GRANDMASTER TITLE AWARDED TO ZDENĚK ŽIŽKA
I have tremendous pleasure in announcing that Zdeněk Žižka, the amazingly talented young player from the Czech Republic, has been awarded the title of Grandmaster by virtue of his superb performances at BMAB tournaments in Schwaz, Prague and Vienna over the last 12 months. On each of these three occasions that Zdeněk has won the PR prizes, with scores of 4.74 in Schwaz, 3.53 in Vienna and most recently 3.52 at the Vienna tournament. He achieved the title of Grandmaster (Class 3) with an aggregate PR of 3.84 over more than 200 experience points.
Zdeněk Žižka was born in Prague in the Czech Republic in 1998. He started to learn backgammon at the age of 5, tutored by his mother, Eva Žižková, also a very talented backgammon player and BMAB master. Zdeněk studies at a specialist mathematics high school in Prague. He started taking Backgammon seriously in 2014, winning his first international tournament in Cyprus, in the intermediate division. In 2015, he had played at championship level player, winning the super jackpot in Zagreb and being runner up in the superjackpot in Sibenik, besides winning the PR prizes in BMAB tournaments in Schwaz and Prague. In 2016 he was runner-up in the last chance in Berlin, and again won the PR prize in the BMAB tournament in Vienna. Throughout 2015 and 2016, Zdeněk has shown himself to be amongst the strongest players at the Backgammon Club Munich, winning the Monthly Championship in 2016. He has also had great success in the USBGF Online tournaments winning close to 67% of his matches and winning the Masters Divisional IV event in 2015.
In 2016, he was selected to play in the prestigious World vs Denmark event held annually at the Nordic Open. His Gridgammon nickname is XZet24.
Congratulations to Zdeněk who through his superb performances has deservedly reached Grandmaster level joining twenty-four other great players who have previously reached this level!
I also recommend the excellent interview carried out by Karen Davis, the Main Editor of “Primetime” the flagship magazine/journal of the USBGF (January/February 2015).
As a footnote, the full results of the recent BMAB tournament in Vienna are currently being processed and should be published within the next week or two.