We had a nice turnout for today’s Tour of Patios – 15 players came out – although Leah technically arrived too late to play in a tournament, she got into some good chouette action. Congratulations to Joel, Bodger, Larry, Jim, and Pete for winning a bracket each.
Andres decided that bringing just his kids wasn’t enough, and brought his parents as well this time. His mom kicked my butt, winning 5-0 in our match! They are truly a backgammon family to watch out for…
Newcomer Chris did respectably, making it to the final of his bracket, and staying to observe the chouette action afterwards. And he bought one of the t-shirts. Did you know we still have t-shirts available? It’s true, but the stock is beginning to dwindle. Funds from the t-shirt sales go to support the group’s meetup charges and the blog hosting fees, so ask me for one if you don’t already have one…
We have one more Tour event coming up in a couple of weeks, then next month we return to the fall version of our regular tournament series. I got the third championship qualifier onto the calendar as well – the fourth will likely be in November, with the championship ideally in December. So sign up for those!
We had a decent turnout for today’s Tour of Patios – 11 players came out, and we managed to run 4 full 4-person brackets. The pace has been falling off as the summer has progressed – Tour of Patios #1 had 7 full brackets, #2 had 5 full brackets, and now just 4…
I haven’t been keeping up on posting results, so this will actually memorialize the first three events.
Our first event was at Victoria, and we had brackets won by Nathan, Tim, Dave, Leah, Bodger, Howard, and Joel. We had several newcomers/long gap returners – Suzi (who was from out of town), Kyle L, Zach, Pete, Janelle, and Chris, plus a lot of the usual suspects. It was a shockingly cold day for this one, and thank goodness Victoria’s has overhead heaters, although it would have been nice if they had a setting lower than thermonuclear.
The second event was at The Hilt, and we had brackets won by Pete (at his second event…), Bodger (twice!), Joel, and me. Kyle L, Janelle, and Chris made their second (ever or in a long while) appearances as well, plus Noah who hasn’t been in an age. I had copies of my book for sale at this one, and many people picked one up – thank you all. Plus Janelle and Chris bought a t-shirt, which supports the club, and so thank you for that as well.
Today’s event was at Bar Bar, incorrectly labeled as Mississippi Station on meetup. We had brackets won by Julie, Larry, Leah, and Howard. Today’s newcomers were Logan (who picked up a t-shirt as well), and Jeff, who learned about the group from seeing Paul on Jeopardy! Turns out that was some effective advertising for backgammon and our group that Paul did there – everyone should be on notice that any national television time they get I expect you to mention the club if you can. Thank you in advance.
Here’s a position that came up in my match against Julie – you know, the one where she crushed me to win the bracket. Things were going her way, and she rolled well, but felt conflicted about the right move to play.
She was looking at three moves. The first was 13/3, the quiet play. The second was 8/4 8/2, also quiet but also constructive, although it gives up her landing point on her 8 point. And the third was 11/5* 8/4, the bold play. She said she had Howard’s voice in her head, saying “Don’t be scared, don’t be scared”, but also her own voice in her head, saying “Don’t be stupid, don’t be stupid!” Ultimately, she went with one of the quiet plays, which is good, because the bold play is a massive blunder! It never hurts to look at a play, unless you talk yourself into it. Well played, Julie.
Next one will be in just a couple of weeks, August 9th, at The Zipper. See you there!
The site was, alas, down for a month or so due to a MySQL migration that I did not plan for, so sorry to all of you who were getting error messages. The big news (in my opinion) while the site was down is – my book is now published! If you haven’t heard, I wrote Rigged Dice: A Backgammon Adventure, along with the companion Solution Manual. Currently, the only two ways to get a copy are:
a) Contact me in person, or
b) Go to Amazon: Rigged Dice and Solution Manual respectively. Amazon knows you want to add both to your cart, so… Go get it!
Welcome to the Portland Backgammon Club. Also known as the Vancouver, Washington Backgammon Club, since I happen to live across the river. Anyhoo: this site is being set up to be the new home for backgammon in the Portland (Oregon) metro area. The intent is to use this website mainly as a place to put out information about tournaments in the Portland area. Depending on how organized this all becomes, it is a central online location for calendars, announcements, etc.
My history: I’ve been in the area for a couple of years, and playing with the Portland meetup.com group. The problems with that are:
Many people join it not out of an interest in backgammon per se, but just because they’re signing up for every possible meetup game group. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it doesn’t lend itself to developing a core of local backgammon players.
Meetup has an unreasonable pricing structure for groups over 50, when they are mainly an email distribution tool and there are other options.
So. This is a work in progress, but if you’re a backgammon player in the Portland area, stick around. We’ll build something good.
