Super Sara Sparkles

The suave presence and insouciant charm of Sara Sathyanandha cast a long spell over a magnificent Players’ Championships where folks are offered up to six tournaments over the two days in what is a merrily hectic affair.  All gets resolved although the structure to find the winner remains a work in progress.  We’ll get there, but the requisite for Dan Rovira to win 10/10 matches in a 128 draw was cruel and unusual punishment.  More on that later, but let us savour the remarkable festival in that we enjoyed in Cecil Sharp’s majestic main hall.

The merging of the Inters with the Masters worked fine, with the low entry fee, and the bigwigs able to enter lots of sidepool action, which lessens the risk of too many players being swamped in a bad equity environ.  And forget that, the giant-killing was everywhere.  I slayed a couple myself, but in turn got dismantled by several who I fancied to beat.  And what about Hazel Harper, getting two wins under her belt, and then pumping Lawrence Powell thoroughly in the debriefing room?  He stumbled over the line for a 9-6, but Hazel was delighted to have run one of the greatest British match-players of all time, so close.  A key reason why we love the game.

All Our Yesterdays

All around, the brave, the bold and the new mixed with legendary figures of the British game – in a wonderful patchwork of colour and chaos you so often get in our fabled game.  Players in their ninth decades squared up against teenagers.  Marvellous.

One recalls a young scamp called Peter Bennet kneeling at the feet of the master – Plato Tserliagkos – and begging to do a deal before the final at Cromwell’s Casino in Birmingham in 1983.  Plato – playing for around $1,000 per point back then – wouldn’t hear of it, briskly swatting away the young whippersnapper.  Peter won – £625 – a huge amount for him back then, and duly repeated the favour again here.

And then there was a time-warp back to 2004-5 when it was Barnes & Busato show going back and forth for about a year, both having outstanding seasons.  And there they were locking horns again in the quarters here, neither aging a day:

One of the Great bluff doubles from Bertie Wooster’s pal

I had an incredibly tough opener with the PG Wodehouse inspired Alexander Pelling-Bruce, who plays a steady, calm game, and knew full well this wasn’t a cube at 7-6 [9] but also detected the skittish, panicky nature of his squirming opponent:

Of course I must take this and play out for the match, but made that dreadful blunder so many make of choosing delayed execution: “Oh, I’ll just outplay and grind him down in the last two – no need to just let him cruise to a non-skill, easy racing win.”  But I had no idea Alex was only 63% here, thought it was more like 73%.  But one fan and he’s actually in quite big trouble.  Anyway, I passed, lost the next in a horror sicko, and can only have myself to blame.  You can’t expect to go on deep runs making catastrophic blunders like this.  As ever with me it’s a case of DSR [deeper study required].

The DSR mistress

A potential great women’s find is Becca Sweetman, who insists on DSR at all times.  I know that we’re all supposed to go through every match on Galaxy or XG analyse every blob of all colours.  But do I?  No.  Why not?  Because it’s too damn hard.  It’s boring, onerous and makes my head hurt.  Oh so slowly I am starting to review more, but still nothing like 100%.  Maybe 40?  But Becca, who has never read a book and only in her second live tourney, does go through every blob, or else, “I’m just wasting my time.”  Hence her extremely rapid rise.  Becca is also on Team GB for mounted archery – surely one of the toughest sports in the world.  I haven’t posted a mounted archery picture for ages, so here’s Becca in action.

A pleasing youth policy

Miranda Moulton picked up more wins with her steady ascent in the game, but of even more note was the 18-year old Jonathan Sher, son of Martin [winner of London Masters in March], who decapacitated the author in the Consolation in an astonishing match, three times hitting me from the roof in two games with the 30-1 parlay of my rolling the high 55/66/65 and him smacking.  27,000-1?!  Meh, I doth protest too much – JS played a fine match.

Turning cantankerous into an art form

After losing to Peter, Plato then had an excellent run to the Quarter-finals, before evergreen Dan Rovira ground him down.  Dan has a fiddly play here to leave himself awkward at the back and he would duly leave shots.  I think at one stage Dan may have gently touched the roof of his mouth with his tongue, and a tiny sound may have emerged.  Was it a tut?!  And if it was?!  Minor hell broke loose as Plato lambasted Dan for “tutting from a winning position”.  Dan looked suitably bewildered perhaps not realising that Plato has been doing “cantankerous as an artform” since the Seventies.  It’s all part of his schtick.  Dan, whilst a little shell-shocked by the hairdryer treatment duly settled the account.

Spirit of the Game – A Farthing of kindness

At the other extreme, the good sportsman award goes to Adrian Farthing who observed Michael Flesch pick and pass but not put the checker on the roof.  Alan was fully within his right to let the play stand, but instead he pointed out the error and told MF to send his man back.  Michael replied that the play should stand, it was his error.  Alan insisted, feeling that Michael saw the play even though I believe the non-hit may have been available.  A lovely little gesture – more of this please people!

