Portland/Vancouver Backgammon

We had a respectable 10 person field show up to play in today’s tournament. Many of the players from last month came back again, although apologies to Rob who was thrown off by the time shift and so did not get in to actually play. Likewise Pamela and her friend (sorry, I have lost the name) showed up late, but kind of on purpose as they did not want to play in the tournament, but were excited to play each other near other matches going on… Anyway, 7 people from last month, the return of Steve, and two newcomers (Leah and Stephanie) made for a reasonably even playing field. Not enough to break into two brackets, but sort of too many for a single bracket – we made do.

I determined that we needed to do 3 point matches instead of 5 point matches, in order to end timely. This was not without controversy. Several people let me know that they would have preferred to stick with 5 point matches, and Steve even went so far as to pull out of the side pools over it. Keep that in mind, I’m not pointing it out from pettiness, rather it is dramatic foreshadowing. Tim also gave me a rather hard time about it, if I recall correctly.

I drew Max in the first round, in a repeat of last month. I think he’s going to get suspicious if it happens again next month (which I will get on the calendar pretty soon – aiming for a weekend that Max’s parents will be visiting, as he said he will drag them along). Brad faced off against Steve, Jeremy took on Tim, Leah and Stephanie had a novice tie-breaker, and Julie played Aaron to round us out.

Max and I had some pretty significant back and forth. He took the first game relatively quickly, doubling me out after an early blitz. I returned the favor in the next game, and he commented that he probably would have taken the cube in a match to 5 – I think exactly correctly. It was a good take in a match to 5, a good drop in a match to 3; the dynamics of a short match are very accelerated. I cubed him out again in the third game, and we went into Crawford in a match that seemed to take about 20 minutes. Eventually I squeaked out the win.

In the second round, I played Aaron. It was again an intense match – the dice made it difficult for both of us at different points. We ended up attracting a crowd watching for a bit, as people were waiting for Tim and Jeremy to finish their first match so that more second round matches could start. Aaron took pictures of a couple of positions where he wasn’t sure what to do; I don’t think he took records of what he actually did, which pro tip: I’ve regretted that in the past. “Oh look at this picture of a backgammon position on my phone! I wonder what I actually did…” Anyway, I again got lucky and came out on top.

In the meantime, Steve had beat out Brad and then Leah, Max was closing in on a win over Julie in the second round, Stephanie lost out to Brad, and about now I started getting confused about who should play whom. I originally was taking on Jeremy, in what I thought was going to be about the championship match, when Steve and Brad came asking who they should play, and I started to set them against each other. “Oh, again?” they asked. No – no repeat opponents ought to appear in the match. Jeremy and I scraped the game, and I set Brad against Jeremy, and took on Steve myself.

From time to time, someone asks how I manage to keep it all straight while also playing myself. As this example shows, I don’t, at least not always. 🙂

Steve at this point was 2-0, and I informed him that he was in the running to win the tournament. He asked if he could get back into the side pools, which I did not allow. We had a good, if short, match. He won the first game, doubling me out pretty early. I offered the cube early in the second game, and he took, which I think might have been a mistake, but he made it work out for him. Meantime, Jeremy beat Brad, and so I set Jeremy and Steve at each other.

If you are keeping track at this point, which I barely was: Steve was 3-0, Jeremy was 2-0, Max and I were both 2-1. So the outcome of the Jeremy/Steve match could have made things complicated. If Steve won, he was the overall champion; if he lost he was 2nd with a 3-1 record. That much was clear. But since he was out of the side pools, if Steve won, we would have three-way tie in the side pools. Fortunately (?), Jeremy did win, and so I could declare him the overall tournament winner and the winner of the side pools. Max and I split 2nd from the side pools, and Steve took second for the overall.

Also meantime, Nick had shown up, and played a bit of head’s up cash game against Aaron and then Tim. When I left, Jeremy and Leah were playing a practice match as well.

