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2nd September 2008
52 Entries, 8 Tournaments, 39 Players, £1600 Prize Fund,
Edward Leighton wins Jackpot. |
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The
Bg in London Swiss Tournament is
proving to be a popular little format for those coming into the
game. The 3 match guarantee that it provides is I think the reason
for that. This week it kicked off just before 7.00pm. Next up was
the Camden Auction starting off at £25 with 13 players interested.
It wasn’t until we got to £125 that only 8 were interested. This
left 5 interested at £25, another 2 joined and a £30er kicked in
waiting for the 8th player to arrive. By 7.30pm we also had an 8
player £10er in full swing which was shortly followed by another
and then it was 4 player Mini-Tournaments thereafter.
Chrissi and I had played our usual “How many do you think will be
there?” game on the way over to the Lockside Lounge and both
guessed within the 50s. I’m glad to report that our predictions
were true to our form – way out as per usual. Having had 60
players there in August and given that previous September events
have been busy ones we expected a bumper turnout. We didn’t hit
the 60s, we didn’t hit the 50s, nor the 40s but instead had 39.
Why? As per usual I don’t know.
There is however a possible reason. We’d launched details of a
Doubles Tournament a few days before. I thought it clearly started
that this would start on 21st Sept and carry on until 2nd December
but we had a couple of phone calls asking if there would be any
normal backgammon tournament this evening. Did other players think
this Bg in Camden evening was a doubles play evenings? Possibly.
The first tournament of this evening to complete was the Swiss –
Graham Read won it, was handed his £50 winnings and handed back
£10 to enter a Mini-Tournament. Next to complete was T3 with the
quiet but always friendly Mahmoud Jahanbani being the winner. In
T2 it was 1st time Bg in London player Gavin Crawley that took the
winners prize. Meanwhile the Mini-Tournament were kicking along at
a fair old rate of knots and Martin Barkwill claimed MT1, and
another new to Bg in London player Catalin Bucur won MT2. Edward
Leighton is now on a run – he won T1 at Bg in St John Wood a
couple of weeks ago and again he won T1 here in Camden this
evening – can he make it a hat-trick on Sun 21st back in St John’s
Wood? T4 was won by Phil Churton and MT3 was won by Andreas
Vrhovsek.
So all in all a nice little evening. I’m not sure that 39 players
can be described as a little evening; other organisers would be
thrilled with such a turnout – but for a Camden event it’s about
par for the course.
Bg in London moves to Leicestershire this weekend where we sponsor
a
Biba event. There’s a number of
London players attending and I would like to see trophies coming
back to London from it.
Then it’s
Bg in St John’s Wood on Sun 21st
Sept. This will be a normal St John’s Wood event (a 200er 16
player clock play tournament for the “Big Boys” AND other
tournaments on demand) AS WELL AS the start of the Doubles
Tournament.
The Doubles Tournament is going
to take a few weeks to play. Please don’t be put off by this –
quite the reverse, it’s an excellent format that we’ve used before
in 2003-2004 from The Fox Reformed. You pair up with another
player (if you don’t have a partner we’ll draw you one) and you
play a match per fortnight – two matches guaranteed – somewhere in
London Town. Doubles is EXCELLENT for new players – you can listen
to your partner and the opposition – hence you learn loads. It’s
also a lot of fun – meet up with 3 others for an evening, play a
game you like and probably drink slightly too much. We’re taking
sign ups now via the new Bg in London
Discussion Board and we’re
looking for a total of 64 players.
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