Istanbul Day 3 - Thursday
The Main Continues
I am following a couple of players today, one is Chris Ternel, my tip for the top position and the other is Riskin, who is my second choice.
I sat and watched and recorded where able the match between Riskin and Rostomyan. It was an exciting game to watch full of action and upset. I give nothing away by saying that Riskin emerged the victor but it was a near thing.
Recording matches is a tricky business, most backgammon is played too fast for me to keep up with, so imagine my disappointment when I saw the rounds were being played with clocks! Oh no!, a time restraint; now I'll never keep up ... and to an extent I was unfortunately right. It only takes a nano-second's loss of concentration to miss a move. Sometimes it can be recovered but I tend to panic and then miss even more moves - quick, where's the Valium?
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| Riskin makes 'snake eyes' as he plans his next move against Rostomyan.
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Such was the case in this match; I recorded 3 games and could only make sense of one of them when I input it into JellyFish. Mind you, it was a crucial one with Riskin leading 14-7 to 17 points.
You can play through it on our Java viewer, and it is available as a JellyFish .mat file which you can download here. (To download, right-click and choose to save the link on your machine.)
Riskin's next opponent was Christensen from Denmark. I watched most of this game but they were playing too fast most of the time for me to record it, but, at 8-8 they played what was almost a 'I-would-have-played-that' game, and at such a speed I was able to record it.
If anything it illustrates that backgammon is a simple game to play as you will see by watching the majority of the moves - they are exactly as anyone would play them, i.e. there weren't any better moves. It's only when each player deviates from the 'norm' that the differences make a difference. Check it out on the viewer or download as a JellyFish.gam file.
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| Calmly, Ternel rolls a cigarette as he rolls towards victory over Liebe-Harkort.
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I then moved on to the Ternel vs. Winslow match; two very strong players and each capable of taking home the top prize. It appears that Winslow is an old friend of our Mindzine Editor, Jonathan Tisdall; but I am afraid I have bad news to report on Winslow ... he lost to Ternel after a rather hard fought match. Sorry, Jonathan.
I recorded one game, Ternel was leading 2-0, and this can be seen via the viewer at or can be downloaded as a JellyFish.gam file.
After this win, Ternel then went on to beat Liebe-Harkort to end up in the last eight with fellow Dane, Christensen.
Hands up all those of you that think I've got a great job, here in Istanbul watching and reporting on backgammon? All of you, eh? Well, I can tell you the Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace, The Bazaar, a boat trip over the Bosphorus are just some of the wonderful sights and experiences I haven't done! No, not one. In this job I am working almost 18 hours a day (I work so many hours I've been made an honorary Turk!).
The action starts at 13:00 each day and continues until 02:30 or later, I trawl the playing room, watching, recording, and when given the opportunity, rush up to my room and get some of my efforts into the laptop. I get to sleep at about 02:00/03:00 each morning and arise seconds later (or so it seems) at 08:30 (09:30 when I've had a lie in), crank up the laptop and finish off what my bleary eyes refused to do earlier that morning. At about 10:00-ish I go down to the business centre and pump it all out over the telephone lines so that my ardent readers may experience some of the tournament...
In the Main the final 8 are now:
Bolge v Shadallah
Ternel v Nantanzon
Christensen v Kahyaoglu
Ongel v Reinhault
From this 8 I am hoping for an all Denmark final between Ternel and Christensen ... and so are they!
- Michael Crane
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