Tournaments abroad can sometimes be a bit of an adventure – just getting to and from the venue. In mid-April, in search of some warmer climes, Rowena and I decided to attend the 2nd Loutraki Grand Prix International Backgammon Championships in Greece.
A delayed flight meant sharing one hire car with CJ and Rachel Rhodes fell by the wayside. Fortunately, we then bumped into Chris Rogers and Julian Minwalla and we were able to jump into their car instead. Our travel travails hadn’t quite finished – once at Loutraki we were faced with an hour-long detour, on foot, fully laden with bags and in the dead of night to get to get round some roadworks to our AirBnB…only to find the next morning that we could have used a path a couple of yards away round the roadworks.
The tournament:
It’s always great to walk into a room 2,000 miles from home and immediately find many of our UK and international friends. There is a very strong camaraderie that exists amongst players of this crazy game. We had a very warm welcome from the tournament team of Arda Findikoglu, Santiago Fornasir and Gokhan Gunes. We registered for our appropriate tournament flights and sat down for a few warm-up games. Rowena was selling some of her crafts for charity and set up her little stall. Arda brought Mochy over with a big pile of books and Rowena was happy to sell them on his behalf. In return he later purchased some of her items. We had a bit of a laugh recounting our previous days adventures to our friends which they all found very amusing.
This was the 2nd Loutraki Tournament and it had attracted 96 Masters players and 53 Intermediates. There were 16 players from the UK. Some of the world’s top players were in attendance including Super Grand Master Masayuki Mochizuki and the newly-crowned Super Grand Master Dirk Schiemann. Our top players in attendance included Grand Master G1 Seb Wilkinson, Chris Rogers and Radu Ciortan. I featured a bit further down the list (quite a lot further down in reality). Following the welcome speech we also received a short presentation on Komboloi as the Komboloi Museum had provided some sponsorship for the tournament. Rachel, Rowena and I hastily purchased a set each to “worry” ourselves to victory.
The main masters flight were 13-point matches. I felt quite honoured to be knocked out in the first round along with most of the other favourites such as Mochy, Dirk, Seb, Radu and many others. All of the brackets (and results) can be found in the features pages of the Loutraki Tournament Facebook pages. Of the UK players Chris Rogers went the furthest and reached the undefeated quarter finals where he went down to P Kokkinis from Greece. Ian Davidson also had a good run before being knocked out. In fact, not many of the top seeds made it through the first round at all. Before one of my matches on an earlier day Rachel came rushing up to me to pass on a “lucky” bracelet Rowena had purchased for me in the monastery they had visited. Unfortunately, the night before my final matches the bracelet broke in bed and at 1am I was scrabbling around under the bedclothes trying to find all these little beads. I put this down to my final defeats as I managed to get one away from the money in both the speed gammon and DMP tournaments. Rowena’s bracelet survived and she won an eight player Jackpot. I did however win the raffle for a nice little Loutraki dice holder – I had selected the ticket with our house number on it.
Our UK winners for the tournament included Chris Rogers who won the Super Jackpot and Mike Grabsky who won the Speedgammon.
One of the side attractions at the tournament was the much anticipated first match between two Super Grand Masters, Masayuki Mochizuki and Dirk Schiemann the latter having only recently achieved this status. That match was commentated on by Sebastian Wilkinson and Carter Mattig. This was a very historical match, being the first ever between two Super Grand Masters, so there was a lot of prestige at stake. I won’t spoil it for you, but you can find the match on YouTube and it is well worth watching.
At the presentations on the final evening there was one of the best free buffets we have ever had at a tournament, which I believe was provided by the Loutraki dignitaries. The food was amazing and of high quality but also included was free beer, which made for a very jolly time as reflected by the number of empty glasses on our table at the end of the evening.
Next year the World Team Championships are taking place in Loutraki alongside the individual tournament. This will make it an even more exciting event to participate in. Below are some figures which may help you decide whether to attend.
Weather – a very balmy +20C as this is out of season this time of year.
Car hire for the week was only £80 + petrol.
Transfer from the airport is approx. £45 per person each way. Buses and trains are available for much lower rates but will take a bit longer.
There are numerous eating establishments near the casino that are very reasonably priced and much cheaper than the UK. The Greek salads are particularly sumptuous. Seafood is widely available and mostly freshly caught. The local beers are all about 5% and were about 3 Euros for a small glass.
The hotel offered special rates for backgammon players and there are many more accommodation options within easy reach of the casino.
We had a great time seeing all our friends from home and abroad again (particularly our Polish friends) and we made many more new ones. For us, this is just as important as the chance to play some backgammon with the best and maybe win a trophy, which unfortunately didn’t happen for us this time.
We wish to express our sincerest thanks to the whole of the tournament team for making our week in Loutraki so memorable, including Stefanos Haraklias, Arda Findikoglu, Alina Schimpfle, Santiago Fornasir, Gokhan Gunes, Stella Perpera, Elina Mazioti, Giannis Papoutsis and Mate Feher.
Away from the backgammon, along with Rachel and CJ, we visited a number of fantastic historical sites: the mountain fortress of Acrocorinth which is over 2000 years old; the spectacular Corinth Canal; and the ancient theatre of the Asclepieion of Epidaurus. It was a most amazing archeological marvel.
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