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3rd March 2009
44 Entries, 8 Tournaments, 36 Players, £1230 Prize Fund,
Raj Jansari wins Jackpot.
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Beautiful blue skies on Monday, raining on Tuesday - that'll be a
Bg in Camden evening on Tuesday then. We're used to the Dice Gods
doing unmentionable deeds to us but the Weather Gods seem to have
teamed up with the Dice Gods. Excommunicate the lot of them I say!
But 36 players turned out so we blew a raspberry back at the Gods
and carried on with our way.
The evening got off to a good start with 8 players signed up for a
Swiss Tournament by 7.00pm. Next up was the big one of the
evening. However we only had 7 players interested at 7.00pm. They
were all willing to play for £100 a piece but I didn't like the
idea of hanging on for another player turning up to take the last
seat so, having gather the Magnificent 7 around me, I offered to
auction off the 8th seat to the highest bidder. It went for £70,
monies paid, draw done, off the went to play. A few minutes later
another 2 players turned up willing to play for £100. Ce la vie.
Did our buyer of the bye wish to sell the seat for £100? He did,
so it was and we had a full 8 players and larger kitty to play
over. This was followed by a 4 player £25 entry Knockout, an 8
player £10 Knockout, a 4 player £10 entry Swiss so by 7.30pm we
had all assembled players bg active with room to spare for late
arrivals of which there were a few. We also had a casual game on
the go for a "backgammon widow" of a new player and a "I don't
wanna play tournament bg husband."
Catalin joined Bg in London a few months ago now. He started off
playing for small stakes with loads of enthusiasm for the game and
winning often enough. His progress has been good and the love of
the game is undiminished. This evening he played in the £100er. He
got to the final but there he met the man just back from winning
the Conso of The Partouche Tour Grande Finale and who won here
last month. Raj Jansari. This is where Catalin hit, like
others, the tall brick wall that Raj is over the board. Raj has
done his backgammon book reading, uses Snowie and plays a heck of
a lot too all for which he is deservedly getting consistently good
results. Chatting after the match Catalin and Raj where talking
about improving Catalin's game further. Backgammon by Paul Magriel
was the first book mentioned (as it often is being aka the bible)
and Snowie was mentioned but overrided by
GNUBG.
In Cannes Raj beat Mochy in the Conso Final. Mochy is Japan's top
player. He's good. He's also a very nice Gentleman. He's very good
at bg. Take Japanese brain, apply to backgammon; it works.
He often has his matches recorded and this final was no exception.
So how good is our Raj compared to Mochy according to Snowie? What
were their error rates? How was the luck balanced? Where are those
files?
Click here.
This was Mr David Potter's 2nd Bg in Camden and he was hoping to
emulate Simon Harding's achievement of winning a Swiss Tournament
on his second attempt. David has recently been posting positions
on the Bg in London
Discussion Board but mentioned
that not many other people were posting on there so I said keep
posting and I'll mention it about.
So there ya go. Meanwhile 2nd
time player Costas had bought along Ali who both played in this
Swiss, Fergus was there on behalf of the Charlies this week,
Graham was of course with us, though it was noted that Simon M
wasn't; were Reading playing? Hayley joined us with her gergous
new Genesis Naylor small size board (more details coming soon) and
Phil Churton and John Belli played Swiss this month. Graham R,
Phil C won their entry fees back, as did 1st time player Ali and
2nd time player David Potter achieved his goal by winning the
Swiss. In Swiss Tournament 2 (a 4 player affair) Audrey Taylor won
at her first attempt.
Andreas Vrhovsek has not been with us for a while but returned
this evening to win the £10 8 player Knockout, Dave Moon slowly
won Mini-Jackpot 1, Martin Barkwill polished off M-J 2, MJ3 went
to a long missing Marc (welcome back, see you next month and
you'll be back into the swing of coming along) and Graham R closed
up his Swiss/Kout evening with MJ4. George Lukucza tried lots but
nothing went his way - next time I'm sure it'll be better for him.
Eric also returned for the first time in ages and gave a couple of
walk ins a fun lesson in bg. There'll be others I haven't mention
but I can't mention you all but I should say thanx to Chrissi, Sue
K and Vicky G otherwise I might be denied their hello kisses next
time. And we can't have that. "Mike?" "Yes Mike?" "Shut-up
Mike." "Ok Mike."
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Ok - these Swiss
Tournaments. They work a heck of a lot better with 8 players and
we seem to be getting about 12 every month. This leaves the last 4
with a less than best evening so how to best to improve their
evening. "Get the players to sort it out Mike" calls a voice in my
head. Ok - to that end, here's the deal. If you wanna pre-book for
a Swiss seat at next months gig you may. But you gotta be there
for 7.15pm. Pre-bookings, on the day please, via 07985-941729.
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