At the end of a thrilling day’s play involving rounds of Speedgammon, Double Match Point (DMP) and Consulting Doubles, the UK team emerged with a slender lead of 41-37 based on match and Performance Rating (PR) wins.
Please refer to my earlier blog post for details of the format used and scoring mechanism.
There were some notable achievements:
- Chris Bray recovered from a 1-10 deficit to win 11-10 against Kit Woolsey in the Speedgammon and recorded a PR of 1.03.
- Pete Heskett and Ken Gibson recorded a PR of 1.29 against former world champion Joe Russell and legend Neil Kazaross, but were beaten in the match and on PR as the Americans scraped in with a PR of 1.21.
- Peter Bennet recovered from 0-7 in the Speedgammon to defeat Albert Steg.
- On the USA side, Matt Cohn-Geier and Jonathan Hardigree recorded a PR of 0.88 against Julian Fetterlein and Peter Bennet, although the latter pair won the match.
The match is held in honour of Paul Magriel, World Champion in 1978, author of the classic book “Backgammon,” New York Times columnist from 1977 to 1980, renowned theorist and coach. Paul passed away in March 2018.
Today will feature two rounds of 11 points single matches with two points awarded for each match win and one point for each PR win. The first team to reach 76 points wins.
A spreadsheet of results is accessible to anyone wishing to check on the progress of the match via the following link:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HysBZ6a91ulCCzgPKRCt7hoQ-ltbDA70DMBst6oIgX4
One match in each of the two remaining rounds will be live streamed with commentary from Geoff Hall, Kent Goulding, Roberto Litzenberger and Ian Terry. They are:
- Sebastian Wilkinson v Matt Cohn-Geier starting @ 18:00 UK time
- Reece Hodges v Steve Sax starting @ 20:00 UK time
The link for the live stream is via the UKBGF YouTube page:
https://www.youtube.com/@UKBGF/streams
Click the Live tab or place Magriel Cup in search to locate the relevant video.
Brilliant! Keep going Team UK!