A full house of 32 players braved the winter weather to turn out for the very first ‘Backgammon at the Grand’ in Scarborough.
The weekend kicked off on the Friday night in the beautiful Palm Court ballroom, with the opening of the weekend long Ca$h Out games.
At the stroke of 10:30 on the Saturday play began with the qualifying pools and continued well into the evening. The qualifiers threw up some ‘groups of death’ which resulted in some closely contested matches.
The results on the Saturday, determined which players were in which pools on the Sunday. The number of pools was reduced from 8 pools of 4 to 4 pools of 8 and once more there were some fiercely contested matches.
Play continued until just after 6:00pm when all the matches were completed. After an intense weekend of backgammon the winners are shown below:
Gold division: Winner Richard Biddle; runner-up John Wright
Silver division: Winner Rob Perry, runner-up Kevin Jones
Bronze division: Winner Peter Bennet, runner-up Steve Bibby
Blue division: Winner Keith Gill, runner-up Paul Barwick
Last Chance: Winner Martin Barkwill, runner-up Richard Neale
Backgammon at the Grand introduced a very novel format – with groups of four on the first day playing a triple elimination to determine which of each four would end up as Gold, Silver, Bronze or Blue; the Sunday saw each division play a double elimination with a trophy at the end for the ultimate winner. It’s a difficult juggling act between keeping every game meaningful, and making sure everyone who comes has plenty of games, and we’d be delighted to hear your experiences and ideas!
Recent Comments