2025 World Championships Review

Much to celebrate for a large UK squad of 23

Yet again, due to the magic of our beloved game, Monte Carlo produced blistering drama and indelible memories.  Do many of the old problems remain?  Yes.  Is single elimination the best format?  The jury is out.  Is the streaming amazing?  Yes, but with one large caveat.  Did Team GB come to the party in a big way?  Oh, you betcha’.  Here are 10 key talking points from the week:

1)           GB report card.  To the naked eye a return of 18-19 in the Main could be seen as subpar.  This was a fantastic squad and for them not to have a winning record, considering how many of them bat at 60% is bizarre.  Then they did it again in the Consolation with 17-18.  And the less said about the Last Chance the better:  12-17.  [12-18 if you count a no-show].  Ay Caramba.  But of course, that doesn’t tell the full tale, and Team GB had a marvellous week, swamping the events and winning three major prizes on the last day, with many more near misses.  A final tally of 120-100 tells a clearer picture, and it’s in the detail that follows which shows just what a talented and respected backgammon nation we have become.

2)           Sensational Moulton Doubles run.  In an electrifying burst of form Paul and daughter Miranda made it all the way to the Doubles semi-final.  A wonderful fillip for the whole squad, and goodness, they didn’t have an easy draw.  Their victims were:  Steve Sax+1 in a torrid first-round, followed by the brutality of world champion Moazed and the redoubtable Jason Pack.  The assault didn’t stop as Oliver Squire+1 required disposal; followed by Hideaki Ueda, one of the finest in the world.  It almost could not have been a tougher draw and after overcoming somewhat less heralded quarter-finalists, they crashed into Ian Macfarlane, not a bookies’ favourite, but travelling the world for 30+ years for these.  Huge congratulations to both.

3)           Game of the tournament?  And a 16 cube for the ages…  If the world champion Timo Vaatainen was put through the wringer in the final, it wasn’t for the first time.  After just 10 minutes of his tournament life he was faced with a howitzer 16 cube by our own Will Blackwell.  But before that it is perhaps important to take a squiz at Will’s cube to 4; and then his take to 8:

This is a nice easy cube for Will, but only 10% of players are taking this.  It is a gloomy prospect.  Will is at over 75%, but amazingly Timo found the correct take.  Brilliant stuff and one in the eye for all the nonsense spouted about backgammon being a game of luck.  35 years of hard study has gone into this.  Timo has the take due to being ahead in the race and the gammons being low.  But I for one am getting the heck out of there.  Timo then got a flukey escaping roll before hitting Will with this nightmare:

Simple pipcount [72-84], simple pass?  I don’t mind Will’s take.  The skill differential is around 5-6% between the players and that must be taken into account.  Ie Will was about 47% to win at the start.  For those that say it shouldn’t are missing the point.  How else does a ‘strong’ player beat someone world class if they don’t take aggressively?  This was Will’s passport to the match, right here, right now.  19.8% is no picnic, but the upside is tremendous.  The error is “only” .087 – or a tad less than a “blunder”.

There then followed a brutal slugfest before we arrived at this:

The 16 cube from Will is tremendous.  Incorrect by .001 but compulsory for here.  He is 57.8%.  What bravery and nous.  Timo’s take is of course trivial.  Now, could Will find anything like average dice?  No.  11 21 was insufficient, especially with Timo’s 22.  What drama, but Will should hold his head high.

4)           Extra-terrestrial Seb, but at what cost?  Many have Seb Wilkinson as the finest player Britain ever produced, and he’s in almost everyone’s top 3.  His record here was an SW special: WWWWLWLWWWLWWWLWL  for a 12-5 return.  His match up with Akiko Yazawa in the last 16 was pure Hollywood and would have made for a good final.  This after disposing of UBC champ Zizka 17-6 with a 1.98 to ZZ’s 3.05.  For nearly three hours Seb had a firm grasp of the match, with a 12-8 lead and again playing off sub 2 to Akiko’s 4.  Now to finish the job.  But he had one dark shadow hanging over him – down to two minutes on the clock.  It is too low, and is the curse of many of our top players to have to play at “speed” late on in matches.  After a near flawless display, the errors started to creep in for Seb.  Some were relatively minor, like this:

Note how low his clock is to prohibit proper consideration of the action double.  He missed it and promptly pinged 66 for the cash.

But then this 31 was oh so severe.  The 1 entered and hit, while 48 seconds became 20 as Seb erred by breaking his priceless insurance policy [the bar] with the 3, and not slotting, to reduce his wins by 6%:

Akiko nailed the killer 61 and despite an astonishing sequence of jokers, always seemed on for the gammon, which duly came to pass.  The price paid for perfection turned out to be too high.

5)           Skipper so close yet again.  In his undefeated semi-final two years ago Chris Rogers was a clean 99% or more to beat Ashkenazi but a pair of boxes [66] won a horror race for Victor.  Another good run to the last 16 followed last year.  Chris is batting at an astonishing 80% strike rate for his last 25 World Championship matches.  Chris will have fancied his draw against Doron Claxton in the last 8.  Just his type of match, someone to grind down, not in any way used to the environ.  Chris bossed the match but Doron wouldn’t let go.  The crunch came with a mesmerising priming game with Chris at 15-14.  So many times he was one good parlay away from the win.

In this taut position Chris had Doron on the roof with his 3 point slotted, and a Doron blot on the 23.  Doron has slammed down the freaker – 31, CR has entered nicely with 31 and now this thunderclap cube – wow:

It’s brilliant stuff from Doron, wrong by a little, to which he’d say, “tell it to the scorebook”.  This fearless, timely cubing was part of the reason for his success.  Sometimes in life, a trigger needs to be pulled.  After some half dozen chances to crush Doron before this, Chris then had several more but contrived to crack first, Doron found boxes and the match followed soon after.  Another Rogers sickener – enough already!  But few in MC history will have had such a granite like run over so many matches.  He can but keep plugging away.  What a player.

