Portland Metro Backgammon Club

We had a good turnout for this month’s event – 16 players, making for two perfect 8 person brackets. I appreciate everyone’s cooperation, it made for a very smooth running day!

There was much excitement as well, as I was able to distribute those cool new t-shirts! I wore my red one (yes, I got one of each), and got complimented on it by the bartender before the event even started. They’re that cool looking. If you didn’t pre-order, don’t despair, I got some extras and will sell them off on a first-come, first-served basis.

In the “A” bracket, round one had Bodger over Dave, Kyle over Larry, Jeremy over Howard, and me over Tim. I had a good day. Tim got taken out in a 2 game match, but my second round (against Bodger) and final (against Jeremy) I had to stage come from behind wins post-Crawford. Still, 3-0. Howard and Dave both fought their ways through the full consolation to meet in the final, with Howard coming out on top there.

In the “B” bracket, round one had Andres over Stan, newcomer Brian over Ben, Gabe over Ed, and Mark A over Steve. Andres went on to win the bracket over Mark A, with Steve coming out on top of the consolation bracket.

The 2nd Championship Qualifier is right around the corner, and then I need to get the Tour of Patios on the calendar, so much more backgammon action coming soon!

-Mark

We had a nice showing for this month’s event – 17 players said “to heck with the sunshine and warm weather, I’ma play!” and made their way to Lucky Lab. Traffic did delay a good number of them, however, so we got off to a slightly late start, to the consternation of a handful who had obligations to leave early. But we actually finished about the normal time.

I had moved this month’s event up a week as well, which meant we were on the same day as Sande’s casual meetup, so there were more like 23 or 24 backgammon players in the place. It gave me the opportunity to get pictures of some of the casual players for the Instagram…

In the “A” bracket, round 1 had Kyle over Bodger, Larry over Howard, Dave over Tim, and me (eventually) over Mark H. Dave went on to win the bracket over Kyle, and Howard fought his way back to revenge himself on Larry in the Consolation. 

In the “B” bracket, we had one first round bye due to the odd number, which went to Mark A. Round 1 saw Julie over Andres, Ed over first timer Gabe (Andres’ son), Jim over Ben (also Andres’ son, and so Gabe’s brother), and Leah (happy birthday!) over Joel. In the final, Ed came out on top over Mark A, and Julie won the Consolation over Leah.

I wore the proto-type t-shirt with the Portland Metro Backgammon Club logo to the event, and got people to weigh in on the color options I’ve been exploring. Keep an eye out for a survey/pre-order opportunity in the very near future! My goal is to get an order placed in time for people to get them at the May regular tournament (so you can then wear it to the Chicago Open ABT tournament, if you happen to be going to that). Until then, remember, better to be lucky than good! 🙂

-Mark

We had a nice turnout for this month’s regular tournament – 17 players made it in for an afternoon of backgammon. Before I get to the results, I’m going to digress for a bit on tournament structure & how the payouts work.

As most of you know, the tournament has an entry fee, and then 2 side pools. The side pools are completely optional, they exist for the sake of players who feel like putting a little more capital at risk for the event. Both the side pools are for the same amount. What I have been doing for the last year plus is, if you are in at least one side pool, you are put in the “A” bracket, which plays 5 point matches instead of 3 point matches. In order to build relatively even brackets, I then also sometimes pulled in people who were not in a side pool, but there was a “pay to play” element there. Put more at risk, you have a little more time in each match to let your skill cancel the luck element.

Anyway, before the tournament started, I was chatting about all that with Howard, and he asked what would I do if more than 8 people wanted to be in the side pools. I said that had never happened, but that I would cross that bridge when we got there.

So, yeah, I jinxed myself. Of the 17 players, 9 wanted to be in the side pool.

Running a 9 person bracket is fine, it basically means there’s one play-in round, and the way I structure things that’s not so hard to do. But on the spur of the moment, I decided to keep it simple; so I dropped out of the side pools to create an easy 8-person bracket for that one, and played in the 3 point match “B” bracket.

So, results: In the “A” bracket, round 1 had David R over first-timer Farhad, Mark H over Dave C, Howard over Tim (in the longest single match of the afternoon – about 90 minutes to finish!), and Larry over Joel. Because the Howard/Tim match-up ran so long, there was a good amount of waiting for later rounds, especially in the consolation bracket – I appreciate everyone’s patience. Anyway, in the final, Larry came out on top over Howard. In the consolation bracket, David R and Farhad had a re-match. I left the prize money with them and asked for a text reporting results, but as of press time I haven’t heard what happened.

