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Nearly five years ago George & Diana Sulimirski’s Double Fives
Club closed its doors for the final time. However, nothing is
forever and I am delighted to announce that the Double Fives is
once again open for business.
Thanks go to Raj Jansari and Simon Barget who have got together,
done a great deal of work, and reopened the club in the premises
of the St. John’s Wood Bridge Club. Freshly decorated and with
smokers banished to the outdoors to indulge their habit it is an
excellent playing environment. For the administration of
tournaments they have very sensibly teamed up with Mike Main’s
flourishing ‘Backgammon in London’ organisation.
Opening day was April 20th when ten tournaments with varying entry
fees were run very successfully and professionally during the
course of the day. The main tournament was won by an ageing
backgammon correspondent from a national newspaper!
In the second round I had this position (as black) against Raj at
6-5 in a match to 11. I doubled, he took as I expected, and I won
a single game. Interestingly black’s position is much stronger
than perhaps it looks because white loses a lot of gammons when
his rear man is attacked and closed out.
Rollout analysis shows that for money this is a close pass but at
the match score it is actually quite a big pass because when black
wins a gammon it gets him to the Crawford game - a nuance of
tournament play that neither of us spotted during the match
itself.
The original article finishes here due to space limitations but
here are some additional musings.
There are four key factors in winning any backgammon tournament:
1) The first of these is luck. At some point you are going to need
the dice gods to co-operate. I had some very close games,
particularly with Raj, that could have gone either way but at key
moments I rolled well.
2) The second is basic backgammon skill. Unless you are very lucky
indeed you are going to have to know what you are doing. We
measure skill in error rates and you need to avoid blunders and
mega-blunders. If you can consistently play with an error rate
under 3.0 as measured by Snowie you are a very good player. By my
estimates there are only a handful of UK players who can do that
which is why we win so few major tournaments.
At the Double Fives I made a mega-blunder in the first round when
I took a double from Edward Leighton that was a massive drop and
was punished by losing a gammon. That brought to my senses and
after that I didn’t (at least to my knowledge) make any further
blunders, only errors. The reason that I jot down so many
positions during matches is twofold: to produce material for my
columns/books and check my own skill level.
3) The third is match-play skill. Match play is much more
difficult than money play - the score is such a major factor. Look
at the position above. For money a small pass, at 6-5 a big pass
but at 6-4 a borderline take/pass. Players consistently make match
decisions as if the game was for money but nothing could be
further from the truth. To hope to win tournaments you need to at
least understand match equity tables and preferably be able to use
them effectively over the board – this capability separates
Falafel, Ballard, Woolsey and a few others from the rest. Sadly
you do need some skill at mental arithmetic to do this especially
now that clocks have been introduced.
For non mathematicians one thing to remember is that it is very
bad to be on an odd number of points when your opponent gets to
match-point, i.e. the Crawford Game. This is because if you win
the Crawford all it does is keep you in the match – it doesn’t
reduce the number of games you have to win. Trailing 10-5 you have
to win the Crawford plus three more game, assuming no gammons.
Trailing 10-4 the situation is exactly the same so the extra point
you have won means nothing.
4) The final one is concentration. My error against Edward focused
me and I knuckled down and applied the disciplined approach to
each roll that is required to be successful at backgammon.
Needless to say I shouldn’t have needed a kick up the backside to
start playing properly!
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