I will attempt to cover a fair bit in this post but know I'm seeing everything after it happened and didn't really follow the event so if I get any details wrong just let me know.
First, in case anyone wants it, here the link to 'Mochy and Ralph's Tour 2025, day 3': https://www.youtube.com/live/7ABO3Uiz0RE
The first match in said link is the one we're concerned with where Mochy and Ralph play a match to 9. A bit of background information that may be relevant to the discussion, Ralph doesn't play matches a lot and is not used to using a clock it seems.
The first position we need to look at happens at 1:33:31 in
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| XGID=aDCA--A---------------cfe-:1:-1:-1:52:3:7:0:9:10 | |||||
| Blue to play 52 | |||||
| 1. | Rollout1 | Bar/18 | eq: -1.033 | |||
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| 2. | Rollout1 | Bar/20 3/1 | eq: -1.075 (-0.042) | |||
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| 1 1296 Games rolled with Variance Reduction. Moves: 3-ply, cube decisions: XG Roller | ||||||
Ralph had this [52] to play off the bar and decided not to play bar/18. We don't care that he got it wrong, we care why he got it wrong. I believe that this is the first point we see Ralph clearly has the score or the cube or something not right in his head about the match. I think he thinks if he loses this game he loses the match. Maybe he inverted the scores thinking Mochy was 2 away??
Anyway, so Ralph stays, Mochy rolls [65] and takes two checkers off and then Ralph immediately offers him his hand as if congratulating for winning the match!?! Mochy shakes his hand, they toss the checkers around as if the game is over and Bill Riles who is doing commentary is rightfully thoroughly confused.
Note. Ralph's clock is a 1:27 left. Mochy hit the clock so it will continue to run down but when they finished that game via resignation it was at 1:27.
I really can't wrap my head around what happened here. Ok, Ralph was perhaps tired and flustered and somehow messed up the score but Mochy had to know the match wasn't over right?? Now Phil comes out to ask them about it in a tone of incomprehension and here's the short convo.
Phil: It's a 9 point match, did you finish the match?
Mochy: Yea we finished. I won.
Phil: How did you win?
Mochy then replies with something I can't really understand but he seems to be waiving Phil off as if he'll talk to him later if he wants. Phil leaves and Mochy and Ralph talk for a bit about nothing related to the match. Now they come back minutes later realizing the match wasn't over which presents a whole new set of problems. First point of note, should Ralph have been allowed to resign a backgammon and the match? From what I understand under USBGF rules he would have been allowed to. I don't know what ruleset this event is being run under but most tournaments more or less align with the USBGF rule set so...
Next, what should the score be or how should the situation be handled?? Mochy states that his gammon chances were 1% so the score should be 4a 2a now. After Ralph stayed Mochy rolled [65] and here's the position.
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| XGID=-DCA-aA---------------bff-:1:-1:1:56:3:7:0:9:10 | |||||
| Blue to play 56 | |||||
| 1. | Rollout1 | 6/Off 3/Off | eq: +1.040 | |||
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| 1 15552 Games rolled with Variance Reduction. Moves: 3-ply, cube decisions: XG Roller | ||||||
So as we see Mochy's gammon chances were almost 4%. To me the easiest solution was to simply play the position out from where they left it but nobody even mentions that. They give Mochy his two points and fire the match back up but they have to reset the clock and in resetting the clock they for some reason give Ralph 1:48 on the clock instead of the 1:27 he should obviously have?
If you watch from the start of the 4a 2a game it ends up being a little messy, complicated, longer than normal. Ralph clearly has little awareness that his time is running out or is unable to play quickly and after a play in the game where Ralph has 13.4 seconds Ralph asks Mochy what happens when the clock runs out. Mochy tells him it's game over. Ralph's frantic play doesn't last long as it's far too little too late though as we see Ralph time out on the very next play.
Thoughts?
Stick