Rocky Road, but Anna & Dave Stay the Course

An experimental Players’ Champs was [nearly] concluded with only abrasions to its journey, as the train rattled on somewhat unsteady tracks throughout, and at moments there could have been a derailment.  But instead we can salute David Brown and Anna Price for reaching the final for an early 2026 battle royale.
The Saturday’s play does not qualify for disaster status, but most agreed it was a bit of a ‘rotter’.  A theme of these blogs for the last three years has been searching for the secret ingredient for what really makes a tournament swing, and there were some fatal, gargantuan flaws here, which we can all learn from.  I don’t mind triple elimination:  it really does give people a chance to ‘go on a bender’.  It is an endurance event for sure, but the play must be smooth and well-oiled.

The obvious and clear way forward is that the random draw for the first three rounds be made straight off the bat.  Then, between the hours of 1030-1400 you know exactly what you’re doing and who you’re doing it with.  But the lay-out was a nightmare:  the tournament moves – and only moves – when the slowest match in each round is complete.  Repeat for round two… and then round three.  My four matches on Saturday lasted 20, 30, 20, 30 mins.  I’m not playing crazy backgammon, it’s just the way it is.  But others are taking well over 90 mins to complete – even closer to two hours.  I saw one person at 4-5 [7] play on “too good, not good enough” for about 20 mins.  He finally won the undoubled gammon, but there will have been over a dozen missed cubes in there. At Crawford that match could still have nearly half an hour – and two games – left.

A Very Cruel Hard Stop

The second snafu was getting booted from the playing room with a hard stop at 1730.  This meant that Andrew had to announce the final round of the day at 1540.  A catastrophe for a weekend with triple elim and 150 players.  So I was off home at ten past 4!  But it was with a heavy heart that some 12 hours of backgammon would be then required on the Sunday, to catch up.  Perhaps I did the clever thing and lost at sparrow’s chirp the next morn, and then went on to win the Consolation/Last Chance, which only needed 5 wins, such was the proliferation of survivors in the Main.

My message for all the BG tournament organizers the world over, whether it be club nights or the big events, is to focus on planning and scheduling to make events go smoothly.  If the schedule is misconceived, it cannot easily be rescued on the day, and attempts to do so can potentially end in an embarrassing mess.  If the schedule is realistic, I’m more than happy to kick back and relax, knowing that the computer algorithm will give me a virtual tap on the shoulder when my next opponent is ready to play.

A Far Mellower Sunday

On Sunday we were told to arrive between 9&10 for a 10.30 start, but even that is kicking a crucial 30 mins of playing time into touch.  Some players have huge distances to travel in the evening with trains or planes to catch.  No-one would bat an eye for a 10am start.  In fact, quite the opposite, we would welcome it.  At 1020 Andrew announced, “well, most of you are here, so do feel free to start.”  Good common sense!

Things were much improved, but the ‘cloak of doom’ of how far behind the 8-ball we were never really went away.  Well into the night it was David Brown who won a bye to the final whilst Anna Price and Julia Hayward slugged it out.  After their denouement [Anna won], David insisted on a lie-down in a darkened room, and the hostilities were ceased.

Please see an explanatory note from Andrew below in comments.

Anatomy of a Back-game

More results later, but herewith some great positions, starting with the “anatomy of a back game”.  They may be a “losing proposition” to many, but they remain endlessly fascinating and complex, and it never hurts to have more comprehension of them.  I’ve overcooked it a little here, but if I make the deuce I go big favourite [as I have built a bridge], and notice I have enticed the premature cube from Hasan Kundi.  But I missed the 2 shot and he scored the grim 44.  Ouch.

However, shots still arrived, and here’s my intriguing recube.  What do you think?

Hasan has snatched as you can see, but it’s a dectruple blunder…  Match winning chances with the pass are some 40%, but only 20% with the take.  But it’s a tough read as I’ve lost the 6-point I was born with.  Hasan then wriggled like an electric eel on acid for the next 50 odd rolls, more than justifying his take.  Now what about this scary 65 for me?  Note how somehow all his checkers on the deuce, have been teleported to the ace!  Pretty freaky:

The blocking play, 14/8, 13/8 is brutal to find under pressure as paranoia yearns for a little more security with the hit.  But the hit [my play] is wrong, by half a percent.  Anyway, after an age I got the close-out but then got needlessly paranoid again with a greedy bear-off.  This in turn triggered the shot, he hit, and I was right back in the mire.  After some 150 tense rolls in the game, I won it by 1 pip, and progressed to the next round.

Anatomy of a dual meltdown

In the Consolation/LC final against Kev Bailey I ground him down to 6-0 but then sat back and watched for the next 45 mins as he cut me to ribbons with his scalpel.  Thrice I had him bang to rights, and thrice he said, “not tonight, Josephine.” At 6-3, Kev and I had a dual meltdown.  Can you guess what one of Ireland’s finest [red] did here?:

To my mild astonishment he ran from the 23… for the 16^th best play.  It’s unlike Kev that, but I greatly admire his skills and he’s well known as a “sub-5” man.  I was so befuddled by what he’d done that when I rolled a 63 I loosely played 10/1* instead of just being nice and quiet with 10/7 9/3.  Kev was only wrong by .117, but I am a triple blunder.  The key was being down to 37 seconds on the clock and I had a panicky ‘waft outside the off stump’.  My wins decline from 79% to 67.  So bad.  I got missed but still lost the game.  Deserved.

I stumbled over the line at Double Match Point in another ludicrously tense game.  Phew…

[Yet another] epic Barnesy snowman

Jon Barnes is known as ‘king as the snowmen’ [8-cube] in some parts; never shy to give that plump little rascal a run of the place.  Could this possibly be a take for Adrian Dinulescu [white] in what was basically a quarter-final?

No, it’s a triple whopper and Adrian must accept the 0-4 scoreline, over the 15% he has here, which he plunked for.  All five of these above examples highlight the blunders we all make under quite severe pressure.  And they say it’s a game of luck.  Pah – care to make it interesting?

Sports round up:

Who recalls that wonderful tune for BBC World service’s sports-round up?  Herewith some highlights, in the tone they used delivering the headlines:

Filby wins the Inters!  One of the Inters’ greatest bandits, Chris Filby [close to the top 100 players in the land], took out another top Inter-assassin in Phil Tutchings.

The semi-finalists were Aydin Kolcak and Yas Turan.

Steven O’Connor won six in a row in the Inters Consolation over the ever-progressing Catherine Thome [semi], and John Bass in the final; and Ritchie Newbold took the Last Chance over Jimmy Ishac.

The final of the Main has been announced for Friday 9 January, 4pm, at the Brighton Open between Brown & Price.  It has been granted “Global streaming status” with Grandmaster commentary.