozen people already playing warm-up matches. That’s how it has been going lately – the maniacs show up early to get extra play.

I put 8 people into the “A” bracket, although only 5 of them were in the side pools. Round 1 had Kristina (down from Tacoma) over Bodger, me over Tim (back from Hawaii), Dave over Chris (returning for his first match of the year), and Jeremy (back from about 8 ABT events) over Mir. In the end, (double checks my notes) Dave won the bracket over Jeremy, and I beat out Kristina for the consolation bracket.

I put 10 people into the “B” bracket, because it did not seem reasonable to split into a third bracket. I might have come to regret that… Anyway, in round 1, Bob H (first time at a tournament, but he’s been to a number of the casual meetups) beat out Julie, Leah beat out Matt T (first tournament of the year for him), Steve beat newcomer Stan, Mark A won over Joel, and Matt H beat Noah (another newcomer). After we were underway, Fariba arrived, unfortunately she had been delayed by the construction and/or movie shoot that was in the area. I ended up slotting her into the consolation bracket to help smooth out the bracket. In the end, Leah won the bracket over Bob H, continuing her undefeated streak for the year! The consolation bracket ended up with Joel versus Julie, so at least they understood one another’s game pretty well. Joel won that one.

A small chouette broke out, and lots of post-tournament pick-up games were played. All in all, it was a great afternoon of backgammon, and it was great to see so many new players and welcome back so many people who hadn’t been around for a bit. A lot of excitement was expressed around next weekend’s “Portlandia Invitational” – I am definitely looking forward to it. Check our instagram for a picture of the prize cup for the event!

I was asked what the standing is for the Player of the Year cup. If you are not familiar, this is a trophy that goes to the person with the highest tournament wins minus losses count for the year. I picked that metric because it rewards both consistently showing up and playing well, and also showing up less frequently but really dominating when you do. At the moment, there is a tie for the race, showing both strategies — Dave has made to every event so far, with a 68% win rate for a net 8 wins, while Leah has only made it to 3 events, but has 100% win rate for also a net 8 wins! We’ll see how the rest of the year develops – lots of room for others to catch up!

Here’s a position that came up in my match against Jeremy, in our first game (so 0-0 in match to 5). A few moves before, I had (correctly) doubled him, and he had (correctly) taken. Then he rolled a double 6, radically changing the situation. Another sequence or two, and he offered me a 4 cube.

I spent a considerable amount of time thinking about this one. For doubling situations, I like to use the Keith Count, a method for adjusting for gaps and wastage. According to the Keith Count, this is a small-ish pass – if there was just 1 pip less of a gap in the race it would be a take. But I talked myself into taking it anyway. This was not a small mistake – it was a -0.188 double blunder! The Keith Count is best when you’re talking about money games, and I did not make the necessary adjustments for this being a match. Not that I understand those adjustments well – but roughly: if Jeremy wins, we go on to play the Crawford game. That’s almost as good as just winning the match. I still have almost 25% chance of winning this game, but if I do turn it around (say he rolls something that only gets off 1 checker, and I roll double 5, and then he again rolls poorly), I can recube him to 8 but he will still have a take. So mostly, he gets to the Crawford game, and when he doesn’t, he gets to a position where he can take my recube to 8, meaning he still has good odds of winning the match. That’s a pretty weak position for me. If it was a longer match, I would have a take; but as is…

Hope to see many of you again this coming Saturday at noon for the Portlandia!

-Mark

We had a fabulous showing for this month’s tournament – 17 players came out on a sunny and almost warm afternoon to play some gammon. Well, technically 18 players came out, but newcomer Molly was, alas, almost an hour late, and I could not fit her into the brackets. Next time! She did get to play some pick-up with people waiting for their tournament matches to start, so not a total loss.

Joel generously brought his collection of backgammon books to the meetup, and gave them all away! I personally grabbed a copy of a Magriel book that I hadn’t seen before. The pile disappeared very quickly, people were excited about it for sure. Thanks, Joel, for your generosity!

