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BMAB NEWS: Grandmaster Title awarded to Victor Ashkenazy (USA)
Posted By: Rick Janowski
Date: Wednesday, 30 September 2015, at 1:13 p.m.
BMAB NEWS: Grandmaster Title awarded to Victor Ashkenazy (USA)
I have great pleasure in announcing the award of the title of Grandmaster (Class 2) to Victor Ashkenazy. Victor is the sixth American player to achieve this prestigious title after Matt Cohn-Geier, Petko Kostadinov, Dimitriy Obukhov, Steve Sax and Paul Weaver, before him. He earned this title by virtue of excellent performance at ABT (American Backgammon Tour) tournaments this year, achieving an average PR of 3.25 over 183 experience points (17 matches). His application is fundamentally based on his streamed matches on the ABT this year. Many thanks to Michelle Steinberg and her helpers for managing the streaming and transcribing process and keeping excellent detailed records on the web. Michelle provides an invaluable service to backgammon which we at BMAB would like to acknowledge.
Congratulations to Victor for this fantastic achievement! Here is his mini biography:
Victor Ashkenazi, moved from Moscow to New York when he has was 25, later becoming a USA citizen. Before switching to Backgammon in his late 20s, he was an accomplished Chess player, with speed chess his speciality.
He started playing backgammon in 1998 and within two years he became a much feared opponent amidst the thriving Times Square backgammon scene. He soon became an accomplished online player, reaching and maintaining high rankings on the major servers.
Victor has very high standard of play in live tournaments, as can be seen from his many streamed matches (over 75 to date). His notable wins include the Las Vegas Open in 2007, the NY Open in 2009 and 2012. In 2012, his best tournament year, he also won the Tampa Open and the Masters events in Las Vegas and LA. In 2015 he won the Carolina Masters.
In 2013, he was voted onto the 32 Giants List for the first time reaching #11. In 2013 he was selected for the World vs. Denmark annual event and has been a member ever since. His GridGammon nickname is Vic.
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