East Kent Backgammon Tournament – 19th October 2024

 

50 players attended (20 club members & 30 visitors).
It was a grey a drizzly day in Canterbury on the 19th October, but not for the East Kent Backgammon Club.

Due to being over subscribed we managed to squeeze another couple of players in to increase the number of players to 50. It was fantastic to see we had 30 players attend from outside of the club including some new faces.
A number of the masters were knocked out after the 5 round Swiss and 5 of the East Kent players sneaked through to the top 8.
Luis Dawber, Mike Ireland, Phil Tutchings and Jay Hayter lost out in the quarter finals leaving the two tournament directors going through to the semi finals (surely it’s fixed a few say).
Unfortunately for me I was no competition for Martin Taylor and Stephen O’Conner lost out to Matthew Guy. The final got rather lively with Martin having a tough decision as to whether to take one of Matthews 8 cubes. After much consideration Martin reluctantly dropped with hope that he might be able to recover from 4:0 down.
All was sadly lost as Matthew rolled a perfect double to clear his back checkers and advance with his bear off and taking a 5:0 victory.

Congratulations Matthew Guy for winning your first Club open tournament. Im sure it wont be your last. And you also got the money instead of another board. Matin, who knows it might be you next time.

Meanwhile 2 of the players who were eligible for the consolation decided to retire early for the day promoting Fraya Dravern and Ruth Flack (1st time to the tournament).
The 16 contenders battled it out in a 3pt knockout with a few of the top players continuing to have a bad day in the office. 
Simon Mouradian won the final against Ruth Flack.

Our one day tournament continues to be very popular and was over subscribed one week after our last one. We have 4 tournaments arranged for 2025 and will be open for applications in a couple of weeks. So sign up as soon as possible to secure yourself a place.
 

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Please feel free to provide any feedback on how the tournament went and if there are any improvements you think could be made.

Regards
Sean Thomas
The East Kent Backgammon Club

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Click the below file for the full report and photos

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