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BGonline.org Forums
Ohio State ABT Recap
Posted By: Stick
Date: Wednesday, 29 March 2017, at 1:44 p.m.
It has been a while since I've written a recap of a tournament mainly because I haven't been to too many and it's always easier to have input to write one when you do well rather than lose 3 matches and spend the rest of the weekend at the bar.
I usually make it up to Cleveland because for me it's only 1h45m drive. It's a straight shot on the highway which is right around the corner from my house. I prefer driving to a tournament not only because it's cost efficient but I like having all my stuff with me. Lugging a backgammon board and possibly tennis rackets and laptops and countless clothes and money through security is a hassle I can do without. It also saves money in the sense that for most tournaments I arrive a day early and stay a day later. I'd rather arrive early and get acclimated and leave a day later so that I don't have to rush the last day of the tournament when I still have a bunch of matches to play because I'm awesome sauce.
So I leave Friday early afternoon to beat any Friday traffic. Luckily Ohio is being cooperative this year and it's not winter at the end of March. The roads are clear and in the blink of an eye I'm there. Check in, register, and hardly anyone in the playing room at this point because the events don't start until 7pm that night and it's like 3 but Phil is there and we decide to play some Paskogammon. For those of you forget, here's the starting position.
White is Player 2
score: 0
pip: 204Unlimited Game
Jacoby Beaverpip: 167
score: 0
Blue is Player 1XGID=-bb--aEaC---bE---baca---B-:0:0:1:00:0:0:3:0:10 Blue on roll, cube action?
eXtreme Gammon Version: 2.10
The side on roll is set up like normal backgammon and the other side is as appears above. The Jacoby rule is in effect and it's played out normally, just like money games. You alternate sides each game to keep it fair. Up until this tournament I'd only ever played it one day or two at home on my computer. This being my first live session it took me many games to even win a game. I was down 8 points I think before I got on the scoreboard so maybe 5, 6, even 7 games?? The most points I was down was 16 before I made my comeback. I still ended up losing but not so much as the kids can't eat this month. Phil had it up and streaming but it was cut off after 28 minutes for some reason so I'm not going to bother putting it in.
The Masters was to start at 7pm and per usual with it seems every tournament in the US, it didn't start until 7:30. I don't know what it is but it's always that way. Why? I don't care if it starts at 7:30 just list it as 7:30! I might have better things to do than sit around for half an hour waiting on a draw. Again, this isn't a gripe aimed solely at the Ohio State tournament, this is nearly across the country from my experience.
The draw comes out and I play Baham Zandi. Someone I had never heard of which is almost always a good sign. A fairly normal match, I won, had Julius in the next round. Had to wait around a bit as Julius' match against Sam Ahmed took longer than mine. My match with Julius fire up and it was over about 3 minutes later. Julius gave me a speculative 4 cube and it backfired. As we've spoken about in other threads here recently, the weaker player should gamble a bit when playing someone stronger. I don't know Julius' average PR put pushing a 4 cube early certainly is a reasonable play. In general I don't like to see 4 cubes esp. in matches that are somewhat short. (11pts) However, this one even I didn't mind seeing. It was overdoing it quite a bit.
With that being over so quickly, like a Sex Pistols song or sex for the first time, I had to wait quite a while for the winner of the Farhad/Ashkenazi match. Victor won unfortunately as I'd think I'd have better chances against Farhad. You should always fear the opponent whose name ends in 'nazi'.
Victor and I had a tough, tough match. Overall his decisions were tougher than mine and being unclocked it lasted quite a while. I input the match and in the beginning Victor was playing a stellar 1 - 1.5 PR while I had already blown a couple/few decisions and was floating in the 4-5 PR range. Over the course of the match though we kept getting closer, and closer, and closer until nearly the end where we converged for a 3.3 each. Given that Victor's decisions were tougher than mine on the whole I thought, obviously I think he played that match better than I did. However, the dice don't care who played it better based on the level of difficulty and they allowed me through to the finals. It was only a 16 player field. Here are a couple of my blunders, see if you can do better.
