We had a nice showing for this weekend’s “Let’s Do a High Equity Event Because Texas ABT Got Cancelled” event. 7 people played in the High Roller, and 4 in the Low Roller, and it made for a busy afternoon of Backgammon!
I arrived at Lucky Lab about 5 minutes before noon, and found 6 people standing around waiting for me. So yeah, people were eager to play.
For the Low Roller, since there were only 4, I went with a Round Robin structure, so each player got 3 matches. Bodger and Nathan each went 2-1, and split the prize money; Kyle and Larry you should be able to guess their records. The format worked well, though, and everyone told me they enjoyed it.
For the High Roller, we went with the double elimination Swiss approach. In round 1, Dave got the bye, which did not count as a win, but did count as a not-loss. I had my one win of the day, somehow coming out over Paul; Max beat Howard, and Tim beat Jeremy. In round 2, Paul got the bye, and the winners were Dave, Tim, and Howard. Round 3 had Dave versus Tim in the undefeated face-off, and Paul and Howard took Max and myself out. Tim beat out Dave, and so we went into the critical round 4.
So for round 4, we had Tim (3-0) facing off against Howard (3-1). This set up a couple of very different outcomes that were possible. If Tim won, he would be 4-0, and Howard would be eliminated. But if Howard won, they both would be 3-1. Meanwhile, Dave and Paul were both 1-1 because they had both had a bye, so the winner of their match would have a 2-1 record and the other would be eliminated. This made the outcome of the Tim-Howard match have a significant impact on the payout of the Dave-Paul match! It made sense to pay out either 2 or 3 places for the main, but I planned to only pay 2 places for the side pool, so if Howard won, he and Tim would split the side pool; but if Howard lost, 2nd in the side pool would go to the winner of the Dave-Paul match. Everyone follow that logic? Good, good.
Dave and Paul had a heck of a match. Repeatedly, Dave ended up hitting Paul during the bearoff, to either save the gammon, or to even win the game. They went back and forth, going all the way to DMP, and Paul turned the tables on Dave, hitting him during the bearoff! But Dave was able to recover, and ended up winning!
Meanwhile, Tim took an early lead over Howard. Leading 3-0, Tim made a dubious decision to take a 4 cube. I assume it was a dubious decision, anyway, because when I wandered over to look, Tim was holding the 4 cube with 2 on the bar… But he somehow saved the gammon, and was suddenly the trailer. Howard took another couple of points, and suddenly they were in the Crawford game. With his back against the wall, Tim rallied, and then they were playing a post-Crawford game, Howard holding the cube, leading 6-4. At this point, all the rest of us were hovering around the table, watching the action. It was an intense game, went right down to the wire; but Howard pulled it off and handed Tim his one defeat of the day!
We also did have a good number of spectators show up, some intentionally, some by happenstance. There was a very large social event going on through the afternoon, and a couple of people stopped by to watch and chat. Thanks to Dave for playing ambassador and to Tim for giving a little tutorial to folks watching his matches, I think we might end up picking up a couple of new members to the club… Also Jan, who was in town for the weekend and who I’ve got a current match against on Dailygammon stopped by, which was cool. Backgammon – bringing people together. It’s a beautiful thing. See you at the next one!
-Mark