Or “Division 2 London Player does surprisingly well against Danish Champion”
UKBGF’s Raj Jansari was over in Denmark this weekend for the Munkebjerg Championships – a regular event run in association with the Danish Backgammon Federation. It features a very strong field in the main division, and plenty of action with generous prizes right down to beginner level.
We were delighted to get a very excited message from Raj, having drawn current champion Michael Nielsen in the first round, that Raj had emerged victorious. In addition, having analysed the match Raj played a truly outstanding PR of 1.0 against Michael’s 8.5. You can find the eXtremeGammon match file here – enjoy a truly fantastic performance.
Sadly Raj’s dropped into the fighters’ bracket after losing to eventual finalist Lars Trabolt, and although he won the fighters’ to go back into the main quarter-finals his run ended against Kenny Nissen (who also lost his semi-final against Lars). You can see nine hours of match play on the tournament site stream, including a gripping 17-15 final between Lars and new champion Erik Sørensen.
I do criticise the redouble to 4 in the last game.This is a good example of an expert over complicating things. Back to basics,it is hard to see a market losing sequence in two turns never mind one and of course the possibility of winning after just losing a single game should not be dismissed.
This is a comment only on this one decision not on Michael as a player,we all make bad decisions sometimes or we would be xg.
I hope Michael sees a copy of my match against Martin at BMAB I made a .777 take error at 8 all up to 11.Puts my criticism into perspective lol
Mark Dixon, really enjoyed your funny post
great play raj , live play 11 pt match PR 1 , nuff said
I’d like to report on a match I have just played as a Division 17 player. It is against someone not well known
After several minutes of quick, ill-thought out play I emerged the loser. Not only that but when I did analyse the match I achieved a distinctly unimpressive PR of 19.7.
I would upload the match file but when I tried to save it XG came up with an error message: “not a chance, I’m not allowing your computer to waste any RAM on that”
First of all, congratulation to Raj on his excellent performance. Great asset for UK backgammon. It would have been better if we had a page or somewhere to discuss about different positions as well.
But where is the match?? The link doesn’t work
Sorry Michael – will fix!
Hi Michael,
The link to the match file has been fixed. All match files referenced on the blog are also kept for posterity on the Resources page, under ‘2. Recorded Matches.’
Thanks,
Tom (webmaster)
One thing in particular struck me when looking at this match, Nielsen’s decision to re-cube to 4 when 9-1 down. He had one checker stuck behind a 6-prime, so it would have taken an extraordinary sequence of rolls for him to win (involving Raj coming in behind Nielsen’s prime and failing to escape). Now I’m sure he is a better player than me, but XG saw it as a double blunder, so maybe someone can explain his thinking in this situation as I can’t for the life of me see how he thought he could win the game!
I don’t criticise Michael’s decision at all. However I wouldn’t redouble that over the board because that game was savable not to get gammoned at least. But, I think his thought went onto ‘dead or live’ cube context. In theory, In matches where you’re far behind and you hold the cube (considering you are likely to lose that game and the match) the cube in your hand turns out to be a dead cube. so why not throwing that on the board and use your little chance to win the game? That’s possibly what Michael was thinking of assuming Raj would roll sth funny and Michael could take the advantage. I think he mismeasured the gammon value and high value of his cube ownership.
Thanks Aref – my comments weren’t intended as a criticism, I was trying to understand the thinking behind his decision, and your reply has shed some light on that. I do understand the concept of a dead cube, though I often struggle to implement it over the board. I didn’t see this scenario as a dead cube as there were so many gammon saves, as you said.