The Bristol Open 2010
"The death of Mr Semi-Final!"


Wayne Felton playing Julian Fetterlein in the Final of the Bristol Open 2010
 

I've been ragging Wayne Felton as "Mr Semi-Final" for a while now but have always added that I was sure a big win was coming his way soon. In truth he has had at least one good win in the past (The Cancer Backup Tournament of 2006) but there have been numerous occasions when Wayne has progressed to a Semi-Final and been halted there. So without any further ado I'm pleased to be able to report that Wayne has now won one of the most prestigious and hardest events to win in the United Kingdom. Bravo Wayne, your patience and dedication has paid off.

The Bristol Open is always a good event. This was its 5th incarnation, the 1st having been Roland and Simonetta's Wedding Backgammon Party, the 2nd featured a dinner and concert on the S.S. Great Britain with the tournament itself, as all events since have been, played at the Artillery Grounds opposite the BBC Bristol. Nowadays Roland is the Organiser of the event and Simonetta plays in it.

The weekend kicks off on the Friday evening with a Warm-Up Tournament open to players of all 3 Flights. Ian Tarr's (of Bristol Backgammon and Head T.D. of this event) commitment to bringing on new players is legendary and here we saw the fruit of his labour: Last year a new player, Shadow Hamilton, played in the lowest Flight, since then she has received one to one coaching from Ian the result of which was that she was the Finalist of the Warm-Up Tournament having knocked out a string of excellent players - Steffen Nowak, Andy Darby, Chris Ternel and Martin Barkwill. It took one of the worlds very best players - Michihito Kageyama (aka Michy) - flying in from Japan to halt her in the final.
 

We re-convened on the Saturday to get the Championship, Advanced and Intermediate Flights under way. The Championship Flight was down slightly on players from last year but there were still sufficient to make an excellent event of it and the field was, as expected, very strong indeed with a number of other international players - Bob Wachtel, Paul Weaver, Michael Sørensen, Volker Sonnabend, Frank Simon,  Walter Meuwis, Vaidas Novicenko and a large contingent of Irish players - coming over. Could the Brits hold off the invasion party intent of raiding the jewel of Bristol?

Raj Jansari conducted his first ever Auction and did a fine job of it; everybody was asked to to sit down and those being bid for were asked to stand as Raj gave us their BG CV before auctioning them all off in 8 Groups. As is the norm Group 1 went cheaply (more of that later.) Roland's assistants Fran and Philippa did the draw and the Championship Flight, all played on clocks, got underway. 
 

The Advanced Flight followed shortly after using the same format (Main, Progressive Consolation and Last Chance) but with a 32 player bracket and this was followed by an 11 player Intermediate Flight that would feature 2 Round Robins on each day (Saturday and Sunday.)
 

Ian had come armed with Progressive Consolation Tournament charts for any number of players; that must have been a lot of work the vast majority of which was going to be redundant simply because only one progressive tournament chart would be used in the Championship and one in the Advanced. But this is a measure of the man; nothing is too much trouble for him. As a result the Champs and Advanced moved along nicely with sandwiches being served during the afternoon and play continuing until mid evening when most players took a break to go up Whiteladies Road to eat. Meanwhile the Intermediates had played a little trick upon us T.Ds by, we decided, colluding to mostly all come home with the same number of points. A solution was quickly arrived at, a few more matches played and we knew who would be in Round Robin 3 (top placed players) and Round Robin 4 (other placed players) the following day.

Most players returned for 9.00pm when Paul Weaver, the co-author of Backgammon Openings, gave a seminar titled "Early Blitz Strategy." Players looked very comfortable in the chesterfield sofas of the bar but none fell asleep so the seminar was evidently well presented and high on content value. It was filmed and will appear in due course on Mochy's Back-gammon.TV.
 

Backgammon play and some other game that uses cards continued afterwards. The Advanced Flight was never in danger of running behind schedule but the Championship Flight needed some attention to match times and two or three matches were arranged for 10.00am starts the following morning. A Jackpot was also arranged for those that had allowed others seats in the Main or Consos. The last of play finished at something like 3.00am.

