"Falafel" and Gus Hansnen at the Nordic Open

Play65 Nordic Open has ended last Monday with the victory of a relatively unknown name, Dane Claus Elken who defeated Tage Mellgren, also of the kingdom of Denmark, at the dramatic final, which will be eternally remembered for the hilarious commentary coming from the official kibitzers American backgammon player Carter Mattig (who was accompanied by his 15 years old daughter, who turned out to be the great hope of women’s backgammon) and local Karsten Bredahl (a Play65 representative, who was very close to make it to the top 4, but was eventually pushed down to the 5th position), with Israeli backgammon giant Falafel contributing some less official pears of wisdom of his own.

In addition to the predictable massive Nordic presence at the Helsingor, Denmark tournament (with Danish Backgammon Federation biggest star Gus Hansen as the welcome speaker), it was the Greek backgammon community (with Manos Mastorakis, the former director of the Greek backgammon federation among the top 16 players, and Play65 qualifier Filomila Karantzali winning the Super Jackpot) who showed the Danish people where backgammon history begins. The DBgF collaboration with their Japanese correspondings brought a group of Japanese players to Hamlet’s city, including Masayuki "Mochi" Mochizuki the current top Japanese backgammon player, and sent Jurgen Orlowski of Germany to a second, successive trip to the Japan Open backgammon tournament.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 23rd, 2009 at 3:50 am and is filed under Backgammon Players, Backgammon Tournaments, Online Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.