Month: May 2024

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