In the “B” bracket, round 1, I won over Mark A, Jim won over Bodger, Cam over Steve, and Ed over visiting player Breeze (in for a vacation from Bali, sounds backwards?). Stan got the first round bye. The final had Jim over Ed, Jim’s third win in three appearances BTW. In the consolation bracket, I ended up winning over Stan, in what was also a re-match. 

The next tournament will be on March 29th, our first Championship Qualifier – RSVP today if you haven’t already. See you then!

-Mark

We had a fair showing for this month’s event – 13 players came out for the afternoon. Lucky Lab was extremely crowded, with a MTG tournament going on. But we squeezed in to the tables that were available and had a good time.

In the “A” bracket, round 1 had Larry over Nathan, Bodger over Joel, Kyle over Howard, and me over the bye. Honestly, I abused my director’s position to take the bye, so that I could eat my lunch – the table I was at barely held the board so I would have been holding my sandwich in my lap otherwise. But I then paid for it by losing my two matches in blowouts. In the final, Larry came out on top over Kyle, and Nathan took the consolation bracket over Bodger.

In the “B” bracket, we only had 6 players, and so it finished fairly quickly. Round 1 had Stan over newcomer Stephen, Tim over Mark A, and newcomer Jim B over Julie. Jim went on to win the bracket over Tim, and Stan (who claims to have never previously won a match) taking the consolation bracket over Stephen. 

All in all, a good day. There was a lot of discussion about the upcoming BMAB event, which is just around the corner now. If you are registered for it, you should get an email from me in a week or so with logistical information. If you’re not… well, time is definitely running out! 

-Mark

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

We had a really nice turnout for our first official tournament of 2025 — 22 players! There were a good number of new players as well — 5 first time participants, including a posse of ringers but I’ll get to that…

The day started a little frantically for me – Howard and I were playing a couple of money games to warm up, but as the second game progressed, people were arriving, so each roll was separated by a minute of taking money, making change, verifying skill level for the newcomers, taking pre-payment for the upcoming BMAB in a few cases… I ended up having to go back and check on a couple of different registrations technically after the draw was done because it got to be an overload. Plus, the minute I finished the draw, one new person arrived, I got a request to add the side pool, and I realized I had left one person out entirely. After some last minute juggling, we got it going across 3 brackets — 2 full 8-person ones and 1 6-person one.

In the “A” bracket (made up entirely of people who entered at least one side pool this month), round 1 showed Tim E over Larry D, Dave C over Howard, Dave R (one of the newcomers) over me, and Bodger over Nathan. Dave R was teasing about it being a pain playing the director, since we got interrupted fairly regularly through the match. He, Ben, and Jim were 3 of the first-timers, and have been playing a running chouette for some time, but just learned about our group. Anyway – turns out he’s a decent player — he went on from beating me to winning the bracket, putting Bodger in 2nd. I managed to fight my way back to win in the consolation bracket, defeating Howard through sheer good luck in spite of at least one monster blunder.

In the “B” bracket, round 1 had Ben (see above) over Mark A, Jim (see above) over Mark H (yes, we had 3 Marks at the tournament), newcomer Alicia over Joel (in part thanks to his effective coaching on how to use the doubling cube, it should be noted), and Stan over first-timer Tim Y (who did come to observe at the Championship last week, but first-time playing). Ben and Jim went on to play for 1st/2nd, with Jim taking the top spot. So the 3 ringers who have been playing a $2 chouette just waltzed in and cashed in everything their first tournament… we’ll probably see them all again. Mark A came back to win in the consolation over Mark H (so all 3 Marks were in consolation matches…)

In the “C” bracket, round 1 had Leah over Ed, Mary over Julie, and Rich (not first-timer, but first time in over a year) over Matt. Rich got the second round bye, and Leah won over him in the final (starting out the year undefeated, again). Ed came back to win the consolation bracket over Matt.