So, overall, a great afternoon of backgammon. Thanks everyone for coming out, and we’ll see you again next month!

-Mark

We had a great turnout for our first “is it post-pandemic yet?” tournament today – 15 players braved the rain to see what it was like to play live backgammon again.

Lucky Lab is on a limited menu and tap list, and requires a mask indoors. But we took over half of the patio (quite literally), and in spite of questionable lighting, it was pretty comfortable. Well, from a fresh air perspective, anyway – eventually the picnic table seating started getting to my back. We all made do.

5 players elected into the dual side pools, and I put all of them (plus 2 others) into one bracket. 8 players made for a perfect second bracket. Let’s take them in reverse that order…

We had a big cast of new-comers in the bracket: Laura, Hobie, Dana, Kyle, and Karl were all making their first appearance. Kate came with her own cheer squad, and Julie and Rob rounded it out. You remember Rob, right? He used to run the group back around 2015 and prior? He claimed to not remember the Crawford rule. That might have been literally true for some of the other newcomers – Laura at least told me she hadn’t used the doubling cube before. First round had Julie defeating Laura (who then had to depart, dropping the bracket to 7), Kate over Dana, Rob over Hobie, and Karl over Kyle. Kate experienced the full spectrum of backgammon, going from a 5-0 win to a 0-5 loss against Rob in the second round. Julie took out Karl, setting the two most experienced players in the bracket against each other for the championship. After a good amount of back and forth, Rob emerged victorious, one of the two players to have a perfect record for the year in live backgammon play!

Our other bracket had a couple of newcomers as well, plus one complex situation. Dan and Brad were with us for the first time, plus Aaron, who had come to a couple of online events, so I’m not sure I can call him a first-timer, but it was his first time playing with us live. Max, Tim, Jeremy, and I rounded it out. Round 1 I squeaked out a win against Max, Tim beat out Dan, Aaron won a heartbreaker match against Jeremy, and Brad got the lucky bye. In round 2, Brad beat me out 5-4, Aaron handed Tim a loss, and so Brad and Aaron set up to play for first/second. This led to an interesting situation, as they were the two players who were NOT in the side pools. I resolved it by setting Tim versus Max to play for the second place while I took on Jeremy for the first place side pool. Both matches went down to the wire, Jeremy besting me and Max defeating Tim.

Meanwhile, in the final game of the final match (4 to 4, post Crawford) between Aaron and Brad, we got into a hyper-gammon situation. Aaron had 5 or 6 of Brad’s checkers back on his home board as he was going to bear-in, and Brad had a 4 point board plus a loose checker or so in the outfield. Aaron was forced to leave a shot and the game went into overtime, as Brad repeatedly hit Aaron’s checker while bringing the rest of his pieces around. By the end, Aaron had 13 checkers on his 1-point, a blot on his 2-point, and one off, while Brad closed him out. Brad in turn was forced to leave a blot after bearing off 5 checkers, which Aaron hit! At this point, the  race was on. Brad managed to get past Aaron’s checker coming around, and it got down to a question of whether or not Brad would ever miss taking one off on a roll. 5 or 6 frantic shakes later, Brad emerged victorious!

Many people asked about when we will do our next tournament, and/or our next chouette. I’m figuring that out – I think Lucky Lab will remain our home base for the next event or two as they have such a good outdoor space, pending further re-opening to indoor space. Assuming that we didn’t turn out to be a super-spreader event, I will get the next tournament posted within a few days, possibly a chouette as well. It seemed like everyone had a pretty good time, I certainly did. It was great to see people again, and to meet new friends. Until next time!

-Mark

We had another full 8-person bracket today, albeit with some last minute twists and turns. We had 10 people sign up, but then one backed out, then another, then a third, then one new person show up at the last minute. As a director, that’s a whirlwind of emotions… Anyway, we ended up at 8, with 3 first timers and 5 returning players.

