The UK Backgammon Federation
After an entertaining weekend, the highly deserving Swede Johan Moazed took the spoils in the final against Brandon Macklin. More on them later, but we start with one of the most dazzling sequences in the game’s fabled 5,000 year history. It is a play in 12 acts. Sit back, enjoy, and prepare to be amazed.
Ethan Rice vs Sander Lylloff, Last 8, 2nd Chance.
1) Rice’s thunderclap cube. This is a difficult position, but you hold onto the cube here. Lots of gammons and you’re well short of 75%.
It was a dramatic day all round at the World Champs, but we’ll start with an amazing detour.
A cataclysmic misfortune occurred in the semi-final of the High-roller. KC Carlston [son of former champion Dennis] failed to show up on time for his semi-final date with Mochy with some EUR60,000 on the line. 20 minutes grace, and then the penalty points kicked in [1 every 5 mins]. He could afford 7, but not 8, which was a scratch. 8 transpired and a few minutes later KC rocked up, thinking the match was to be played at 5, not 12.
There’s much to say about this grimness, but it can be boiled down into five succinct points:
The Thursday at MC is what separates the wheat from the chaff. We saw it last year, and it happened again. Twice in two years I’ve been over 90% to get to the thrills of Friday’s last 32, and twice the fickle finger of fate tapped me on the shoulder: “not today, Willie.”
Last year, in a sensational denouement against the double French Open winner with a big crowd and the legendary Francois Tardieu looming over me like the Angel of Death, and my opponent down to 5 seconds, I hit the crucial shot, saw the fan and only a 3 x 6 x 3 x 2 parlay would nail me. So about 100-1. It happened. And this year was even worse. I lost not through luck, but due to terrible technique, ignorance, skittishness, panic, nausea, hyperventilation and “chasing ghosts”.
With Team GB fighting hard up the road apiece at Paris ’24, what of their noble gammoning brothers? After a chastening first day, we knew we now had to go hard or go home. 18 matches were played by the UK, and 12 wins were notched. Terrific stuff. 75/226 souls remain of which 5 are British.
It is interesting to look at how the nations are doing as it gives a great insight into who’s doing what in global backgammon:
20 US
7 Japan
5 GB
5 Italy
4 France
4 Denmark
3 Sweden
3 Germany
2 Iran
2 Brazil
1 Costa Rica
1 Lithuania
1 Ukraine
1 Turkey
1 Albania
1 Canada
1 Belgium
1 Argentina
1 Switzerland
1 Portugal
1 Romania
A pleasing uptick this year with 226 players, up from 198 last year. [72 in Intermediates]. The atmosphere has crackled with huge crowds around some of the games and some monumental matches on the live streams. Tobias Hellwag, ranked the number 1 player in the world on one site’s global rankings, hit his opponent’s very final checker at DMP and then won it from there. Such a rare, spectacular occurrence – backgammon at its bloodiest.
The British contingent has sent a dozen souls to try and crack the code of global domination in Al-Daftari, Barnes, Blackwell, Broomfield, Choraria, Cockerell, Foulad, Kumar, Moulton, Rogers, Squire & Wilkinson, and 10 have lived to fight another day. Alas, just two have survived in the Main, which is significantly down on last year’s heroics, but there’s been some positive, fighting spirit in the 2nd Chance and two good-looking byes, which means our tally for the day is Won 11, Lost 12. Chuck in those byes and it’s actually a positive return. Not great, but not terrible. It is just Broomfield and Choraria who we’ve lost.
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