Anyway, 17 made for two 8 person brackets, plus one extra. In the “B” bracket, I had Cam wait for a match to finish as the “play-in”, and took it from there. It all worked out. The first round matches were newcomer Fred (a/k/a Jeremy A’s dad) against Larry C, Bodger against Steve, Jeremy A against Nathan, and Julie against newcomer Luke. In each listing, the first player won the match. Bodger and Steve were the first to finish, and so were punished by being the play-in round. Fred and Jeremy did have to face off at one point as well, much to their mutual consternation. Truly this is the cruelest game. Ultimately Cam won the bracket, over Jeremy, with Luke taking the consolation bracket in a rematch against Julie.

In the “A” bracket, round 1 had Ed against Matt H, Buzz against Dave, Neil against Joel, and me against Mir. Again, the first listed player won that round. In the end, Buzz won the bracket over Ed, with Mir taking the consolation bracket.

This is a position that came up in my second round match against Ed. It’s the second game, only a handful of moves in, and as you can see, it has gotten messy.

I found myself overwhelmed by the number of options on this one. With the exchange of hits, I was down in the race – at the time I assumed I was down even more than this. Obviously the 2 could be used to cover the blot on my 4 point, but then the 6 wasn’t clear to me. Alternatively, I considered making Ed’s bar point with 24/18 20/18 or making Ed’s 5 point with 22/20 and again being unclear on the 6. Ultimately I went with making Ed’s bar point. Big mistake! Covering the blot on the 4, and then moving any of the back checkers, was the right move according to the bots. The reason I was confused about the 6 was that it didn’t much matter – best was 22/16, worst was 20/14, but 6/4 20/14 is only -0.015 equity lost. Sometimes when you’re confused about what move is best, it’s because there isn’t a lot of difference!

Anyway, it was a fun afternoon, in spite of the gradually dropping temperatures, and we all had a lot of fun. Hope to see you all again at the next one!

-Mark

I was pleased to be invited by Leah to be her partner in the 3rd annual WWB Mixed Doubles Tournament. We had our first (and final) match today, after an extended delay trying to coordinate a match against our opponents, who were from Romania, which is 9 hours time zone difference. The original schedule was to play on the first Tuesday night of the month, 7:00 pm Eastern, 4:00 pm Pacific, 1:00 am Romania. They (understandably) did not want to play at 1:00 am, and so we were going to find another, more mutually agreeable time; but as the month went on, deadline pressure meant we ended up playing on the last Tuesday night of the month, 7:00 pm Eastern, 4:00 pm Pacific, 1:00 am Romania.

After resolving some technical difficulties, we got underway. Game 1 started off rough. 4 of our first 8 rolls were a 21, the smallest possible roll. It wasn’t much easier for the Romanians – 3 of their first 8 rolls were also a 21. So, nothing was moving quickly. We did ok, getting a 4 point board, keeping one of their checkers trapped. But then they had two lucky rolls in a row, double 1’s and double 4’s, both in positions which were relatively easy to play, and so we were on the bar with a 31 to play.

We debated on this one for a while – it seemed clear to come in with the 3, because we didn’t want to have three checkers trapped on their ace point. But the 1 was harder – either 24/23 or something else. We could not reconcile ourselves to that, so instead we offered up 13/12, exposing a second blot. 24/23 was correct, and 13/12 was MASSIVELY wrong. They correctly doubled us.

It does not look good. We get hit by a lot of numbers, and when hit we lose a lot of gammons. We dropped, but with 33.5% wins, this was still a take! So between the checker blunder and the cube blunder, our error rate was very high for the game.

Game 2 was a short one, both teams running back checkers out pretty easily, and they had a couple of big doubles that put them up 28 pips in the race, 92 to 120, and they doubled us out.

Game 3, we had a double 5 blitz out the gate, and we offered an early cube:

This is actually a small no double and an easy take, I take full responsibility for this one, but I figured being down in the match score it was justifiable. For the next few moves, things were going pretty well for us, we kept hitting them, moving towards a close-out. On move 6, we had this 63 to play.

We spent a lot of time on this one. 13/7 is clear, we need more checkers down to cover the blot on the 2 point. The 3 is harder. We talked about 13/10, getting a third builder into the outfield, but that does not immediately help as we already have a checker on the 10 point. We talked about making the bar, 10/7, but that reduces the number of covering numbers for the 4 point. We ended up going with “the clever play”, 5/2, covering the blot but in a way that gives us two covering numbers for the new blot! And this is correct! 13/10 is also pretty good, but making the bar would have been pretty bad; so I am proud of us for finding this one.

