Hi!
It was mentioned that the match: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PPVYh1XHno was impossible to transcribe. It is blurry as hell and there is no info on who is playing on which side. Just give up?
I am much more dedicated than that! :-) So what to do? Well, there are many clues which gives away the information on who is playing on which side. In this case I spotted:
when players stretch over the board to move some checkers you can often spot distinctive clothing. Next step was to find another match video where one of the players were playing from the same tournament. It didn't take long until I came across:
So Victor Ashkenazi is playing at the bottom in the first video.
What about the dice? They are very hard to spot but both players did see the dice and unless both players missed that one player did a wrong move then seeing where the checkers landed will be enough to determine what the dice must have been (in most cases).
There are cases where two different dice values can lead to the same move. 6-1, 5-2, 3-4 for instance. In that case you have determine what you can see on the board. A blurry 3 will look different from a blurry 6 so most of the time there won't be any problem. I had to use my judgement in one case where one 7 would have given an error so I checked an alternative and it gave no error. So I gave the player the benefit of the doubt and used the play that gave no error.
I transcribed the match in question:
Victor Ashkenazi (2.30) - Jeremy Bagai (3.18) 7pt Chicago Open 2014 WBTOC R2: http://www.backgammonstudio.com/index.php?gotomenu=startmatch&argument=9029
Should it have been rescued or just be forgotten? I think that if it is at all possible to transcribe a match why not?
Luckily most matches aren't as bad as this tough.
There are 32 matches left for 2012, one for 2013, 38 left for 2014 and 45 left for 2015. I haven't located all matches for 2016 yet and I am sure there are other match videos that I have yet to locate.
If you have nothing else to do you know what to do! :-)
Backgammon Studio 3.0 will be released shortly: http://www.backgammonstudio.com
Best regards,
TP