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