2009 New Zealand Backgammon Championship
 

The 2009 New Zealand Backgammon Championship was hosted by The Nelson Backgammon Club at Founders Historic Park November 21 and 22.

12 Players (9 male and 3 Female) were divided into 2 pools of 6 players. Every player would play every other player in there pool ensuring that everyone got at least 5 matches. All matches were 9 points. The top 2 players of each pool would play in a direct elimination on the second day. Founders Historic Park was an excellent venue with some players electing to play in the hired rooms, some played outside in the sun and some played in the excellent café next door.

The battles were fierce but friendly with the tournament directors only having to step in once to rule on a dispute. The tournament itself created quite some interest from both tourists and residents enjoying Founders Park on those days. One of the spectators - an old man gave Grant Hoffman a nice medium sized backgammon set that hadn’t been used for years.

At the end of the day Grant Hoffman (4 wins) and Pip Biss (3 wins) emerged from one pool and Mike MacManaway (4 wins) and Patrick Davey (4 wins) from the other.

The first elimination match of 13 points put Mike McManaway, a previous national champion freshly back from France against Pip Biss a frequent traveller to international tournaments. Pip won through.

Grant Hoffman played Patrick Davey, an Irish player currently resident in Christchurch. Patrick won 13 to 10 in a match that had sudden and huge swings for both opponents.

The final between Patrick and Pip was for 15 points. Most of the players left the finalists to it and migrated to the café for a money chouette. There they made so much noise they decided to leave before they were evicted. But when they tried to leave they were asked to stay by the manager as they “added so much life to the place”. We like that café. Grant soon learnt the dangers of leaving his cube to a friend as he checked on the final – “you took that redouble?” but in the end broke exactly even.

Back in the finals Patrick started the 15 point final match strongly but Pip evened the match at 5 - 5 but Pip then gammoned Patrick with the cube on 4 winning 8 points. The score was now 13 – 5 to Pip. One more game and Pip Biss become the New Zealand Backgammon Champion for 2009.

The Championship has renewed interest in Backgammon and a weekly money chouette has been organised and starts on Wednesday. Grant plans not to leave the room so no one takes bad doubles for him.

A special thanks to Jackie Hoffman for score keeping and taking of photos.

The tournament will become an annual event.

Many thanx to Grant Hoffman of backgammon.org.nz for this report