Our acquaintance, Phil Simborg, reports from the Chicago Open ABT Tournament:

I am sad to report that I lost in the Open and am playing last chance (I did win the first two rounds including a win over the great Herb Roman in Round 2).

In the Open Div, the Semis are Sam Pottle vs. John Jennings and Chris Yep vs. Alan Grunwald   (I own John and Alan in the Calcutta along with my partner, Scott Casty, who is in the finals of Intermediate, and we own him as well!)

In one of my later matches, this interesting positions came up.   Black trails 0-4 in a match to15 and is on roll.  Cube action?

The fourth week of Play65 backgammon quiz begun yesterday with a brand new question: which famous singer spent a holiday playing backgammon at a luxurious hotel in Ibiza?

If you know the answer, just check it, fill in your username and email address and submit. If you’ll be lucky, your name will be drawn and you’ll get a $20 bonus delivered straight into your Play65 account. Ha! And you thought that reading celebrity gossip was a waste of time!

What more can you ask (except for a backgammon board)?

3rd Backgammon Quiz 

As for last week’s backgammon quiz, the answer is Victoria Smirnoff (who won the 2000 Doubles Consulting World Backgammon Championship in Switzerland together with Paul Magriel) and the winner is pressureplay, a 39 years old guy from Queensland, Australia.

Think you’re good enough to play at the World Series of Backgammon?

If your answer is yes…

1. Go to Play65 Backgammon Site

2. Download the software: Free Backgammon Download

3. Play on Play65 WSOB qualifiers

and…
win it to get a free entrance to the WSOB Championship Final in Cannes.
and get a chance to win €100.000. That’s right:

 €100.000 in CASH!!!

* Play65 WSOB package includes: 
- A flight to Cannes, France.
- 5 Days accomodation.
- A FREE entrance to the world series of backgammon finale
(WSOB final in Cannes is schedueled to July 22nd, flight is on July 17th).            

Read the amazing story of "The Wizard of Oz", a 22 unprofessional backgammon player named Oz, who played so remarkably at the 2008 Portuguese Open, they had to come up with a new trophy especially for him.

Oz Cohen-Zada is a 22 years old ex-serviceman of Israel, who, following his win at the Backgammon Championship of Israel organized by Play65 last March, got to represent his country at the WBA Portuguese Open 2008 held at the beginning of May. 

While Oz’s backgammon experience sums up to three years of amateur playing during his army service, his opponents at the backgammon event held in Casino Estoril in Portugal were the world’s leading pro players with Israeli Michel Natanzon aka Falafel, German Götz Hildsberg and Francois Tardieu of France among them. Nevertheless, Oz made it into the Masters Division.

On his first match at the tournament, Oz had defeated his German opponent Andreas Humke 13-0. Soon after, he found out that he played against the wrong opponent, and his came was out of the bracket. Therefore, he had to play another game. In his second game, Oz lost to the Portuguese millionaire Jose Salema and dropped out of the Masters Division (which eventually won by Oz’s compatriot Falafel).

Oz came back at the Consolation Division, where he continued amazing everyone by winning four recognized backgammon players. After beating Carter Mattig of the US, Oz made it to the semi-finals, by dropped out of the lucrative competition after losing the another Play65 qualifier, Denis Etienne of Sweden. 

By the time he made it to the Last Chance event, Oz was recognized as a phenomenon and he was nicknamed "The Wizard of Oz". He started out with an absolutely shocking triumph over French backgammon champ Francois Tardieu and continued winning Badri Tsertsevadze and Rida Hassan on his way to the top, where he lost to the Veteran Robert Wachtel of the United States. At the end of the 2008 Portuguese Open, Oz Cohen-Zada received a special fair play prize at the awards ceremony. 

The Wizard of Oz contemplating his next move

Play65 backgammon quiz begins its third week. Dozens of players gave the right answer on last week’s question, but only one of them - Lampashu of Romania – knew that when you have two checkers on the bar and there are three points open in your opponent’s home board, you have only 9/36 possible rolls to get both checkers in with. Lampashu got an immediate $20 bonus, plus his name might be drawn at the $200 quarterly draw. 

For Play65 3rd backgammon quiz all you need is a short term memory (or a handy internet search engine): who won the Doubles Consulting World Backgammon Championship in Switzerland 2000 together with Paul Magriel (the legendary backgammon player and the author of the classic backgammon book known as the "bible of backgammon")? Hint: it was a female player. So if you think you know the answer, simply check it, enter your username and email address and click on submit. If you won the $20 bonus, you will be notified by next Sunday, when the 4th backgammon quiz will be up.

Some more backgammon tips gathered since the last update: 

Making the Best Possible Move

Generally, it is advisable to go through all possible moves before playing the roll. Or in other words, don’t make any move until you’ve ruled out the alternatives. An easy way to accomplish it is by playing half of the play with the second half in mind. For example, in the game, if your opponent has hit loose on his 5-point and you plan to enter with a 5-3; you can play the 5, hit, and then look for the best possible move to play the 3. 

Splitting in the Early Game

In the early game, it is commonly correct to split your back checkers, especially if you have 1/2/3 that does not hit or make a point. By that, you can easily escape your back checkers, plus it will put pressure on the opponent in case he/she will leave blots in the outer board. In the early game, split your back checkers when your opponent has 2, or even 3 checkers on his 8-point, but if he has 4 checkers, don’t split. 

Studying your Backgammon Game

Backgammon matches in professional tournaments and championships are often recorded for studying and analyzing. But even if you are not a pro, you can save your online backgammon matches and analyze them (using backgammon programs such as Snowie or JellyFish) to learn from your mistakes and get better in time. Note that the bots, and most of the human players are not so strong on backgames, therefore, you can feel unobligated to adopt its recommendations in these cases (or others). 

Match Play vs. Money Play

Cube decisions, in particular, are more difficult to make in match play comparing to money play, so if you are used to play money games you are obviously required to adjust the match situation and score when you are playing backgammon tournaments. To learn the difference, you can use any backgammon analyzing tool of your choice to run evaluations of the same play at double match point and as a money game. By that, you can learn how gammons (or their absence) affect the cube decision or any other decision.

Backgammon Quiz

Play65 introduces a weekly backgammon quiz with a weekly $20 prize. In addition, once in three months, one of the weekly winners will earn a $200 bonus. Do you know who the 2007 Backgammon World Champion was? If you think you do, simply submit your answer, and you’ll be automatically included in the weekly draw. 

WSOB Cannes Qualifiers