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BGonline.org Forums
PGH Review
Posted By: Stick
Date: Wednesday, 5 September 2012, at 3:46 p.m.
I made a decision a while back about replying to messages on the forums that rubbed me the wrong way. That decision was to try to wait roughly half a day or more before replying. This allows a lot of the anger to dwindle out of my posts I think, there will be less 'fucktards' or 'go fuck yourselves' and over all keep the trolling, drama, and bs to a minimum on my part.
That being said, I have waited long enough and will give everyone a summary of my weekend in PGH even after totally infantile and inappropriate post from the TD. My initial reaction was to pull the review that I had planned on writing but that didn't seem to do much expect punish the readers here at BGO. I will address Steve's rantings at the end of this post.
Going into the tournament I was very happy that for once I was going to PGH and I didn't have to drive on icy roads nor would it be minus my weight with a burning wind chill factor when I got there. The drive for me was just under 3 hours. I had planned on playing the Masters (jackpot) and the Open and possibly the doubles should I lose straight away in the Masters and have the time.
I rolled in around 5pm with the late start scheduled for 7pm. This gave me time to eat, run a not so quick 5k, and watch some of the US Open. At my house in Cbus we don't get those fancy ESPN channels so all week I've either been watching online (lots of courts, great quality) or going down to my neighbors house and stealing their tv to watch. I meandered down to the playing room ahead of time to chat w/the bg folk and pay my entry fees. The early start had had 16 entries and I was hoping it would field a full 32.
When the draw was posted my name wasn't there and there were now 24 in it. I was told that there were only two(?) of us in it and they were waiting to see if Bill Phipps got there and maybe bought the rest of the spots and some other stuff possibly I stopped listening to. I didn't really care, figured I'd play later, no big deal. I hung out in the playing room watching some, chatting some, for about 90 minutes. Nothing more came of it and realizing that even if it did get going by that point in time I would be playing later than I really wanted to, esp. if I had to play two matches that night, so I asked if I could pull out of it. They said that was fine, refunded my money. At least I didn't lose on day 1.
I made it down for the Calcutta the next morning. I bought one team in the intermediate knowing that my roommate, David Presser, was likely the strongest in the field. There was a daily quiz of sorts that you could pay to take and he won amongst the intermediates who entered at least one day and scored higher than the player who won it in the Open! When the Open calcutta rolled around it was choose a player from column A and a player from column B format. (or 1 player from column C).
I need to side track now to multiple threads I haven't addressed yet. The Bill Phipps threads. Don't get excited, there won't be the drama you're craving. I agree completely with the couple/few people here who agree that Bill has done nothing wrong. Aside from one post of his where the wording didn't tickle my fancy, everything was approached in a very respectful manner. I have nothing against Bill for any of the postings or challenges etc...yet when I saw him in PGH I would swear that he was avoiding looking at me. I could be wrong, I could be imagining it, but that was my feeling.
So, I thought what better to do than buy Bill in the calcutta!? It provided me with some humor and it's not a bad buy at all as Bill is a solid player. Well, it wasn't a bad buy until I added Mr. Friesen to the team, then things got sketchy. Bill didn't buy back though so I never talked to him. Other than that, I bought back in the calcutta and had Michael Edge on my team. One of the horses got me a few dollars back via the calcutta but overall not a success on the weekend.
My first(?) match was v. Gregg Cattanach. He has a nice board so we used his. He also prefers to play with a clock and said 'Clock?' under the assumption that I was using it. Normally a good assumption but no, as I said, for this tournament and any other tournament I attend where it isn't clocks mandatory or clocks if it's one player's preference, I will not use a clock.
I can tell you and I feel you can ask all of my opponents that I never purposely played slowly over the weekend. That would be plain dickhead. If there was a decision, I spent as much time as I felt it merited. The thing is, the kind of time a decision merits differs greatly when you're not on a clock and responsible for managing your time. I feel if I don't use all the tools at my disposal to come to a conclusion for any decision, if I have not exhausted my bg knowledge to try to make the proper action, then I'm robbing myself. My opponent is no doubt using everything he knows to give himself the best chance at winning. It's only fair in unclocked bg that I do the same. It is not my fault if it takes me a lot longer because I have more to access and go through to get to my decision.
