We had a good start to our 2024 tournament series this afternoon. 16 people braved the (falling) rain, (melting) snow, and (also melting) ice to come out to Lucky Lab for the event. 16 makes 2 perfect 8 person brackets, which makes my life so much easier for keeping things running, I greatly appreciate it when we manage to arrive in multiples of 8…
In the “A” bracket, round 1 saw Mir face off against Bodger, Jeremy (fresh back from cashing in the New York ABT tournament) against Dave (2022 and 2023 Player of the Year, remember), me against Tim T (who came to spend time playing with his daughter, but they ended up in different brackets, so their playing together had to wait), and Andres (with a fancy new board he brought back from Peru) against Kyle. First player mentioned won in each pairing, as usual. After some quite serious backgammon, Jeremy won the bracket, with me taking second, and Dave winning the consolation bracket.
In the “B” bracket, round 1 had Buzz (newcomer and apparently a professional pool player?!?) against Mark A, Leah against Sarah T (who came to spend time playing with her father, but they ended up in different brackets, so their playing together had to wait), Tim E against Shayan (our other newcomer, who did quite well in spite of not having used the doubling cube before!), and Julie against Joel. Once again the first mentioned player in each pair won that round. In the final, Leah took it away from Tim E, while Julie went on to win the consolation bracket.
I took a bunch of pictures, in support of our club’s new Instagram account. (Did you know that we now have an Instagram account? We now have an Instagram account.) Including this one, the two bracket champions celebrating their early lead in the race for Player of the Year.
Our next regular tournament is coming up on February 18th, and the first Championship Qualifier is coming up on March 2nd. RSVP through meetup today, and I will see you there, then!
-Mark