But ultimately, we were not able to close them out, and had a bunch of blots spread around the board. Several of those got hit, and we ended up having to try to get 5 checkers back around after they escaped their back checkers. However, we had a lot of assets – we had a 5 point board, versus their 1 point board, and all it would take to get back into a dominant position was one hit. We did not get the hitting roll, but we felt pretty good about this double 4:

This was a tricky one. We were looking at two options, 20/16(2) 18/14(2), or 24/16 20/16(2). One of those is much better than the other. We went with moving everything to the 16 point, on the theory that we were up in the race, and so we should break contact. But the win is more likely to come from a hit, given our strong board! So we should have left the checker back on the 24 point for contact. From there, we did in fact break contact, but they rolled double 5’s followed by double 6’s, and there went our racing lead. They doubled us out, and now we were down 4-0.

In game 4, it took a little longer before I suggested throwing out the early cube – being even further down in match score making even a slight edge worth throwing it out.

We have three checkers back, they have one checker on the bar. We have a two point board, and high likelihood of making a third this roll. The race is very close. But the positional advantage and threats of closing them out does make this a good cube! It is also a big take, and they took easily.

A couple of rolls later, they had entered both their checkers, and we had an unfortunate 65 to play:

We saw and considered the correct move, 8/3* 8/2*, putting two back on the roof, and giving us a chance to finish the close out. But that felt like a big play, and it has the potential to backfire. But so does the play we went with, 11/6 8/2*! That was a -0.178 double blunder!

A bit further down the road of this game, things had resolved in the Romanian’s advantage. We had two checkers trapped on their deuce point, and a roll that did not help with that at all.

We felt like it was important to get the blot off the 13 point. But the bot disagrees – with the blot they have on their ace point, it is hard for them to hit. Our move, 18/15(2) 13/7, was a -0.107 blunder.

Fortunately, our next roll was a major bit of luck, double 5’s, which let us escape the back checkers and equalized the race. We were rolling towards a close finish, which ended with this position:

We were well positioned – I know the reference that if you have a checker on the 2 and a checker on the 5, you have just over 50% to get both off next roll. But 32, was not enough. We got one off, and the Romanians spent a fair amount of time thinking about whether or not to recube us, which gave us plenty of time to figure that once they realized they should double, we were going to drop. Which we (correctly) did.

From there, however, we started to really roar back. In the Crawford game we did not make any serious mistakes, and in spite of slightly worse luck than our opponents, we got our first win. In game 6, we doubled right away and they (correctly) dropped. In game 7, we also doubled right away, and they (correctly) took. We played another game without any serious mistakes, and now were only down 4-6.

In game 8, we once more doubled right away, and they (correctly) took. Things then immediately got kind of rocky for us, and we ended up making a couple of pretty serious blunders. First was this double 5 from the bar

The race is basically tied after this roll, and we went with Bar/5. But an even game is not enough for us, as we’re trailing in the match. We need something with some gammon potential, and breaking contact does the opposite. Bar/5 wins more often than the top move (Bar/20 13/3 8/3 or Bar/20 13/8 6/1(2) depending on which bot you believe), but the top moves win a lot more gammons, and gammons win us the match.

Luckily, the next move gave us the chance to head back into gammon territory with a double 3 to play:

13/10*(2) to start, for sure. Then Leah wanted to play 6/3(2), making another point on our home board. I wanted to play 10/7(2), making a small prime in front of the re-entering checker. My play wins more games, but Leah’s play wins more gammons; but for some reason she agreed to let me play the priming move, and so we had two major blunders in a row!

Fortunately, our next move after that was only an error, not a blunder. We didn’t make another blunder until the second move after that, when we had this 42 to play:

The alternatives we considered were 13/7, or 7/3* 5/3. There’s a bit of a running theme here – 13/7 wins more games, 7/3* 5/3 wins more gammons. Ah, well. We did, at least, win the game.

Which brought us to a tie score! 6-6 in a match to 7, here comes DMP! We were, by the way, at this point down to 42 seconds (!!!) in our time bank, and so we had to make a lot of pretty quick decisions. Nevertheless, our play in the final game was very good, no serious errors. Not to discount the Romanians, who also played that game near flawlessly! But they severely outrolled us – it turned into a one-sided double anchor holding game with us hoping for a shot as they bore their checkers in. And then an ace point game with us hoping for a shot as they bore their checkers off… And we did eventually get a shot! But we missed it.

