Month: January 2025

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, Howard over Dave C, 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