This position came from Sean Clennell, from the final of the most recent Bucksgammon High Rollers tournament. Sean is Blue against Anna Price (Black), and it’s only the third move of the game so we’re in a position that probably comes up regularly for most of us. Before reading on, decide what you’d do with the cube…
Archives for May 2017
Game Changer: How Backgammon Will Bring Peace to the Middle East, by Zaki Djemal
How backgammon can change the world and even bring peace – starting in Jerusalem. This talk was originally given at TEDx White City. We’re also grateful to Mochy for bringing it to our attention.
Zaki Djemal is Co-Founder and Managing Partner of fresh.fund, the first student-run venture capital fund in Israel. He is also Co-Founder of דאבל ירושלמי | دابل مقدسي | Jerusalem Double, Jerusalem’s first backgammon league and championship for Jews and Arabs.
Marc Turner wins The Birmingham Open 2017
Dave Pritchard writes:
The 6th annual Birmingham Open was held on Saturday 13th May in Moseley, Birmingham.
This year Mike Wood, the Tournament Director, expanded the Tournament from its traditional format of a 32 player knockout. After a high level of early demand for places Mike decided to go for a field of 48. Everyone played four 5-point matches in a “Swiss” system to produce 15 players with three or four wins. One lucky player with only two wins was drawn from a hat to produce a sixteen player Main knockout. The remaining players competed for a “Consolation” and a progressive “Last Chance”. Thus every single entrant was guaranteed a minimum of six matches.
[Read more…]
The UKBGF Ratings
Tony Lezard, creator and administrator of the national ratings service at https://results.ukbgf.com, explains what the ratings formula means and why the bar for changing the formula should be set very high indeed.
I sometimes receive suggestions for how the formula used for the national ratings service could be improved. It’s hard to argue that the current formula is unimprovable, but hastily changing it causes its own problems, even if the rationale for making a change is sound. Let’s examine this more closely.
Position of the Week: 7th May
After a brief break for the May bank holiday, we’re back with another position from the same match as last time. We’ve moved the score on a bit and it’s the third move of the twentieth game. This one left me scratching my head as while I blundered over the electronic board, and accepted that XG would ding my PR for it rather badly, my second choice also would have provoked the bot’s ire. What do you make of it?
A reminder – please do send in your best positions, we’d be delighted to feature them here, especially those with an interesting backstory!
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