In the first match, I played Larry, who is one of the newcomers, although he’s also an old timer. We talked about some of the people we’ve played in common, but none apparently in the same decade. Hopefully that will change soon… I had good luck, and won, in spite of him significantly outplaying me.

This position came up in one of our games, and is one of many, many examples I could have picked of checker play blunders. On the bar, rolling a 6-2 is a great piece of luck. Obviously the 2 is B/23*, but I went fast with the 6 and played a blunder as a result.

 

23/17* just looked obvious from a get-more-pips lead and momentum perspective, but it is worse than 11/5* by -0.083! In retrospect, the potential prime built by slotting the 5 seems kind of obvious, but I played the move in about 2 seconds and didn’t even think of alternatives. 

Here’s another position I misplayed, file under “doubles are hard!”:

 

Similar theme to the last one. 24/21* pops up immediately, but what to do with the other 3 moves? Well, what do I really want here: a gammon. The best way to get that is to keep Larry on my ace point, and use the other 3 moves to play 13/4*. Completely failed to even consider it – instead I let momentum take me 21/18, then looked around for 2 more to play, eventually settling on 17/11. Which looks kind of pretty, accomplished nothing much, and lost me -0.134 in equity!

I didn’t only blow it through bad checker moves though – I also made plenty of cube errors. Here’s a fun one. I’m on the bar, holding the cube, closed board, and a blot to aim at. What’s the cube action?

 

I figured this to be a no double, as I’m on the bar, and if I don’t roll a 5, I’m throwing away the match with the recube. Indeed, I’m only 36.1% to win here – basically rolling 5’s plus a few later shots if I dance. But it is a recube (and very easy take)! No double is a -0.119 blunder. 

Jesse went on to beat me 7-0 in the match, then faced off against Tim (Tim E, not Tim D) in the final. I watched the match online, and it was a good one. Here are a couple of other cube decisions that came up, which surprised me as they were playing.

First off, in the first game, Jesse (white here) is on roll, and offered a cube. Would you have done the same?

 

It’s a surprisingly close one. He’s up slightly in the race, but his position isn’t great, with 3 checkers back. But he does have the threat of pointing on the checker on his 5 point, or doing a pick-and-pass. Tim snatched up the cube of course, as it is a narrow no double position: -0.011 error to double here. But I did not recognize how strong Jesse’s position was. Only 59% to win, but 33% to gammon, makes this nearly a double, and probably worth time to think about the take.

Finally, here’s a position where Tim offered the cube. I assume his thinking was that with an even race, it is likely to be a take. But it’s a clear too good situation!

 

Position, race, and threat. Normal rule of thumb is if you have 2 of the 3, it’s a double/take. Here all Tim has is position, but he has a lot of it! Jesse lacks the timing to keep a strong home board for the eventually return shot, and Tim doesn’t have a lot of gammons, but he’s 88% to win, so there’s no harm in playing on. Well, it worked out for him, as Tim went on to win the match and thus, the tournament. Congratulate him the next time you see him!

-Mark

So, COVID-19 has kept us all from getting together to drink and gamble in person. The Portland Backgammon Club continues on, though – virtually.

Today we had our first online tournament. 8 players showed up to compete. We did it as a single elimination, because I did not want to juggle the logistics of something more complicated. It was a learning experience.

I’ve played in a few online tournaments in the past months, mostly those sponsored by the US Backgammon Club, as well as played some with local members looking for an online game. Most of my activity has been on backgammongalaxy, which allows you to play via your web browser, and so my chromebook is adequate for the task. It also gives you an analysis of your match immediately afterwards, using XG, making it a very effective learning tool as well if you have the patience to look through your blunders while they’re still fresh on your mind.

The other tournaments I have been in have used whatsapp or discord for communication, and some have used a bracket management site called challonge. For our first Portland backgammon tournament, I just set up a group text message to communicate with everyone. The limit of that is Tim E, who is a caveman and still uses a flip phone.

