As the Monte Carlo World Backgammon Championship ended, the first event in the third season of the World Series of Backgammon began with the WSOB Cannes, held at the Palm Beach Casino from July 23 until yesterday, when anonymous Najibulla Salamzy of Afghanistan/Germany has surprisingly defeated the favorite, backgammon giant and WSOB team member Falafel Natanzon in the best out of three 7-point matches. Salamzy took home the first €18,000 prize and he will continue to WSOB next event, the European Championships in Prague, the Czech Republic on September 16-20, 2009.

It’s not the winning that counts

Play65 is happy to congratulate Masayuki "Mochy" Mochizuki for winning the 2009 World Backgammon Championship final, held yesterday at the Fairmont Hotel in Monte Carlo, after defeating reigning champion, Lars Trabolt of Denmark in a 25-points match. Mochy, who is also one of Play65’s backgammon bot busters, is the first Japanese champion in the history of the world backgammon championships, and probably one of the youngest players (born in 1979) to achieve this impressive title.

Mochy, carrying Play65 on his back

A rare session of blindfold backgammon was played last night during the Monte Carlo World Backgammon Championship between Falafel and Sander Lylloff, two backgammon masters (no. 1 and 4 in the latest Giants of Backgammon list) who never reject an offer to make things interesting. The backgammon game was physically performed by two other players, who rolled the dice, informed on the outcome and moved the checkers according to Falafel and Sander’s orders. The game went quite well, say spectators; unofficially, it was Falafel stepped out as a winner, Snowie evaluation is required to determine the real winner.

 World Backgammon Championship Finals

 It is the last day of the 34th Monte Carlo World Backgammon Championship, and the championship final is taking place right now, and in a few hours we will be able to tell whether the Japanese player, who was born as Masayuki Mochizuki but mostly known as Mochy, is going to win his first world title, or if Dane Lars Trabolt will reclaim his 2008 world backgammon championship. The champion will take home a check on €62,280, while his runner up will do with €20,760.

The two backgammon pros arrived to the final after beating less experienced players in the semi finals; Mochy outplayed 23-21 a French man called Phillippe Lecomte and Trabolt defeated Roland Herrera of the UK 21-21 after the Crawford rule, both in front of cheering crowds that was thrilled to see that after all, skill bested luck in backgammon.

who said backgammon is not a spectators’ sport? 2008 World Backgammon Champion at the semi finals

Last Monte Carlo World Backgammon Championship?

The general air of disappointment surrounding the event in the last few years, imply that it might be the last year the World Backgammon Championship is held in Monte Carlo in the current format. Rumors say that the next world championship might take place in Las Vegas, probably under a brand new direction.

After IBM has developed the first backgammon computer to compete with a championship level player (TD-Gammon, mentioned here in our second chapter in the history of backgammon bots), and a chess computer that beat then World Chess Champion (in the famous 1997 Deep Blue vs. Garry Kasparov match, ended in 3.5-2.5 result), IBM research center in Hawthorne, New York is now working on a machine that can beat a man in Jeopardy.

The first Jeopardy bot is called Watson (after IBM founder, Thomas J. Watson), and it is planned to make his debut TV appearance at the popular trivia show sometime during next year. In the meantime, Watson is learning the importance of context in finding the right answer, while practicing in finding the correct information through texts using different textual relationships such as metonyms, paraphrases and others.

Although IBM’s Watson has one of the strongest engines a computer can have (IBM Blue Gene/P), it was not necessarily loaded with huge amounts of data, that, among other reasons, to make it ready for commercial use. IBM hangs high hopes on Watson; after (maybe) becoming the first nonhuman Jeopardy champion, it is expected to use its language skills in assisting people with the numerous tasks that requires finding the right answer as fast as possible. (Read Watson full story on CNN Money).

Summer time is travel season, thus there is not a better time to learn how to prepare your very own miniature backgammon board you can carry around to wherever you plan to spend summer vacation (that unless you plan to drag an ultralight laptop and play backgammon online while swinging on a hammock in some deserted island).

The video shows you how to make a multi purpose game board (backgammon – chess – checkers – tic-tac-toe) board from an empty box of mint, using baked polymer clay sculptures and chopped pieces of magnet as checkers.

[via box in hand]

How to Make a Miniature Backgammon Board in four simple steps:

• Print the template sheet with your desired board game pattern and glue it on one side of the tin box (after washing and drying it).
• Create 15 X 2 game pieces from Fimo or find readymade objects that can fill this purpose (breath mints in two different colors?), just bear in mind that the checkers should not be much wider than the base of a triangle and a row of five-six checkers should not stretch much longer than the triangle’s height.
• Cut magnets into tiny pieces with pliers and glue them to the bottom of the game checkers. If Fimo it is, bake the pieces after attaching the magnets to their bases.
• Add pair of dice and a single doubling cube, and your travel backgammon board is ready to go!

Special Warnings

Keep those magnetic checkers away from kids and credit cards.