6)           Dreamboat final.  Timo Vaatainen [FIN] vs Doron Claxton [RSA].  Now THAT was a backgammon match.  The wildness of Claxton, nervy, excitable and intense and often prematurely molesting his opponent’s dice.  And the shaking eagerly after presenting the cube, with his opponent deep in thought is a no-no too.  But Doron is a breath of fresh air and brings real humanity to the game, especially with Timo morphing into the Terminator with the dark glasses and earpods.  Even the coiffure is very Arnold.  Despite playing off an expansive 9, Doron bossed the match for 3 hours before finally feeling the pinch.  This position sees him slap bang in line for 18-6, but then snowflakes!:

Timo hit the resulting deuce shot, and never looked back as Doron became ever more skittish, with some premature cubing and extremely spooked passing.  We arrived at a thrilling climax and so many times DC thought he had his man.  Finally, we arrived at the denouement:

Any thoughts on Timo’s 54?  I found it most strange that he entered on the 20.  The position seemed to scream to stay back, but you can see his grave concern of not getting a clear shot at Doron’s back man.  Very intricate and complex stuff.  Timo is wrong by 1% [21 to 20%].  Anyway, what could Doron find?  Not very much… 42.  Still, only 15 shots for Timo, otherwise it was surely Goodnight Vienna [ok, Goodnight Helsinki].  No 5 for Timo!  But the 64 flyshot was there, and Doron had no answer to that.  A classic match and well worth a look on youtube.  I think the correct side won.  Doron is an inspiration to amateurs the world over, but the backgammon gods opined, “not today.”  Timo is a great player and many decades of hard work went into this.

7)           Wonderful streaming but that caveat.  The streaming service is amazing, but backgammon commentary has a deep flaw – and I’ve noticed this for a while.  We often only get about 80-85% of the play described and analysed, and countless key plays and fascinating moments are overlooked due to the booth going wildly off-piste with irrelevant and loquacious side-chat.  It is maddening – and sometimes nauseating.  You don’t see this in any other sport – so why backgammon?  Deep into the world final critical moments were getting missed due to irrelevant anecdotes.  Vital cube actions should never be missed, especially if they’re wildly premature – it’s backgammon at its most exciting.  Instead, there will be a spectacularly bad cube that can change the entire course of a match – and history – and we’ll be hearing about some tea party in the Bahamas.  Rule number one for backgammon commentary:  fall in line with the rest of sports comms and never, ever miss an important play.

8)           Gaz & Pete doing Gaz & Pete things.  You can’t keep a man like Gaz Owen down for long and he duly won the second Super Jackpot, beating Dirk Schiemann in the final.  Elsewhere both Rogers and Heskett had deep runs in the “oldies but goldies”, and Pete fell in the final.  Pete enjoyed his debut on the world stage after the brutality that was the UK qualifiers, and played off 3.08 for the week, putting the small matter of ZZ, Trencher and David Wells into his basket.  Some trio.

Newly qualified Brit, Jason Pack reached the final of the Speed for the second year running.  Nothing could top the jaw-dropping drama of last year’s loss, but this was also highly dramatic against Tage Mellgren.  But once again, not to be…

More congratulations are due to 13 year old Bobby Blackwell who placed a smooth 3rd in the U18s; and to Fabricio Cardoso, pictured, another online UK satellite winner who took that momentum all the way to winning the Intermediate Consolation.  Many on our tour know him to be an extremely tough opponent and this might be his time to step up for good.

9)           Miranda the golden girl.  One of the hardest studies in the business, Miranda Moulton deserves every bit of acclaim for winning the women’s championship over Gabriela Leon.  Some get rather uppity about calling it the World Champs – should that not go to the furthest travelling woman in the main?  The cream of the women’s game don’t tend to partake in the tournament and some say its existence is an anachronism in this day and age.  But if it is a “development” tournament, and promoting the women’s game, these can only be good things.  Miranda is posting impressive PRs with increasing regularity – a remarkably swift rise through the ranks.

10)         The Last Word.  So what is my report card for the World Championships as a whole?  I remain stuck on around 7.5/10.  The field could be at least doubled – some say tripled – if it wasn’t all so ruinously expensive.  The Main event was identical last year: 226.  Yes, there was the invention of the Advanced tournament, but that is largely overlooked.  Who wants to be Advanced World Champion?   I have made my points very clear:  take it on the road, have it at MC once every 5 years for the history, and I believe that Dubai’s triple elimination is the way to go.  A poll on social media has it as 77% of the community’s preference.  Single elimination, whilst thrilling, is too savage and the last 16 & 32 seemed rather short on quality and huge match-ups.  This is an excerpt from Grandmaster Mislav Kovacic’s recent notes on the matter [and there is loads of chatter all over Facebook, including a major open letter from Christian Munk-Christensen that is bristling with comments]:

“It’s a well produced tournament with a lot of hype and great coverage (thx Tara and Bill!).

That said, with the recent changes—namely the significantly higher entry fee and the switch to a single-elimination format—it feels like the focus has shifted more toward high-stakes gambling than the mind sport aspect of the game.

I chose not to attend this year because I’m not willing to pay €1,800 (€300 of which is just a registration fee) only to be knocked out after a single loss. I don’t see that as the right direction for the game. It’s the complete opposite of what a World Championship in any sport or game should be about.”