Anyway – first round there was some technical confusion by having both Tim E and Tim D show up to play, something that hasn’t happened in years actually. Michael was supposed to call Tim E, but called Tim D, and before Bryan did. Bryan eventually figured out what happened and asked if he could just play Tim E instead, and we went with that. Paul is still on our mailing list, and he got paired with Steve. I played Bob. We played 5 point matches for the first couple of rounds, and a 7 point final.

In the first round match, I made a blunder on the following position, which is similar to a host of positions that I seem to not be able to get through my head. I’m on the bar, and so have to come in with the 1; but what should I do with the 2?

The choices are limited. There’s 20/18, 13/11, 10/8, and 8/6. 13/11 is obviously wrong – it duplicates 1’s I guess but really, why? 8/6 is also obviously wrong – there’s already 5 checkers on the 6 point, what good is one more besides opening a blot? 10/8 is safe, so that’s clearly good. 20/18 is what I went with, and that’s the category of plays that I find challenging. When do you pop out a blot from the opponent’s home board? Here, I figured, only two checkers aiming at it, there’s a blot on the 21 if I do get hit, and it gives me a chance to anchor outside.

But, in this case, a -0.101 blunder, just as bad as playing 8/6. Why? I do not know. That’s what I’m saying about this kind of position confusing me. Maybe because I’m so far down in the race, I want the extra couple of places of contact? I’m really not sure.

A few rolls later, I was on the bar again, and had another decision to make.

I can come in with either the 1 or the 5. If I come in with the 1, there’s only a couple of options for the 5: 10/5 or 6/1. 6/1 is safe, but leaves me two blots behind his checkers. 10/5 slots the point I want to make next, but then I worried about him having a good chance of making his bar point, leaving me trapped on the ace point. And if I come in with the 5, I can hit with 13/12*, which seems helpful – plus I have two numbers to hit the blot on the bar point which would become much less likely to be covered. So, I played bar/20, 13/12*. Which is a -0.109 blunder.

The correct play is bar/24, 10/5. Why? Again, I don’t know. If I understood the position, maybe I wouldn’t have played it wrong.

First games are rough. Eventually Bob took pity on me and offered the cube so I could drop. He did that again the next game as well, but I rallied after that, managing to come back to win.

In the second match, I faced off against Paul. He and Steve had played a protracted first round match, and by the time they were done, Bryan and Michael had already finished their second round match. But Paul and I made up time with a pretty quick match (which also gave Bryan time to get lunch), so no harm done. In our second game, Paul offered me the following cube:

Should I take or drop? I’ve got 2 checkers back on his 3 point, with a clear shot at freedom, but I am down in the race, his prime can get better on the next roll, I have no home board, and I’m up in the match. I did not fully figure the odds of my coming back to win the game, but it seemed like a pretty clear pass. Nope! Dropping is a -0.095 error! I’m still 22.6% to win the game, according to XG. Apparently that ability to escape with a 6 is worth more than I figured. That evened up the match score. Paul won a doubled game on the next one, then offered me the cube again in game 4, which I accepted and redoubled to make for the match. Then I snuck out a win with a miracle 6-1 roll when I needed it most.

Mind you, these are not all the blunders I made through the day. I was not playing that well, in spite of getting the wins. They are just a few of the ones that stand out. But my biggest blunder of the day came in game 4 against Bryan in the finals. I am up 2-1 and think I have a difficult decision to hand him with this double. What would you do?

Bryan took, and was eventually able to return the cube to me, which I had to drop. This is a big no-double, -0.24 mega-blunder to have offered it! Sure, I’m the favorite here – ahead in the race, he might dance, giving me an opportunity to escape the back checkers or make more points on my board. But, and this is important, he might not dance. And if he comes in, he’s not in such bad shape. I’m only 59.3% to win here, way below an efficient cube level. I had a great roll, filling the 3 point, but Bryan came in with a 4-2 and was able to turn it around on me.

For that game, anyway. I held on to win the match, although it was a tough one!

