On January 10th, 2026, 7 people came together to determine the 2025 Portland Metro Backgammon Club’s Men’s Champion. Well, 6 came together, then Paul showed up later, because he had a bye in the first round, having won two qualifiers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Round 1, Jeremy C faced off against me, Kyle had to take his chances against Leah (who, reminder, is the 2025 Women’s Champion), and Cam had to battle it out against Larry. And I guess Paul had to challenge himself, in some dimension, as well – but he got through that ok. Anyway, in those pairings, the second player was the winner. Leah and I sat down to play our round 2 pairing; while Paul sat and waited for Cam and Larry to finish (they went to 6-6 DMP in the match to 7, really getting as much play as possible out of the match).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I won the first game on a relatively early double\/pass. Second game, Leah had me in a rough spot and I unwisely took a cube that was also a pass, and paid dearly for it, losing a gammon to go down 1-4. Third game, the shoe was on the other foot, Leah taking a cube that was technically a “too good\/pass”, although she managed to save the gammon. It turned into one of those crazy long games, where she hit a blot during my bearoff, and had to try to contain me from re-entering and running around the board – game had 55 moves before it was finally over. Fourth game, I doubled her from the bar, with two checkers on the bar actually. She took, and it did not go well for me. Soon enough, she redoubled, I took, and she went on to win the game, advancing to the finals!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meanwhile, Larry and Paul were battling it out. I was too busy to watch their match, but it went Paul’s way in the end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I did record Leah & Paul’s final, and I will get it up on YouTube eventually – took me a week to get around to doing this write-up, so I’m definitely behind on my work… \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyway – first game, Paul won on a relatively early double\/pass. Second game, Leah (attempting to recreate her match against me) offered a relatively early cube, which this time was not a double\/pass, and so Paul took, and Leah won that to take a 2-1 lead. Third game, Paul came back, getting Leah to take a borderline cube and winning a single: 2-3 Leah-Paul. Game four, Leah got in another cube and won another single, regaining the lead 4-3. Game five, she did the same again, taking it to 6-3 Crawford! Paul, his back to the wall, rallied and took it to 6-4 Post-Crawford. Game seven, Paul won the opening roll, playing down and slot with his 5-1. Leah replied with a 5-2 and so was not able to hit the blot in her homeboard. Paul doubled, of course, and Leah took, of course. And then it was on – Paul playing a gammon-go, Leah a gammon-save game. Paul took an early lead, hitting one of Leah’s checkers to put 3 back into his home board. Leah replied with 1-1, making a four prime and putting Paul on the bar. A few rolls later, Paul got 5-5, letting him escape his back checker and setting him up to have an easy time getting the rest of his checkers home against Leah’s anchor on his 3-point. Leah managed to make Paul’s bar, adding difficulties to his bear-in. But a lucky 4-4 let Paul jump past his bar, and begin bearing off! Leah’s front structure was pretty good, however, and after getting only two checkers off, Paul was forced to leave a shot, which Leah hit! Paul entered soon enough, but was never able to jump back out, and Leah completed the close-out. Leah began her own bear-off, and had to clear both her 5 and 6 point in order to get to having two checker off herself. Paul entered with a 6-2, setting himself up to come back with a big double or two. But it was Leah who scored the next big double, taking four off with her 4-4! Paul limped along around the board, but by the time his last checker was home Leah’s lead was too great to overcome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Congratulations to Leah, winner of both the 2025 Women’s Championship and 2025 Men’s Championship; and incidentally losing Player of the Year by a technicality – if we had managed to have this event in 2025 she would have had the trifecta! At least she took early lead on 2026 Player of the Year with this 3-0 event. And congratulations to Paul as well for a very well played match – his PR was a “World Class” 4.01 on regular XG settings, probably going down on ++.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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On January 10th, 2026, 7 people came together to determine the 2025 Portland Metro Backgammon Club’s Men’s Champion. Well, 6 came together, then Paul showed up later, because he had a bye in the first round, having won two qualifiers. Round 1, Jeremy C faced off against me, Kyle had to take his chances against … Continue reading “2025 Men’s Championship Results”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/pdxbg.club\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/pdxbg.club\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/pdxbg.club\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pdxbg.club\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pdxbg.club\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=728"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/pdxbg.club\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":729,"href":"http:\/\/pdxbg.club\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728\/revisions\/729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/pdxbg.club\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pdxbg.club\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pdxbg.club\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}