Blunder #1
White is Victor
score: 1
pip: 11011 point match pip: 149
score: 2
Blue is StickXGID=---aBBBBB---bB---b-fBb-Ab-:0:0:1:52:2:1:0:11:10 Blue to play 52
eXtreme Gammon Version: 2.10
Blunder #2
White is Victor
score: 3
pip: 15211 point match pip: 178
score: 9
Blue is StickXGID=-a--aaE-C---bDa--c-bb-Ab-B:1:1:1:44:9:3:0:11:10 Blue to play 44
eXtreme Gammon Version: 2.10
Karen Davis had bested Mary Hickey in the semifinals on the other side of the bracket and she wasn't in the side pool so I was already a happy camper.
One more thing of note, I don't know what happened to allow this to happen, I'm sure Ben or Joe can clear it up, but there was a single bye in this event. Karen got that bye. A bye in a Masters event to me is unacceptable. First, I believe they had enough people to fill out the bracket and a hiccup happened. Again, we'll await the details. Even if they didn't it would be better in my opinion to allow someone to rebuy instead of chunk off so much equity to one person unfairly.
By the time I finished my match with Victor it was late, 1-2am(?) so needless to say it was straight to Snoozeville. I woke up early on Saturday, early enough to attend Phil and Art's lecture if I wanted, and I did want, but not enough of a priority to override the other things I wanted to do...like eat breakfast (yay Denny's) and proper get ready to own people all day long.
The thing with lectures is it's a rarity I would get anything out of it. I'd like to go to be supportive and I like to think someone thinks it's more interesting if I'm there to give my two cents worth but I have to prioritize. I have since watched the lecture above on youtube and from the answers given by the people in attendance it would seem to be a lesson many people should view.
I did get back in time for the Calcutta. I rarely buy anyone in the calcutta. The main reason I go is for the humor and to put names with faces again. It's always a struggle for me to remember who everyone so the calcutta makes for a nice cheat sheet. During the calcutta I was inputting my match with Victor with Victor. (I really just wanted to end a sentence like that and have it be correct)
The main was to 11pts and in the first round I had a name I knew this time. Frank Raposa then the second round Roberto, a match that should have been recorded but someone (cough, cough, not me) forgot to hit the record button on his recorder before we started the match. After that I played Nick Mourtos who I didn't know going in and he played decent in our match. Making some progress and this is a double elimination event so even if I lose once I can still win and I go to play Marty Storer. I started out hot getting up 3-0 but really never recovered after being properly cubed here and not pulling it out.
White is Stick
score: 3
pip: 1211 point match pip: 23
score: 0
Blue is MartyXGID=-BE----------------aaba-a-:1:-1:-1:00:3:0:0:11:10 Blue on roll, cube action?
eXtreme Gammon Version: 2.10
These are the kinds of things that can make or break a match. If I get that I'm up 7-0 and while that's certainly not gin gin, the opp's spirit is broken and it's virtual gin. I had my 3 attempts to roll a set but it didn't happen. Marty advances and I get kicked down to the 1 loss crowd. Enough bg had been played and it was once again late already so tomorrow morning we'd start again.
For dinner I joined up with a bunch of people who were going to Phil's favorite place, a place I went to last time with him whatever year that was, called Johnny's. It is said they have some delicious fancy French things like frog legs, foie gras, veal, I don't know what else. Phil had them, loves them. I had a decent steak and Phil and Victor played a quick dmp match to see which one of them would buy the other's dinner. They do this a lot and from the tally I heard, Phil has never won. We had Victor, Alia, Dmitriy, Roberto, O'Hagan, Julius, Karen, and a handful of others there I can't remember right now. Our table, composed of 7 people, all got meat. The other table, salads. It was like we planned it.
Here's where something interesting happens Sunday morning. I have to play Karen Davis, a theme for this tournament it seems. Here is the draw sheet. Draw sheet
I maintain that something can be considered completely your own fault and you're still allowed to be pissed about it! Ok, maybe it's not completely my fault, maybe it is though, for you to judge.