Next time, I might explore using discord, or challonge, or otherwise up the technological requirements to participate. But everyone seemed to have a good time, it was great to get to interact with others, and we will definitely do it again soon.

-Mark

We had a good turnout for this month’s tournament, considering the sunny weather attracting people outside and the coronavirus scaring them into staying home. 8 people showed up to play, plus newcomer Esti, who wanted to observe, having only taken up the game in the last month or so.

Joel showed up early, and we played the first game or two of a warm-up match. But people were showing up and we didn’t get to finish, which was a relief to me as I was down a couple of games. Random draw, however, put me back up against Joel in the first match. Grateful for the fresh start, I went on to lose the match by a considerable margin.

Bryan, Philip, and Joel also won their first round matches, and we shuffled players around. After the second round, Joel and Chris were undefeated. Mark J decided to head off, and Jenny played a match with Esti. Philip, Jenny’s father, noted that he would never have bet that she would end up tutoring someone else on backgammon, so shortly after he finally convinced her to start playing herself.

Here’s a position that came up while Jenny and Esti were playing, which I was watching and talking to both of them a bit about the cube. Here Jenny is the lighter checkers, and offered the cube. Should Esti take?

Definitely not. With any 2, a sixth checker will get sent back, and although they are only behind a 4-prime, Jenny will have perfect freedom to bring the rest of her checkers around. Without a 2, there’s still a good chance that both Jenny’s back checkers escape, and Esti doesn’t have the timing to keep her home board from collapsing.

XG actually says this position is slightly too good to double, it’s about -0.034 to give up the gammon potential. And of course, it’s a huge pass for money.

While all that was going on, Chris was playing Joel for the championship. Chris took an early and commanding lead, but Joel survived the Crawford game, and then won the next game with a doubled gammon to take 1st place! Don’t feel bad for Chris, though – second month in a row that he’s cashed in one of our tournaments…

Joel very kindly donated his winnings (that is, less his entry fee) back to the club to help offset the expenses of running the meetup. That’s actually the third donation I’ve gotten in the last year, I want to acknowledge him and  also say thank you to Dirk and Steve who also both spontaneously gave some back to the club. Meetup has just raised their rates, and it now costs just under $200/year to keep that running – so my $10/month rake is not really cutting it. I’m not complaining, it’s a modest expense, and I’m only out $202.34 for the past 3.25 years that I’ve been running the club. Yes, I am keeping records of that. I don’t know how much money I’ve lost in chouettes over that same time period, but I’m pretty confident it’s more…

Next month I’ve moved the tournament back to the third Sunday of the month, to not conflict with Easter. Hope to see you all there!

-Mark

We had another great showing this month – 16 players came to enjoy the afternoon over the board. 16, as you know, is a power of 2, which is super helpful for running a tournament, especially since I decided to try something different this month.

I posted a bit ago about the Bellingham tournament that Tim E and I went up for, and they used a double elimination bracket format. It struck me that this would probably be easier to keep track of than the Swiss format, and so we gave it a try. I was gradually reminded of why I moved to the Swiss format, however, as the double elimination bracket requires a LOT longer to determine a winner. Fortunately, I broke the group up into two groups of 8, it could have gone significantly longer.

In the “A” bracket were most of the more experienced players. This was also on purpose, I wanted to give out multiple 1st and 2nd places and give some of the less experienced players a good crack at the prize. That part worked, although again, way slower than I would have liked.

Anyway: “A” bracket featured Jeremy, fresh back from a trip to his first (I think) ABT tournament in San Antonio, where he won the Novice division! Well done, Jeremy. Jeremy ended our tournament undefeated, but conceded to take 2nd place because it was after 4:00, and there was a several match wait for his next opponent. Similarly, Bob conceded his second match because of time constraints. Late arrival Hu got slotted into the “A” bracket because that was where I had a bye, but I moved him to the “B” bracket to replace Kamron when he too had to leave early. And not that early. You get the point – the logistics were not as clean as I hoped for.

