The second West Yorkshire Open was played at Clayton, Bradford over the weekend 23rd to 25th March 2018 under the directorship of Steve Lee assisted by Steve Bibby, myself and a great team of helpers Jackie, Jenny and Deana. This year it was bigger and better with over 120 players including the World numbers one and two, Giants Mochy and Michy from Japan.
The week started with two matches at Napoleon’s Casino Bradford, one between Mochy and Peter Bennet and the other between Michy and Steve Bibby. Our guests beat both our current UK number one and our reigning UKBGF tour champion in top quality matches despite Peter’s match going right to the wire.
Mate Feher recorded a number of the challenge matches and you can find them here:
The format of the tournament was a 5 round Swiss, with the top 32 qualifying for a 32 player knockout on the Sunday. After many toughly fought matches Jon Barnes – who needs no introduction to the UK backgammon community – emerged as a well deserved champion defeating Tim Cross in the final. Other notable results were Neil Webb winning the consolation and Cristian Cozos taking the last chance event. Michy beat Eric McAlpine in the final of the Super Jackpot.
I personally want to thank Steve for all his hard work during the weekend and hope that despite all the stresses and strains involved in being the tournament director he is motivated to do it again in 2019.
“Finely poised” somehow doesn’t capture the drama of my 15-point match with Mochy 🙂 It went from 11-11 (in the photo) to 12-12 to 13-13; and in the next game I doubled early to make it DMP. I was looking dead and buried with three on the bar against an ‘almost’ closed board until……but I’m ruining the excitement! Watch the last game on YouTube using the link in the above post.
Thanks to Steve and his team for a very enjoyable tournament – great to have both Mochy and Michy there. Already looking forward to the 2019 WYO….