Gorgeous George full of the joys of spring

I had a terrific match with George Jacobs, all but becalming him several times.  But George isn’t #66 in the land due to not knowing how to win matches; he’s certainly not there for his PR [which he readily admits and revels in].  I was surprised after hitting twice in a coup classique that I didn’t really know when to cube.  But it’s all about the score and where my spares were.  I tried this:

I am actually a little early, and George’s pass is a .355 blunder.  To his credit though, George shipped in a seriously good cube in a priming game earlier that about 3% would have had the courage for.

Get Carter

Richard Carter had been on the beers by the time he got around to me on Saturday night.  What a howitzer cube this is.  What on earth?!

Heh, there are action doubles and then this!  The hit with the deuce would justify the cube, but as things stand, a double whopper with cheese.  The match was the Lucky loser last-16, so hardly important, and the amber nectar will have helped matters along…

A complex cube against Radu

I had a tense match in the consolation against Radu Ciortan which ended up being a whitewash to me.  Radu is perhaps one of the most intimidating players on tour with his severe demeanour over the checkers.  Would I have gotten more out of XG in terms of human interaction?  Perhaps, but that is no criticism of Radu:   he’s there to win a backgammon match not to partake in a sewing circle.  Backgammon matches does turn some of us into machines, and playing such a match in these conditions can feel a tad joyless, but goodness we had some absorbing games.

What say you to my cube here to Radu at 4-0 to 7?!

Heh, I may be 70.5% with 16% gammons, but this is far too big.  A terrible .35’er.  Whoopsie daisy.  All about the score of course.  Radu snatched with delight and I was soon in big trouble, and he may even have missed a chance for the super-duper rewhip to 4.

The Quarter-final line up

The last 8 merged the winner of the undefeated with the rest, and yes, I’m coming back to that!  Here they are:

Dan Rovira		Platon Tserliagkos
Reza Zarei		Tiberiu Bostan
Jon Barnes		Walter Busato
Saravanan Sathyanandha		Wesley Howell

We particularly like the look of Wesley Howell, pictured, another unsung Galaxy star who it’s good to see in flesh and blood…  welcome indeed, and watch him go now.  This tournament alone sees him leap from 900 to 400 in the UK rankings.

Sweetman Turns Sour

Becca had a great semi-final in the Consolation with the above Alex P-B, and cubed at 81.8% at 5-3 [7] which was one of those hideously complex too goods, and Alex’s take was about .1 incorrect, but good luck finding it.  He promptly hurled back to 4, and it duly came down to Becca just needing to avoid the horror shot-leaving 62.  Out it popped.

Check out humanity in all its forms here!  Becca recoils in the face of machine gun fire, whilst Mike Ireland flinches at the mayhem of Alex’s fatal 21.  And Alex now has a quandary.  The hit he knows [and has accomplished], but does he lift the blot on his 6 – a point he’d dearly like to make?

Alex is quite correct to lift.  Simply not enough ammo to cover, especially with two burnt.  Besides, he’s levelling up the race anyhow.

The Grand final

So, two of the hottest guns in the land made the final, both with pretty stratospheric rises through the ranks.  Sara keeps a beady eye on Dan here with an extremely scary-looking cube.  Too scary as it goes, this is too good, at 71% with 48% gammons.  Dan got out the way.

At 4-6 Dan shipped in a promising cube, but promptly got gammoned for match, and we had our winner, pleasingly surround by wife, father and other friends and family.  Lovely moments, and clearly a great selection by Geoff Hall in the recent Magriel Cup.

Danny not Champion of the World in this format!

So – yes – the only way for Dan to win the 128 draw tournament was to win 10 in a row, which is wildly out.  I know this was in reaction to Pete Heskett having about half a day off at the UK Open, but this went too far the other way.  I remain convinced that one of 16, 24 or 32 should qualify for the Sunday, and you get there by Swiss and ties decided by shoot-outs or possibly mounted archery [see above].  It’s important to find a format that is the “least worst option”, and we know for sure that Leamington and Players were not it.  I firmly believe that Blackpool and Cambridge came closest.  And I like what all the European football leagues are now doing of the top 8 being rewarded with a place in the last 16, and then 9-24 play a qualifier [on the Sunday morning].

Precious few meltdowns for the D/J

Finally huge thanks to David and Jill on the front desk, with Andrew roaming freely in his role as BGs answer to Kofi Annan.  There was a lot going on, and only perhaps three meltdowns and bottlenecks in the event?  And one computer crash.  Many byes needed working out too, as in here, as Noah Bernstein creams his way to the Consolation final due to a nifty little coin flip.  Nice work if you can get it, and he proceeded to win a thrilling match with Alex – two more great finds from the weekend.  Noah bats at a phenomenal win rate of 60.8% in his career; and 97-52 for the year.  Bonkers but brilliant.