Jeremy having conceded, it came down to me, Chris, and Tim to duke it out through the second tier to determine the winner. Chris took me out in classic style – won the first game for a single, then a game with the cube at 4 to finish me off. His match against Tim was slightly different, in that he won the first game for a single, then a gammon with the cube at 2 to finish Tim off. So congrats Chris on winning that bracket!

In the “B” bracket, Judy marched her way through the top half of the bracket, taking out Terry (one of the two Terrys who showed up), Kamron, then Cece to get to the final. Max took a longer route, getting punted down to the bottom half of the bracket in his first, then defeating both Terrys back to back, Hu, and Cece to get to the final. That left them with Max needing to beat Judy twice to take first place – if Judy won the first match, Max would have his second elimination.

Well, Max proceeded to win the first match in a hard fought battle. Both players were showing signs of exhaustion by that point, but they gamely reset for the final showdown. And… Max took it again! Congrats to both Max and Judy for their first placements in one of our tournaments.

With two tournaments down, the “leaderboard” is pretty tight. Jeremy is ahead in winning percentage, Max in total matches played. We’ll see what March brings!

Player	Matches Played	Matches Won	Percentage
Max	10	7	70.00%
Jeremy	9	8	88.89%
Chris	9	7	77.78%
Mark W	9	6	66.67%
Tim	6	4	66.67%
Martin	6	2	33.33%
Judy	5	3	60.00%

Yesterday, I took part in the 9th annual Bellingham Winter Classic. It was my first time up there – I had been invited a couple of years ago but the timing didn’t work out that time, and it was a great little event. 16 players showed up for the “A” flight, and I believe another 8 for the “B” flight.

Tim also made the trek up from Portland, and we joined 4 players from Bellingham, 8 from Seattle, and 2 from Vancouver BC. Neither Tim nor I made it especially far in the main event, but we then did a fun little round-robin with Chris and Kristi. It made for a full day of backgammon, and I was able to get back down to sleep in my own bed last night, after a pleasant stop in Seattle to spend a little time with my daughter.

Michael, our host and organizer, has some big ideas. One thing he would like to do is have a regional event, pitting Vancouver BC, Seattle, Bellingham, and Portland against one another. The idea is that each place sends four players to the match, and the best overall team result wins the day, and then hosts the next year. I’m always up for another event, so we will see if we can pull that off.

Here’s a position that came up in my second match of the main event, against Kristi. Just a few rolls into the game, I’m on the bar, and was offered the cube. Should I take?

I like this one, because the match score comes into play. This would be a blunder to pass for money, or if it was the first game of the match. But it’s a borderline double at this score – XG mobile says it was -0.003 for her to offer the cube at this point. But human psychology wise, definitely the right move. It gave me pause. I did take, and she went on to win by a gammon.

Overall for the main event: I got crushed in my first match against Karl, losing 9-1. He pointed out one position where I made a clear blunder, but it was also a match where I just couldn’t get any breaks and he rolled a lot of big doubles when he needed them. Ah well. I did win my match against Kristi, although it was quite close. And then I lost my match against Joe, although again it was quite close. Both of those last two came down to the winner getting one more double in the bear-off than the loser.

All in all, a good time – I look forward to returning next year.

-Mark

We had a good chou this month, trying out a new location. We went to the Kenton Club, which… is dark. They were very nice, the drink pours were extremely generous, and the jukebox was great – playing a nice mix of classic rock and rockabilly. But it took a while for our eyes to adjust to the dimness. We were playing at the best lit table in the place, and Judge Judy was playing (no sound) on the TV just to one side of us – whenever a commercial came on that had a white screen with a page of disclaimers for whatever side effects came with their drug, someone would invariably remark about how it was suddenly much brighter.