I did record my matches, and might get them up onto YouTube eventually – if you didn’t know I have been posting there for a while, it’s perhaps not as inspirational as watching Mochy’s videos, but it’s more entertaining because I make more mistakes. Check them out…

Dave C and I were having some back and forth about how “Player of the Year” is determined. I still haven’t fully worked out how I want to handle it this year, but the rough idea is close to what I did back in 2021 (when Bodger won it) versus the “wins-losses” formula that I’ve used since (when Dave D won it 3 times in a row). The problem with the “wins-losses” formula is that it is really biased towards whoever is crazy enough to show up for the almost every event (that is, Dave C (and to be fair, Tim E, Bodger, Julie, Joel, and Ed)). Last year, we had 87 people come to at least one tournament, but only 23 people who came to three or more. I still want the field limited to people who come pretty regularly, but whatever that threshold works out to be for 2025, PotY will go to whoever has the best win percentage. Right now we have a 22-way tie for participation and a 3-way tie for win percentage, so it’s a pretty tight race…

By the way, keep an eye out for a likely last minute, “Super Bowl” weekend event. With the Texas Backgammon Championship tragically cancelled for this year, a number of us are grumpy about not getting to lose significant amounts of money on Backgammon, so I’m working on a “high roller/low roller” event.

-Mark

We had a fun afternoon of backgammon yesterday at the 2024 Women’s Championship/2024 Men’s Championship event – here’s the blow-by-blow:

In the Women’s Championship, we unfortunately had a low turnout. Julie reached out ahead of time to let me know that a last minute homeowner’s issue was going to prevent her from making it. I don’t know what happened with Paola or Nicki, but neither of them showed either. So, it was a 3-player field. In round 1, Andrea faced off against Kashic. They had a drawn-out match, over two hours long, mostly single point wins, and going down to the wire. Ultimately, Kashic came out on top, and after a short break, sat down to face Leah in the final (Leah, of course, had a first-round bye from winning two of the qualifiers…)

And it was another drawn-out match, well over two hours again, with mostly single point wins. I was able to come spectate for the last few games, as everything else had wrapped by then. Trailing 4-5 in the match to 7, Kashic offered Leah a cube in a complex mid-game position. Leah (I strongly believe correctly) took, and came damn close to turning it around. With 3 of Kashic’s checkers on Leah’s bar point, and the rest brought in, Leah broke anchor off Kashic’s 3-point with a 64, 22/18 22/16. But Kashic replied with a 65, and hit, 18/7*! Leah re-entered quickly, somehow escaping to her mid-point; then Kashic hit again with a 63, 18/9*! It looked like game over, but Leah saved the gammon with 66 and they moved on to the Crawford game. 

Crawford game was Leah’s going away – she was playing very well, and had Kashic on the bar with a closed board. With just a single checker on the roof, the gammon was unlikely, but Kashic had a difficult time entering! Leah had cleared 3 points before Kashic could come in, and it was looking like Leah would get the upset gammon to win the match, when Kashic hit 66 to save it!

Now tied at 6-6, they began the DMP game to decide it all. Once again, the game looked like it was Leah’s going away. Kashic’s board was crunching with two checkers still trapped back on Leah’s 4 point, and Leah had a substantial racing lead as she brought her final checkers around. But then Kashic rolled 66 to escape the back checkers, followed by 33 and 55 on their next two rolls, while Leah was throwing small numbers. Suddenly Kashic had the advantage, with most of their checkers on the 1-4 point, a gap on the 5, and a small stack on the 6, while Leah had a nice even spread across her board. It was all up to the dice at this point, but Kashic kept rolling big and Leah kept rolling small. Nothing you can do at that point – congratulations to Kashic for winning the 2024 Women’s Championship!

In the Men’s Championship, we did also have some absentee-ism. Somewhat as predicted, Aggi did NOT fly in from Hawaii to play. The draw would have set him against Paul, so Paul ended up with the first round bye. Dave and Bodger faced off, as did Joel and Gary. Both Dave and Joel won those matches. In round 2, Dave faced off against Paul, and Joel sat down against Tim (who, of course, had a first-round bye from winning two of the qualifiers…) Dave and Paul were at the table next to me, so I was able to watch the score going up as they played, and Dave came out on top! Meanwhile, Tim squeaked out a victory over Joel, and so Tim and Dave went on to play the final! Ultimately, Dave came out on top, and so congratulations to Dave for winning the 2024 Men’s Championship AND 2024 Player of the Year!

Additionally, we did have a handful of players who had not qualified show up for the knock-out jackpots – plus Bodger joined in after his first-round loss. Congrats to Kyle, Steve H, and Bodger for winning one each of those.

First regular tournament of 2025 is coming up in just a week – see you there!

-Mark