We had a fantastic turnout for our final Championship Qualifier for the year – 20 players! Results were again, ahem, lopsided – 18 players in the Men’s, 2 in the Women’s. So I had everybody play in one big, raucous bracket, same as we did for Qualifier #3. And we came very close to repeating the result of that, having someone qualify for both the Men’s Championship and the Women’s Championship…
Sande’s casual was again happening at the same time, and so the backgammon players outnumbered even the warhammer(?) players. Lucky Lab was a crowded place.
Because of the size of the field, I decreed that we would stick to 5 point matches, in order to prevent the tournament running into the twilight hours. Certain people tried to get us there anyway – I had two matches which took 9 games to resolve. I would like to remind everybody that the doubling cube does exist and is allowed to be used.
Without going through all the details, for the women’s, Julie secured a bye and Paola secured her spot in the championship. For the men’s, Paul secured a bye and Larry got his spot. Our final list of contestants for the championships is:
Women’s: Kashic (defending champion, bye), Julie Bellman (bye), Leah Nash, Paola Nealon, Kathy Beatty
Men’s: Paul Swain (2023 champion, bye), Kyle Peterson, Cam Davis, Mark Danburg-Wyld (tournament director and all-around swell guy), Leah Nash (overachiever), Larry Deckel, Jeremy Conant
Scheduling is being worked out, I hope to get that announced in the coming days.
Here’s a tough position that came up in Julie’s match against Paul. Score is 2-2 in their match to 5, and the standoff has come to a critical point…
Julie correctly noted this was probably the most important move of the match for her. There are really only two candidate plays — 13/6 (and hope you don’t get hit), or 7/5* 7/2 (and hope you don’t get hit). Either way, there’s only one bad number for you on your opponent’s roll, but one move is significantly better than the other. After hitting, you are much less likely to leave a shot on your next roll, assuming that you are missed. 13/6 is a -0.232 blunder!
Julie made the correct move, but unfortunately for her, Paul did roll a 5 on his turn, and went on to win the match. Nonetheless, an exciting match for everyone concerned, except maybe Asell, her dog, who seemed to not understand what was taking so long.
See you all at the next one!
-Mark