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How I wish I had more time to rant in general

Posted By: Gregg Cattanach
Date: Thursday, 9 December 2010, at 8:50 a.m.

In Response To: How I wish I had more time to rant in general (Timothy Chow)

A cute idea but unnecessary. In almost all 'horror stories' you hear regarding clock usage, it turns out that the player(s) had to play quickly in the last couple of games, and nobody lost on time. And that 'problem' was easily avoided earlier in the match. If this situation never came up (someone having to 'rush' for a small percentage of their match), then the only conclusion is that the time limits were too liberal. A small percentage of matches will ALWAYS have a time rush at the end if the time limits are appropriate.

Bill Davis's story about MCG and Stepan misses the point is so many ways, it's hard to list them all. I respect Bill and spent vast amounts of times working with him with the last revision of the US Rules. No one person has done more for the continuance of top-quality tournament backgammon in the US. I've always found him to be rational and logical. But in this instance, he really has gone off the deep end, IMO.

I believe he is yearning for 'the good old days' when only a few people really knew how to play and the low hanging fruit was always easy pickings in the chouette and at the tournament. In today's game because of the bots, this scenario doesn't really exist anymore. Even the biggest fish is cured of his ways rather quickly, if only by osmosis from the bot analysis going on around him. My guess is that somehow this dissatisfaction with this increased skill level of today's Open player has been packaged-dealed by Bill into 'clocks, dice tubes, cameras, bots and T-shirts have ruined the game'. Yes, these are things new to the game, but are so far from 'what's wrong' with backgammon as to be a complete inversion. And lumping these things together as some fast 'technology conspiracy' is just plain silly.

ESPECIALLY where clocks are concerned. Clock usage (mandatory or on-request) at the Championship level is the only hope for tournament backgammon's survival.

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