Day 2 - Wednesday.
Hen's Teeth
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| Here in Turkey the 'Year of the Brain' has been taken to heart.
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Super Jackpot (32)
At 13:00 today the Super Jackpot $1000 got underway, and, with a first prize of $21,000 it's well worth winning; so you'd think that anyone that actually won a match would be mad to agree to replay it, wouldn't you? Well, someone did just that!
Ed Rogers (Biba member, ex-pat American) was playing in the first round, both players using clocks for the first time (in fact all players were using clocks. As a tournament director I love clocks - they ensure that everyone finishes at a reasonable time and they cut out all that over-the-table stuff about the moves and equities that the majority of players seem to think more important than actually finishing a match!).
The score was at 10/9 when Ed's opponent ran out of time and, as per international rules Ed's opponent was penalised 2 points for a first time penalty and lost the match. It appears that he wasn't aware of this rule and appealed to the committee stating this fact.
The tournament committee listened to both players and when asked for his comments Ed said that he was willing to restart the match from the beginning - surprisingly the committee accepted this offer and restarted the match with Ed leading 2-0 in compensation for having already won it once!
Sadly, after running away to a 9-1 lead Ed froze on 9 and eventually lost the match! Zero points for losing, but 1,000,000 for being a sportsman - they're as rare as hen's teeth, I can tell you.
On the advice of my friend, Martin De Bruin I watched a match (post Crawford) between Dag Ekmark (Norway) and Johannas Leverman (Germany). I joined the match at Leverman leading 10-7, leaving Ekmark 4 points to win. I stood and recorded the remainder of the match - I can't sit, I'm too short. When I sit down I can't see all the board and end up bobbing up and down like a boat on the Bosphorus; so I stand.
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.)
If you don't have a copy of JellyFish the file can be opened using Notepad and read as a simple text file and you can then play from the listing.
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| The playing room at 2:00 in the morning, proving that backgammon players are truly creatures of the night.
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After winning that match, Leverman went on to beat Elliot Winslow and meets Putchov in the 3rd round. Winslow's fellow American, Malcolm Davis didn't fare so well falling to Riskin in the first round. Riskin went on to beat Schiemann in the 2nd and now moodily prowls the playing room awaiting another victim.
I went out for a breath of fresh air today - that was a mistake! Yes, it was cold and wet but that wasn't a problem, no, it was the 'shoeshine' boys. They pester and pester you continually. One latched onto me, shortly joined by two others, and they all bombarded me with, 'Shoeshine? You want shoeshine?' The fact that I was wearing my trainers at the time didn't perturb them in the least, 'Shoeshine? You want shoeshine?' they droned, on and on and on and on.
Finally, very near to breaking point I turned on one of them - the smallest, I could handle him; and, grabbing him by the lapels of his grubby jacket I bawled at him in the meanest, toughest, don't-mess-with-me voice I could muster, 'GO AWAY!' Only it didn't come out as mean or as tough or as don't-mess-with-me as I'd planned; it was more like Mickey Mouse! 'GO AWAY!' I'd squeaked at them, and they all fell about in fits of laughter unable to believe their ears. Mind you, I had the last laugh; I slipped away whilst they were blinded by tears of laughter and hotfooted it back to my hotel. I'm not going out again!
- Michael Crane
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