All of which is to say that, although I do not regret choosing the location, we probably won’t be rushing back there. There’s another spot a couple of blocks from there which Martin recommended, and so we’ll maybe give it a shot for the next chouette. It might even be big enough for a tournament, but we’ll start small.

Five players were in attendance. Jeremy made the trek up from Salem again, Martin, Tim, Bryan, and me. Tim had the longest and most successful run in the box for the day, at one point ending up over 30 points, although he slid from there before the day was over. I had to head off “early” (at 5:00), and so I don’t know the final positions for everyone, but it was a fun afternoon.

Here’s a position that came up in one of the games. I’m facing off against Tim, who has already taken the cube, and I rolled a 4-1. Prime versus prime type of position developing. The big question in my mind: should I split my back men?

Here’s my argument against splitting: It gives him 9 numbers that turn this into a blitz, and it’s also important for me to move the checker on the mid-point to a safer location. Here’s XG’s argument for splitting: everything else is a double-blunder at least. I went with the second best move (-0.173 equity loss), and Tim went on to win the game. Ah well.

-Mark

We had a great turnout for our first tournament of 2020 – 18 players! There were a couple of brand new people, maybe three if you count Kate who showed up to watch last month but played for the first time this month. And there were a few last minute cancellations as well, plus some regulars who were not available… I am thinking we’re going to break the 20 player threshold in the next few months.

I’m thinking about making some structural changes to deal with the larger turnouts. Rather than run things as one big (and confusing) Swiss-style event, I might break the group up into several double-elimination brackets, which would mean payouts to more players, but lower payouts. It would also mean I need to spend a lot less brain-power on keeping people paired up properly, as those pairings would all be set at the initial draw. Keeping the pairings straight is a challenge with 12+ players. For instance, this month, at one point I had to pair Jeremy (who had 3 wins/no losses at that point) with Brad (who had 2 wins/no losses) because they were the only two undefeated players left. Not such a big deal, if Brad had won; because at the time I was playing Tim and we both had 2/0 records. If Brad had won, then I would have played him, and the winner would have needed 4 wins to win the tournament, which is perfect for an over-16 person bracket.

But sadly, Jeremy won his match against Brad, meaning that he was going to need 5 wins to win the tournament. Sort of unfair, since his opponent only needed 4 wins. We dealt with that by agreeing to a double-win criteria for his opponent – that is, if Jeremy won the first match he won 1st, if he lost then his opponent would have to win a second match to win 1st, since at that point they would be “tied” with 4 wins each.

That opponent, by the way, was me. I had a pretty dramatic match with Tim. I won the first game, he won the second. In the third game, he doubled me fairly early, and I was able to turn it around to where I could re-cube him. I should have taken a picture at that point, because it seemed like a close decision. Tim decided to drop. In the fourth game, I was able to hit and cover my home board on about roll three, and turn that into a successful blitz, winning by a gammon.

Anyway, that’s how I ended up in a position to eventually take second place.

In our first match, Jeremy and I had some good back and forth, I eventually took it 5-3. In the second match, I was not as lucky, and ended up losing 5-1. So Jeremy gets the first tournament win of 2020, and is currently leading the pack in terms of (1) total matches played, (2) matches won, and (3) winning percentage.

I’m not yet sure what format it will take, but there will be some kind of awards handed out for each of those metrics for 2020. I’m taking myself out of the consideration for the total matches played, because I have a unfair advantage as the organizer – I will be at every tournament this year, and most likely I will be the only person with that distinction. Maybe not – Nate, Tim, and Chris all came close to having 100% attendance last year, and there wasn’t a ribbon at stake then.

See you next month!

-Mark

 

I attended the Las Vegas Open last month, for the third time, and am finally getting around to looking through the photos I took of various positions that came up – mostly around cubing decisions. Here are a few that were interesting.

