Month: December 2025

Well, that’s a wrap on 2025! We had 12 players come out for our final tournament of the year. I say “final”, but there’s a grey area – the 2025 Men’s Championship has yet to be played, but it is scheduled for January 10th, 2026; so I decided results from that event would count towards the Player of the Year chase for 2026, not 2025.

There were three newcomers at today’s tournament too, Bill, Jeff, and Karen. I slightly rigged the first round of the bracket to make sure they were each playing an experienced tournament player. So, round 1 had Joel playing Bill, Tim playing Jeff, Bodger playing Karen, and Mark A playing Steve H, with the first listed player winning in all cases. Jeff went on to do well in the consolation bracket, though, making it to the final. In the main bracket, Tim ended up winning over Mark A, while Bodger won the consolation.

In the high-rollers bracket, since there were only 4 players, we went with 7 point matches. Round 1, Dave beat me and Howard beat Larry. This was a big deal for Howard, he’s had poor luck against Larry all year. Howard then beat out Dave, and Larry beat Dave as well to take 2nd.

With that, we have a last minute twist in the race for Player of the Year! Leah had it all but locked up, with 12 net wins (that is, 14 wins in 16 matches, so 14 wins minus 2 losses…). Going into today, Howard had 10 net wins. By winning the bracket, he’s tied Leah in net wins! And, in case of a tie, the trophy goes to the player with the higher participation level. Howard got to his 12 net wins over 54 matches for the year – over triple Leah’s count! And so congratulations to Howard Markowitz – Portland Metro Backgammon Club’s Player of the Year for 2025!

Granted, not the greatest honor Howard has ever won in backgammon, it’s still pretty good!

I have set the regular tournament series to continue on the 3rd Sunday of the month through May. There’s a new casual meetup starting on the 3rd Thursday of the month as well, and I will soon be scheduling the 1st 2026 Championship Qualifier as well as bringing back the Portlandia Spring Classic high equity event. So, tons of backgammon planned for 2026. Hope to see you all there!

-Mark

This past Sunday, we had the Women’s Championship. It was a great event, everyone showed up. 🙂 Last year we had a couple of people who were not able to attend at the last minute, and so I was just pleased to have all my contestants make it…

Well, I should say ALMOST everyone – Julie’s friend Kathy, who came from out of town and qualified back in the spring, did not make it; but she was not really expected to.

So we had 4 contestants – Julie, Kashic, Leah, and Paola. After some horsing around for pre-tournament photos, we got them going, in that order: Julie versus Kashic (our 2024 champion, BTW), and Leah versus Paola.

Round 1, I recorded Julie versus Kashic, and I will get that posted to YouTube fairly soon. They had a drawn out battle, and also some controversy! In game 4, holding a 2 cube, Julie decided to redouble from the following position.

The board is shown from Kashic’s perspective. Would you take? Your board is crunched, and you have no landing spot for the back checkers, but you’re winning the race, and if you do manage to pull it off, 4 points wins you the match…

After some thought, Kashic did take the cube – correctly! It’s actually an enormous take, and right on the borderline of a no double for Julie. However, Kashic did not put the cube all the way on her side of the board, she put it closer to the middle; and Julie thought she was rejecting the cube! So Julie started to reset the board, leading to the controversy! The camera doesn’t let you rewind and play back on the device itself, so they had to recreate the position from memory (and came close); but then Julie also gave herself the two points for the drop, leading to further confusion when the game finished…

Fortunately, we got it all sorted out. With some luck and some persistence, Julie managed to unseat our defending champion.

In the mean time, Leah had swept over Paola almost 40 minutes ago. They were hanging out and chatting and generally doing fine; but Leah was eager to get the second match going. After 2 years in a row coming in second, she was out for blood.

Paola stuck around and played a chouette with me and Jeremy (Tim had also come by for a bit but left around this time). I also recorded Leah and Julie’s match, of course, and that too will go up on YouTube as soon as I process it.

But I won’t make you wait to find out the results… Leah started out strong, and came close to sweeping Julie as well. But after winning 4 games straight (for 5 points total), Julie began staging her comeback. She won a point, then another! And then – Leah got her win!

Congrats to Leah, our 2025 Women’s Backgammon Champion! And, with these two match wins, she also is back firmly in the lead for 2025 Player of the Year! With one event to go, three others (Howard, Jim B, and Paul) are within range to overtake her on that one – but they need to make it to the final tournament of the year (December 21st) and get 2-3 net wins to do so. We shall see what happens!