THEY THINK IT’S ALL OVER ... IT IS NOW!
I recently asked for your hard luck stories and I'm pleased to say I've received the following:
Martin Barkwill emails:
I should have thought John Simon rolling 5 consecutive 2/1's bearing off at 22-22 in the Monte Carlo Final in 1992 against Ion Ressu has to take some beating, particularly in view of the amount of prize money & prestige.
This was the position in Game 30, move 27:
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This was the first of Simon's (white) run of 2/1's.
There again John Simon didn't do himself any favours by failing to double before this sequence, which his opponent would have been correct to pass.
After this sequence of 2/1's Simon himself got doubled and he incorrectly took with only about 15% win probability (his subsequent explanation being that after such an extraordinary sequence of rolls he was due a high double!).
- Martin Barkwill.
This was the position John Simon found himself in when Ion Ressu turned the cube.
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Ressu (black) doubles to 2
According to JellyFish Level 7 Evaluation this is a double/drop.
| Wins | Equity |
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| Simon | 20.2 | -0.596 |
| Ressu | 79.8 |
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| Volatility: 0.497 Double/Drop |
You can see John Simon's nightmare for yourself by downloading the JellyFish .mat file here, which appears here with acknowledgements to Harald Johanni. If you don't have JellyFish just save the file to your desktop and open as a text file using Notepad.
27 November 2000: Lamford and Zavoral impart their tales
Paul Lamford writes:
Romolu Mudu once lost one against me with a chance of winning of under 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 or in 'newspeak' 1 in 10 to the -39.
This was the position with me playing Black -
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Basically I was on roll here and had three on the bar. I entered with 6-6 playing the last six from 19 to 13 and won the race without hitting!! I made 40 crossovers in ten rolls (10 consecutive working doubles); while Romolo averaged under 3.6 pips per roll.
George Sulimirski [of the Double Five Club] was watching at the time. He just said "incredible" and went back to his newspaper, unperturbed.
In 300,000 rollouts after my original 6-6, Snowie saved the gammon just once.
- Paul Lamford.
Wow! That's a big number, Paul. Poor Romolo must have been sick after that defeat.
Our next hard luck story comes from Bob Zavoral, he writes:
At Double Match Point in the money round in our local club tourney against a fairly weak player I had the following position come up. I was playing Black and was feeling pretty confident -
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I threw 1-1, he hit and I lost!
When I show this position to people they can never figure out the direction of play and think its no big deal 'til I explain what's going on. Neil Kazaross thought it was easily 5000 to 1 to lose this game.
- Bob Zavoral.
Ah, Bob, the luck of the dice! You can always beat skill but you'll never beat luck.
If you'd like to enter your favourite hard luck story then please send them in as soon as you can before the closing date of December 10th 2000.
23 February 2000: Michael Crane shares a rollout
In the Lincoln BG Club, amongst other things, we play a weekly, 1-point knockout competition as part of our annual grand prix type championship. Although the matches are important we all appreciate that luck - good and bad - plays a part in winning just one single point but occasionally some really strange games emerge.
In the first round of one of these devilish 1-pointers I was playing Jeff Ellis when the following position occurred.
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| Jeff (White) to play 3-2 |
As you might expect he moved to cover the 2-point blot leaving me with 3 men on the bar and little chance of getting back into the game. This move gave him a 96.1% chance of winning the point according to a JellyFish 2-ply evaluation; expanded up to 97.1% on a Level 5 1296 rollout.
So, there I was, 3 men on the bar, Jeff needing to win just a single point and I said, as I put my cup and dice down to the side, "Well, that’s the end for me. No way can I win now!" How wrong I was!
Jeff had unbelievable dice. The sequence went:
| White |
3-3 |
6/3x2 5/2x2 |
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| Black |
6-2 |
25/19 |
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| White |
3-3 |
4/1x2 |
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| Black |
5-4 |
25/18 25/17 |
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| White |
3-3 |
no move |
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I couldn’t believe my luck - or Jeff’s bad luck. The first 3-3 he rolled was a laugh but not too bad for him; the second was followed by even louder laughter (from me), amplified by my 5-4. But, when he rolled a third 3-3 in a row we both just rolled up with laughter - neither of us could believe it.
Tears were clouding our vision and streaming down our cheeks There I was facing a 97.1% chance of losing the game and it turned in my favour; I went on to win the game - against all the odds.
My luck ran out in the final, however, against Pete Slinger but I’m not complaining; I didn’t really have the right to be there in the first place. Backgammon eh? What a stupid, brilliant game.
Have you had this sort of thing happen to you? Have you been the victim/ benefactor of incredible dice? If so why not send it in to Michael Crane and we'll publish the best (or worst) ones. We'll also award the one we judge the best a special mystery prize.
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