This first one is a screenshot of XG Mobile that I created after the fact. Spoiler alert, I went on to lose the game, and later the match. Here black is on roll and offered me the cube:

My thinking was, 16 rolls leave him stuck on my 2 point, and of the rolls that escape, I have a shot at hitting him again. And indeed, it is pretty close! It was only a -0.029 error to take. White has 22% winning chances, and of course there are no gammons. One more checker for him on his 2 point, and it would be a take. As it happened, I think he rolled double 6’s, which did not leave me the hoped for shot.

This next one is from a blitz against Ed O’Laughlin, who I had the opportunity to play a couple of times, and you can consider this name check as foreshadowing. I had doubled him earlier in the game, and he decided to return the favor:

I’m ahead in the race, 107 to 117. I’m on the bar, but there are no other threats. And he’s got a little bit of a struggle to actually close me out. Position-Race-Threat – I figured he had 2 out of 3, and took. Again, very close! -0.038 error to take, and if his checker on his 7 was on his 8, it would be a take. In fact, I think this was probably a take, considering the difference in skill level between us – I’m a much weaker player and dragging the match out has to work in his favor. Fortunately for me, he did in fact have trouble closing me out, I came in and ultimately won the game (and hence the match).

This next one is from the first round of the main tournament. I was playing Keiken, and she offered me this cube in our third game:

The picture is a little dark, because we were playing in the “overflow” table out in the hallway. Position-Race-Threat. She’s got position – both her back checkers are escaped, and she’s a strong favorite to make either her 5 point or her bar point on the next roll. Race, I’m way behind. Threat – well, not much, except the threat that she’ll make a prime before I get my back checkers split. I dropped, correctly. It’s actually a -0.283 to take! More interesting is how this is as a double – it’s only -0.021 to roll here, and if my back checkers were split, it’s completely even whether or not to double.

And having a picture from my first match of the main, here’s one from my last – this is the match that knocked me out of the Last Chance.

I’m up in the match score, and so should be worried about gammons, but there’s not much gammon potential here with my advanced anchor. I’m down 129-120 in the race, weaker in position, but no real threats to speak of. I took the cube. In fact, it’s a small no double for black! -0.007 error on his part, which is to say, not really an error. He pulled off the win, and then the win in the next game as well.

Which left me with just the blitz to play in. I entered 6 blitzes in total, and won 1 of them. For the blitz playoffs Saturday night, I had a play-in round against Gus, who had won 2 entries, and who I had beat for the 1 blitz that got me into the championship. I then had a second round match against David, who I had beat in 2 of the blitzes, and again in the championship! David was nice enough to send me the transcripts of our matches, and it was clearly luck rather than skill that got me those victories. The evening dragged on, as I waited for the match to determine who would make it into the finals, which ended up being me against Gus again! We played until about 1:00 am, and I squeaked out the win.

I made it to the blitz championship, facing off again against Ed O’Laughlin! This was very exciting for me, as it’s the first ABT event where I made it onto the results page. I didn’t figure I had good chances to win, in spite of having beat him before, especially as tired as I was by this point. The match came down to the following position, which I again did not photograph, but took a screenshot of the XG analysis right after:

As you see from the XG analysis, it’s a huge -0.37 blunder to take. But take I did, and re-shipped the cube on my next roll. No regrets, and here’s why. Also you see in the XG analysis, I’m 14.6% to win from this position. At 4-away/1-away Crawford game, my match winning chances are more like 18.6%, depending on which Match Equity Table you use. But here’s the thing: those tables work on the assumption that the players are evenly matched! I am a much weaker player than Ed. Over the board, my reasoning was, I’m maybe 40% to win. I would have to win the Crawford game, and then about twice more. 0.4^3 = 6.4%. I’m much better off taking my chances with the race. There’s probably some flaw in my thinking there, but I think it’s worth spending some time working on Match Equity Tables with uneven chances to figure it out. And, maybe, I will.

Anyway, I lost the race and the match, and so placed 2nd in the Blitz Championship. Like I said, still a big deal for me. I have a long way to go, but made me feel like I’m on the right track.

-Mark