That last position kind of summarizes the emotional feel of the whole match.

The Romanians took it back at the end, but it was closely fought. Their PR was better than ours, but I think they also had fewer tough decisions than we did, and our PR was nothing to be ashamed of. So all in all, I feel pretty content with the experience. I hope Leah invites me to join her again next year, and maybe we’ll have better luck (and opponents in a less challenging time zone). Thanks to Leah for dragging me into this, thanks to Karen & Nano from WWB for organizing, congrats to Dana & her confusingly named partner for a well played match, and thanks to you for reading all this!

-Mark

We had a fine showing for our March tournament – 15 players showed up on the first really warm Saturday of the year, foregoing the sunshine and refreshing breeze to instead play backgammon. Naturally, we moved out onto the patio, so we still were able to enjoy the warm air and the sound of passing motorcycles, etc.

15, as you might know, is an odd number, so it doesn’t lead to a perfect bracket. It gets slightly worse than that, because a couple of them had the wrong start time in mind, and didn’t show up until 2:00 or 2:30 (that was Steve “I’ll be about 30 minutes late” E…) So I had 13 as I did the bracket draw. Gene got the first round bye, but since he had somewhere else to go as an alternative, he just headed out, and so we were down to 12 players in the tournament, in two 6-person brackets.

In the “A” bracket, I faced off against Buzz in round 1, Tim E took on Leah, and Tim T drew Dave. In each pairing, the second person won the first match. In round 2, Leah got the bye, and Buzz rolled over Dave. Leah and Buzz faced off in the final, and in spite of some immediately regretted cube action, Leah took the prize! That makes Leah undefeated in all appearances this year, if you’re keeping track. Tim E went on to win the consolation bracket over Dave.

In the “B” bracket, Steve H played newcomer Tammy A (and they spent a lot of time talking strategy, since she’s a newer player and he’s a nice guy), Larry (in his first in person visit) played Ed, and Tim A (related to Tammy A, and so also a first-timer) played Cam. In each pairing, the first player listed ended up winning. In round 2, Steve got the bye and Larry beat out Tim A. In the final, Steve came out on top. Ed went on to win the consolation bracket over Tim A.

You’ll notice that 3 of our 12 players were named Tim, making this the most Tim-intensive backgammon tournament in the US for the weekend, I am pretty sure.

After my quick defeat, I got to play a pick-up match against Steve E and some heads up against Dave, so in spite of the poor showing in the tournament I still got a lot of backgammon in. As Dave and I were getting close to wrapping up, a lady leaving the bar let us know that we had been playing for hours, a very accurate description of the situation I have to say.

Thanks everyone who came out, and I hope to see you all again at our next tournament, scheduled for April 21st at (take note, JB and Steve E, and I guess the rest of you as well) 1:00 pm!

-Mark

We had a terrific turnout for this year’s first Championship Qualifier – 18 players came out for an afternoon of backgammon! We had 16 entries for the Men’s Championship but only 2 for the Women’s Championship. So congrats to both Julie and Paola for qualifying! But rather than having them just play a 21 point match to determine 1st/2nd, we just did it all as one jumbo bracket. This caused some concern about what would happen if one of them won, especially as Julie made it to the semi-final! Alas, or fortunately, or just as it happens, the two finalists were both people who identify as male, so we have two qualifiers for the Men’s Championship as well! But I’ll get to that.

With 18 players, we had to have a play-in match, so I punished Dave and Nathan for finishing their round 1 matches so quickly by making them the winners of the anti-buy. From there, we had an easy to manage 16 person bracket. Things moved along fairly well, although a couple of the first round matches ended up taking 2+ hours. I punished the winners of those matches by making them play a 5-point match in the next round in order to help catch up to the rest of the field. That worked, and we ended up with the final around 5:00, 4 hours into the day…

Most of the field were regulars (or at least semi-regulars), with 2 new players. First was Paola, one of our Women’s Championship qualifiers. In the first round, she faced off against Steve H, in one of the brutally long 2+ hour first round matches. When I went over to check on them, the score was 5-4, and it ended up going to 6-6, pretty much all single games, before she finally clenched it in the DMP game. The second new player was Gary, who (spoiler alert) is one of our Men’s Championship qualifiers. In the first round, he faced off against Ed, then he took on Dave in the second round (third round for Dave). I noticed Dave and Gary then talking for about the next hour while he waited for his next match.