I had been playing matches to 11pts the entire time. I had played 3 in the Masters and 4 in the main. Before playing I of course checked the sheet, saw I played Karen, thought it was to 11 because I saw an 11. So we sat down, both agreed it was to 11, started playing. Before you know it Karen is up 6-0 out of the gate! Then suddenly Ben comes by and informs me that the match is to 9, not 11. I mumble something obviously unhappy because not only has the match been shortened making it much more likely I lose, but the cube action in the second game where she won would have likely went DP instead of DT if we were playing to the right score and it would be 4-1 instead of 6-0. Annoyed, I got up and looked at the draw sheet and as you see it says 11am and at a glance that's what I saw. Apparently (?) that's what Karen saw too because she had us playing to 11.
I was annoyed at the time also because Karen had played her last match to 9 points. How could she not know/realize this one was to 9 also? Ultimately I had no gripe of course but it still doesn't mean I can't be hot under the collar. I steam rolled the rest of that match and won to face Sean Garber to be in the finals.
My match with Sean also lasted all of 5 minutes but this time unfortunately I was on the losing end. I sent Sean a 4 cube that I was honestly hoping he'd pass. It was a very gammonish 4 cube and I hoped the score might scare him. He properly took though then I rolled my worst and we arrived at this where I was forced to take and then again rolled like refried ass quickly to lose the match.
White is Player 1
score: 0
pip: 808 point match pip: 131
score: 0
Blue is Player 2XGID=a-CBDBBA---ab----bbcbb-A--:2:-1:-1:00:0:0:0:8:10 Blue on roll, cube action?
eXtreme Gammon Version: 2.10
I get kicked deep into the consolation and only need to win one match against Tim Mabee who doesn't even recognize me. I think it was the clothes without a slogan on them or maybe being well rested or perhaps having some hair on my head that did it. It was a 5pt match and I rolled well, on to the finals against. Oh wait, that's right, Karen Davis.
So at this point I had two matches left both against Karen having already played her once and luckily coming back from a 6-0 deficit to elev...I mean nine. We played the Masters first and I won. Then the finals of the consolation to 7pts and I was on fire getting up 6-0 and closing it out at 6-2 post Crawford. Won the Masters, won the Masters side pool, won the Consolation, won the Consolation side pool, only entered two events. Great weekend for me. Could hardly script it any better unless I came from Poland to play or perhaps my name was Gary Koscielny.
In the main event our own Jacek Wojciechowski niuniuch roided over the competition easily. I think he lost one match to Sean Garber in the finals before clinching it but someone else will have to verify that. I was busy playing Karen Davis, or playing Karen Davis, or maybe I had a match against Karen Davis at that time.
Whenever I see long last name I can't pronounce I can't help but jump to Samir nah...
As for Gary Koscielny, he took 2nd in the Amateur Jackpot and also won the advanced. Again, another guy you can't trust. He lives in NY and his last name reminds you of that. Isn't that odd??! I think he real name is probably Gary Kosciel and he changed it to Koscielny in case he ever went senile, got lost, and they had to figure out where he was from.
Seriously though, Gary over the past few years has made great improvements to his game. He has spent a lot of time with it, taken lessons, and has obviously improved not just because he did well at this tournament, but he told me how much his PR has dropped since he started playing bg and taking it more seriously.
Only 4 of my matches were recorded and I input them all. My PRs were:
- 2.3
- 2.5 (3.5)
- 3.3
- 3.5
The one in bold is the one I posted about here on the forums with the adjustments I made during the match. I didn't do this for any of the other matches. Given my 3 opponents, Victor, Marty, and Nick who played a 3.3, there wasn't much opportunity probably to do so anyway.
I never made it to the Jack, the local casino, as I had hoped because I was too busy with Charlie Sheen's winning. We had planned to go one night and check out the poker room. (myself, Ben, and Joe Feldman) They only have a $1-$3 NL game and sometimes some PLO but it would have been fun regardless.
Overall it seemed to run fine. I'd still prefer clocks esp. with the larger the field gets. There were people playing very late Saturday night because of the late Saturday start time after Phil's presentation then the calcutta. Ben will give you his opinions on this soon I hear. Esp. with matches that get closer and closer to the money people play more seriously and spend an inordinate amount of time over rather clear decisions making sure they consider all the options and don't overlook something.
Stick
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