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14th June 2010
38 Entries, 7 Tournaments, 28 Players, £1103 Prize Fund,
Neil Robins wins Jackpot.
Stephen Pearson
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What's the
connection between backgammon and gold? Mr Stephen Pearson is the
man who put together The PartyGammon Million - the biggest paying
out backgammon tournament the world has known. He's not a man
afraid to try out new ideas and has since moved into the buying of
gold. He
usually does this in Fitness Centres, at Ladies Parties and the
such but was willing to see how the backgammon community would
take to crossing a gold selling evening with a backgammon evening.
He agreed to add £200 to the prize fund of the evening and we'd
see how it would go.
Seeing as the prize fund was going to be handed out in cash I
limited the split of it to only tournaments started by 7.45pm.
which turned out to be 4: Jackpot 1, Swiss 1, Mini-Jackpot 1 and a
Round Robin. With this added cash Jackpot 1 went higher than it
usually does for Fulham events, Swiss 1 was up and running by
6.45pm, The Mini-Jackpot was for those that dropped out of Auction
1 and the Round Robin for the remaining 6 players in-situ by
7.45pm.
Steve John was the first player to take advantage of the presence
of the Party
Cash for Gold stall by cashing in some of his unwanted gold.
Meanwhile, just for further added action this evening, we had
Italy versus Paraguay playing in the World Cup on big screens in
the bar area (but not the backgammon playing area) with,
thankfully, the volume muted due to the din made by those blasting
vuvezelas - join the
Facebook Group of 186,000 people (and counting) trying to get
the thing banned.
As players lost in the Jackpots and others arrived so we kicked
off more Mini-Jackpots to keep players as backgammon active as
they wished to be. Our first winner came in Mini-Jackpot 1; Ali
Shimiri had arrived just a little too late to play in Jackpot 1 so
was, at 7.15pm, disappointed to play in Mini-Jackpot 1 but his
disappointment receded by him winning it. Mini-Jackpot 2 was won
by Kenroy Brown. Simon Gasquione had lost in Round 1 of Jackpot 1
but went on to win Mini-Jackpot 3 (and hence played 3 x 7 pointers
without me having to impose a clock upon him.) Mini-Jackpot 4 was
won by Martin Hemming despite him protesting that he didn't want
to play anymore!
In our 6 player Round Robin things were tight pretty well all the
way though it. George Miltiadou was in a chatty mood, a seat where
David could watch his Italy was reserved for him and Jafar was
anguished by his losses but thrilled with his wins. George lost to Jafar
which left George as the Round Robin winner and David and Nick fighting it out for
2nd place. Italy drew 1,1 with Paraguay but David beat Nick on a 4
cube.
Meanwhile in Jackpot 1 our two finalists - Neil Robins and Engin
Ongel battled it out. At just gone 11.00pm they completed with
Neil Robins being the victor.
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