For myself, I faced Bodger in the first round. We had an… interesting match. Our PRs suffered. Here’s a position that came up in our second game.

I did not count the race at this point, but clearly I am ahead. I was starting to worry about that. I can enter with the 6 and give Bodger a tenth checker back, or I can enter with the 2 and do something else. I decided that sending back the tenth checker was suspect, and instead played Bar/23 13/7, slotting a point I hoped to make next roll. Big mistake! The top 5 possible moves all include Bar/19*. After that, there are better and worse uses for the 2, but even the worst of those is better than my -0.191 mega-blunder.

I did go on to what was looking like a pretty good outcome, forcing Bodger off points on my homeboard and clearing from the rear, until I got to this unfortunate situation:

It took me a minute to play this one, as I told Bodger, not because it’s hard to see the move (there’s only one legal option), but because I needed to mourn. After 4/off 4/2*, Bodger responded with a 41, hitting both my blots, and then doubled me out. He then went on to win all the rest of the games, as part of his march towards the finals.

So I already mentioned that Gary made it to the finals, and now you know that Bodger did too. Bodger ended up winning, so congratulations!

We have our next regular tournament in a couple of weeks, on Saturday March 16th – normally we have the monthly tournaments on Sundays, but the 17th is St. Patrick’s day, and I figured it might be a little busier than usual at Lucky Lab that day. Hope to see you all there!

-Mark

We had an excellent turnout for this month’s event – 22 players showed up to compete, including 6 first timers! We really took over the space… as I was getting everyone settled, one guy who was not there for the event commented about it being quite a good show – I invited him to join in, but he had to demur, although he did take one of the fliers and so maybe we’ll get him next time. Also on the outreach theme – there was a couple who came to play with one another who ended up in the corner of the room – again they got a card and who knows, maybe they’ll come in the future. Also, one of the newcomers found us through a means other than Meetup, which is the first sign of our new push for greater social media presence paying off! Granted she came through Facebook instead of Instagram – it’s just a matter of time. I also got a lot of good feedback about the YouTube channel, so our social media game has really gotten strong!

A big thanks to Mark A, for doing a little bit of tournament maintenance at the outset making sure everyone was well set up, until a late arriving first timer took away what would otherwise have been his first round bye.

In the “A” bracket, we started off round 1 with Jeremy K (fresh back from his victories in the San Antonio ABT tournament) overcoming Bodger, me (fresh off my victories in the Seattle Winter Invitational) over Max (visiting from Seattle), Kyle over Dave (fresh off his victories in the Seattle Winter Invitational), and Michael G (exciting to see him in person again!) over Bob H (ditto!). Jeremy and I went on to face off in the final, and I narrowly defeated him. Dave ended up winning the consolation bracket over Bodger.

The “B” bracket ended up being the small one, with just 6 players, 4 of them first timers. This made it impossible for me to completely pair experienced with new, and so we had first-timer Alex playing first-timer Beebe – but that seemed to go alright. Also in round one we had first-timer Kristin (who by the way wins the award for most consistent participant in the recently concluded online study group) over Mir (who was late getting into the study group but made up for it by his track record once in), and Joel over first-timer Bob M. Kristin went on to win the final over Joel, with Mir taking the consolation bracket.

The “C” bracket started off with Cam over first-timer Neil, Ed over first-timer Gene, Tim T (without his daughter this month) over Julie, and first-timer (and later arriver) Jeremy A over Mark A. Ed went on to win the bracket over Cam, with Gene taking the consolation bracket.

So overall – 6 new players, and 2 of them cashed! We like first-timers to cash, makes them more enthusiastic to come back. But I got the sense that a number of them are going to become regulars – I believe it was Bob M telling me that he couldn’t bring his board this month because they hadn’t finished unpacking yet.

Our next event is going to be the first Championship Qualifier for 2024 – go to meetup and RSVP if you haven’t already. And our regular tournament for March will be pushed forward one day, so it falls on the Saturday before St. Patrick’s day instead of on St. Patrick’s day — just in case that impacts space availability. See you there!

-Mark