As many others feel, it is a horrible feeling to have an entire tournament stalled because of one person. It's also horrible playing against someone you find brutally slow. I will step out before I go off on the clock rant again...
Everything went pretty smoothly at the tournament from what I know. I played 7 matches going 3-4 before being eliminated and was ducking out after a win or loss to watch the US Open. There was one hitch in doubles that I will mention and anyone can feel free to clarify as I'm not 100% on the whole story myself.
I was asked by Alex Gerding if I could sub for him in doubles because he needed to take off early Monday for work. I told him I'd be happy to but I didn't think it was needed nor legal. Come to find out it was exactly as Alex had said according to Steve (TD). He said basically that doubles is two people and you are allowed to have a 3rd person to rotate in. This rational dumbfounded all the players who were asked about it to my knowledge.
I was talking about it with Alan Grunwald and I think he finally decided to see if he could take it to a committee. Whether or not that happened I'm not sure, but I know in the end it was overturned and not allowed. I'm still a bit stupified that a TD would see no problem with this. If this is how it works any regular doubles team would make the money round and swap in a world class player. (you did not have to pick your 3rd person before the tournament started either)
The format was great, I always like Swiss. It assures a lot of play against a lot of different players. The only drawback of Swiss I would say are the short match lengths but since they're weekend tournaments I'll never get everything I want. The stronger players like the format because they feel it favors them more than the other standard formats and some other players like it because it gives them a better chance to draw some of the big name players and go up against them. If you look at the results of PGH you will notice none of what is considered the really big name players at the tournament even cashed. (Neil Kaz, Kent Goulding, Mike Senk, Ray Fogerlund, etc...)
I also like knowing that if I finish my match early I don't have to be back until the next start time. I had a few matches that were just a joke and finished in two shakes so not having to constantly check back to see when a specific match was finished allowed me to do a lot of other stuff I'd rather be doing.
One thing I always like at a tournament is good hospitality. This means food almost all weekend long of some sort. PGH had no shortage. One night we had all you can eat pizza basically and another night was subs. During normal hours there was always pop of all sorts, candy, munchies, sometimes lunch meat and bread etc...to make your own sandwiches. In the tourneys I drive to any more I take a cooler along with me. The main reason is I get hungry a lot and not having the time to eat in between matches sucks. At most tourneys I'd have to go somewhere or at least order from the bar, wait, and have to cram something down my throat. Any tournament with hospitality like PGH I can always make something and eat it in plenty of time. (ok, the real reason I take the cooler is to keep Pepsi to mix with my Captain, you caught me, happy?)
Now, to this thread and what it morphed in to. Steve, you are a tournament director. You are never going to please everyone all of the time. After a tournament is over you will without a doubt be criticized for how you did this or how you did that. A certain amount of criticism is expected and hopefully it will come across in the form of constructive criticism or suggestions on how to improve your tournament in the future. It seems to me you are taking these as personal attacks. You immediately jumped off the deep end attacking players who were doing little more than providing either their opinions or facts of what happened over the weekend.
Never having run a tournament nor been a TD I still feel I can shell out advice on certain things and have the vast majority agree with me. Sometimes you have to suck it up, smile, and say thanks for the input when you really are thinking "you're insane, go f yourself". Replying on forums I would tend not to go on and off from CAPS to no caps like you're shouting at people.
As to calling me a sleazy person, after giving it the half day + of calming down on my end I still respectively lower myself to saying go fuck yourself. You have no idea what you're talking about. I am not going into any of the details because the people involved, your son Ryan, his gf Janeen, one of your staff members Rachel, and let's toss Ben in there too because he was the only other person around almost all of the time ... because I like them and it's none of your business what anyone does on a social level but possibly your son does. If you have some work related complaint it goes to them.
It may come as a shocker to most of you reading these forums but at a backgammon tournament if there are younger people around who like to drink, have fun, don't discuss strictly backgammon the entire weekend, and will tolerate my presence I will hang around them.
I have had 3 people from your tournament contact me privately who were around one or both of the nights at the tournament asking if I wanted them to set you straight. Anyone can always post whatever s/he likes but I let them know there was no need.
Your tournament overall was clearly a success and I still posted my review just as I would have before your uncalled for and unfair comments. Without an apology I will not be attending another of your events.
Stick
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