In the Group Auction the buyer of Group 1 still had a staggering 5 of his 6 ponies still running; 2 in the top half of the draw and 3 in the lower half. Ay just gone 10.00am Raj did an Auction of the Last 8 in which the Group 1 owner bought the 4th player in the lower half of the draw. The Mains and Consolations got going again, the Last Chances kicked off as did the Intermediate Round Robins.

In the Championship Main Last 8 Julian Fetterlein overcame Bob Wachtel, Mike Heard beat Michael Sørensen, Andy Darby won over Julian Minwalla and Wayne Felton beat Chris Ternel. Hence one thing was for sure; a Brit would win The Bristol Open 2010. The Conso carried on even if not at a heck of a pace and thus releasing players for the Last Chance.

With 45 players in the Champs and 6 of them due to cash in the Main or Conso this left us with an ugly number (at least to T.Ds) of 39 players to accommodate in the Last Chance. Because the prize fund was being split between the Main, Conso and Last Chance it followed that all players that did not cash in the Main and Conso should be entitled to a seat in the Last Chance. But how to avail them of these seats without making others wait for an age for them to come though? Re-buys were made available to knocked out LC players and slowly but surely we got towards a full field but still some of those that would lose in the Conso were not yet on the horizon. When a prize fund is split to 3 brackets I think there is an excellent case for making the 3rd bracket progressive for those players that will certainly not be available until mid-way though the Last Chance. Fortunately the tone of this event was very amicable and players were happy to do deals to speed up the progress of the Last Chance.

In the Main Mr Wayne Felton saw his way though his Semi-Final via Julian Minwalla and later it was Fetters who won over Mike Heard in the other Main Semi. Final 2010: Jules Fetterlein (Finalist Bristol Open 2008) versus Wayne Felton (aka Mr Semi-Finals numerous events.)
 

In the Advanced Flight a new backgammon star came to the fore. Anna Mielech had come over from Poland having played in The Nordic Open at Easter where she displayed a high degree of interest in improving her game. In Bristol Anna won at the Bristol Backgammon Club on the Thursday evening, spent a good deal of the weekend going though backgammon positions with Bob Wachtel, was an attentive student at Paul Weaver's seminar and won the Advanced Flight. I think we can expect to see and hear more of this little lady.
 

The Intermediate Flight played out its 3rd & 4th Round Robins. Two friends of Sean Williams -  Shez and Donna - had both performed well on the Saturday and were in the Top Round Robin. Who would win all came down to the last match played and it was Shez who took 1st place to become The Intermediate Champion of the Bristol Open 2010. Bravo Shez.
 

And so onto the Final of the Championship Flight. It was little surprise to see Julian Fetterlein take a finalist's seat - ask his peers and most will say they consider him to be the best player in the UK. Hence, even though Wayne Felton had taken out Simon Gasquoine, Ray Tannen, Chris Ternel and Andy Darby en route to the final, it was Julian who sat down as the favourite. Julian quickly established a 7-0 lead (15 pointer) and one could have forgiven Wayne for curling up his toes and succumbing to the moment but he just didn't. A slow slog back ensued, a 4 cube sent Wayne into the lead and, try as he might and did, Julian could not pull enough points back before Wayne reached the holy grail of 15 points. Congratulations Mr Wayne Bristol Open 2010 Winner Felton!

Meanwhile it occurs to me that Julian Fetterlein is in danger of gaining that tag of "Mr Finalist." That twice he's been so in Bristol and once last year at The London Open. Julian is an excellent and determined player and will I'm sure do all he can to banish such a tag at the forthcoming London Open in September.

A wonderful weekend of backgammon and we look forward to it all happening again next year. Another (the official one) report of the event can be found on the Bristol Backgammon website and more photos are published on Roland's Flicker website.

Photos by Roland Herrera, report by Mike Main