Magriel Mega Match Madness Series

January 18, 2020 Leave a comment
This might seem crazy at first. And also, later.

I’ve been casting about for another weapon to add to my “gain experience and get better, faster” arsenal— I study, read, play in both live and online tournaments, Dallas Backgammon League play, timed and un-timed matches of various lengths, play XG and BGBlitz, analyze my games, etc.— but one piece that’s missing, in large part, is playing myself.

Seriously.

Playing yourself in a mind sport is a great way to learn and improve, particularly if you approach the process in a serious and thoughtful way.

Paul Magriel famously took on the player-moniker “X-22” after playing himself, on each side of the board, in a 26-player tournament, where the players were named “X-1” through “X-26.”…

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This is the End (of 2019)

December 31, 2019 Leave a comment
Champagne and a game, anyone?

It’s been a couple of weeks since I posted my last backgammon update (“bupdate”?), and seeing-off 2019 is the perfect excuse to crank one out. I’ve been busy, just as I’m sure most of you have, with the Holidays and the usual closing-out-the-year madness, but haven’t neglected the game. Because, priorities.

I think I’ll lead by stealing a super-lazy idea from the press: the end-of-the-year recap:

On January 1, I will have been:

  • Playing backgammon for eight months
  • Playing Daily Gammon for seven-and-a-half months
  • Been serious about learning for five months
  • Been playing with a doubling cube for four months
  • Been playing live tournaments with a League for two months

Today, as of this writing, I have a synchronistic 2002 games under my belt on Daily Gammon and my stats look like this:

231 days of gameplay.
…

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Punk Rock Backgammon

December 14, 2019 2 Comments

Had a pretty good game-week this week, with lots of little things adding up to plenty of fun and adventure (as far as backgammon goes).

On Tuesday, my baffle box arrived in the mail and I immediately unboxed it and gave it a whirl. It’s the box that’s sold by Phil Simborg, but it didn’t fit my board as intended. It has adjustable spacers on the bottom which allow it to expand or contract to the depth of the dice tray it’s sitting atop, but the width of my tray, on my board, didn’t accommodate the notch width of the box.…

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Monte Carlo Dreaming

December 7, 2019 Leave a comment

I’ve had the pleasure of visiting Monte Carlo— I was spending time “down the road” in Cannes, attending an industry awards festival, and decided to take a day exploring by car, driving up the coast through Nice, Monte Carlo and, briefly, crossing the Italian border. It was wonderful.

Doing my part to keep Monte Carlo family-friendly.

There’s truly no other place like it; it’s unique in the world.

I want to eventually go back and play in the Backgammon World Championship, not because I feel I can win it, but for the experience of it.

Here’s what the Championship looked like in 1985.…

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FIBS Fifteen Hundred

November 22, 2019 Leave a comment

I’ve gone on a nice little tear since I posted my 1,400th game update on the 11th.

The red line indicates where I stood eleven days ago.

Then, eleven days ago, my FIBS rating stood at 1,429.87. Last night, I managed to (re)cross the 1,500 mark, a place I haven’t been since the first day I began playing (and began with an automatic 1,500, a number that climbed slightly— and only very briefly— before crashing to Earth while I learned the game).

Waiting for the FIBS score to roll from this…

…to this…

…was, um, anticipatory. I’d won a match and knew it would put me over the top, but my opponent had stepped away and hadn’t cleared the game, leaving my score in limbo.…

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1,400 Games

November 11, 2019 2 Comments
Yes. Yes it did.

After taking nearly four months to play 400 games on Daily Gammon, here I am, just over two months later, with 1,400 games under my belt.

That’s a pretty serious escalation, and I blame it on the doubling cube. The games really start adding up when your matches go to multiple points.

For those who don’t know my “backgammon timeline,” prepare for the boring:

  • Began playing the game in May of this year (2019)
  • Discovered Daily Gammon on May 14
  • While traveling, played one-point matches to learn the game
  • Decided in August I would get serious, bought many books
  • Began playing with the doubling cube for the first time in September
  • Had a Birthday, showered with gammon gear, continued reading
  • Located a local League in October, kept getting crushed using the cube
  • Began clawing back in November, and attended my first League meeting
The ups and downs (and downs, and downs) of learning

So I’ve been playing for six months, three of those with serious intent, and only two of those in multi-point matches using the cube, with one week in a League setting.…

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Gammon On The Go

September 17, 2019 Leave a comment

This is what DailyGammon looks like while waiting to pick C up from arts magnet school and tween-taxi her on to arts magnet after-school. And, yes, that’s a lot of art.

Anytime’s a good time for backgammon.

The little dude hanging from the rearview mirror I cleverly call, “Little Dude.” I picked him up last summer from Marie Laveau’s House of Voodoo in New Orleans.

New Orleans was on the opening leg of our Epic Nonsense Tour of 2018, a 5,300+ mile / 8,500+ km giant circle of road-tripping. Part of it was my wanting to introduce C to blues roots and jazz culture (stops in New Orleans, Nashville, and Memphis); part of it was B wanting to see some Southern charm (stops in Savanah, and Charleston); part of it was reliving some of my university sailing/drinking days (stops in Thibodaux, and Navarre); part of it was for fun (stops in Orlando, and Virginia Beach); and all of it was for memory-making.…

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400

September 8, 2019 1 Comment

I’ve just finished my 400th match on DailyGammon, which isn’t a huge number by some long-time member standards, but it’s a milestone for me.

The site’s been around since the early 1990s, and is one of the oldest websites on the World Wide Web (back when it was called that; now it’s just “The Internet”). There are players with tens of thousands of matches under their belts. I’m a babe in swaddling clothes by comparison.

I found DailyGammon during the second week of May this year (05/19) while “going into training” for playing during our trip to Italy. I started off slowly, playing only matches to one point (no doubling cube, which at the time was a mystery to me, and still largely is).…

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