Karsten Bredahl, Team Play65 Captain, continues to look back at the 2009 season in the Danish Backgammon Federation top league. The season, which ended in the team’s championship, started out quite lame:

Round 1:
Team Play65 opened the season real bad, losing 1-3 to Klaps, which is a former two times champion in the Danish Backgammon Team tournament. They are strong players, but the road to victory has to include luck once in a while.
For fun – let’s look at a position where Team P65 member Steen Groenbech is playing the white checkers and leading 14-6/17 holding a 4-cube.

He ends up losing the match without ever entering from the bar. 0,2% backgammon turned into 100%.
Lady luck says ”welcome and have a nice season” to the players from TP65.

Round 2:

Defeat is a lousy excuse for giving up. Next challenge is Team Ladbrokes which is one of the favourites to win the tournament. Now we were ready to get back to even score but unfortunately, we were lucky not to lose 0-4 and ’only’ lost 1-3 again. Now we were -2 with our 2 out of 8 and were second to last in the division.

Round 3 + 4 were a lot better for Team Play65. We won both matches 3-1 against Temple and Hitmen and were back on 0 with 8 victories of 16 matches.

Round 5: Last years champions from Soirée Dansante just beat the world team (including Falafel and Mochy) in an exhibition match in France and showed everybody they were fit for a fight. It turned out to be a match which could go both ways but after 4 long hours the result 2-2 were satisfying for both teams.

Round 6 – Force Majeure: The plan was simple: victory! And the plan became forfilled. But the road to victory is often quite bumpy. Here is a little position from Bredahl’s match:

Bredahl is black, leading 6-5/17 and faced a cube here. He took and won easily after a couple of aces from white. These positions is very easy to calculate over the board and often takes a lot of time to decide.

In this case, the cube seemed a little premature (double blunder) but 2 rolls later black had 3 on the ace and white had 2 on the deuce. Black on roll. Cubeaction? Despite the underdog position (40%), black should still reship the 16-cube for the match. This emphasizes how match play is much more complicated and difficult than money games…

New backgammon tournaments on Play65 – private tournaments, created by you. On Play65 private tournaments (Sit n’ Go/Private at the game lobby), you set the time, the date, the buy-in and the prize; you also invite the players of your choice, by sending them entry passwords (via Play65 backgammon community or any other online or offline communication tool).

And most importantly. Play65 private tournaments allow you, the tournament creators, to earn extra money. Yes, you earn 5% of the prize pool from EVERY private tournament you create.

Play65 - US Backgammon Open Qualifiers

Play65 first collaboration with the American Backgammon Tour and second collaboration with the World Backgammon Tour (after the Nordic Open qualifiers) sends you to San Francisco, where the second ever US Open will take place, between May 13 and 16, 2010 with expected prize pool of $50000.

Play65 US Open sub-qualifiers will start tomorrow, Friday April 23 at 20:00 PST (03:00 GMT) and would run everyday, at the same time, until Sunday May 2 with entry fees of $10 and prizes of $60 entry coupons to the final. The final qualifier will take place on Monday, May 3rd at 20:00 PST. Entry fee: $60 and first prize is $1000 prize package includes $600 entry to the US Open backgammon tournament and four days accommodation in San Francisco.

By Karsten Bredahl , Team Play65 captain

Denmark is known as the greatest backgammon nation in the world. Why is that? What’s the secret behind such a great success coming from such a very small nation (+5 million people)?

Let us provide you with the secret! The answer is ”The Danish Backgammon Team Tournament” which is the outspring from organized backgammon over decades.

Every year, 100 teams is fighting a battle all winter long competing to be the best TEAM in Denmark. Backgammon is an individual sport, and making it into a team sport is brillant as it takes the game into a higher level. Now the players are not only meassured on their own results but on the result of the team. Discussion and exchanging theories and knowledge pays off. It is about getting better by helping your team members to get better.

THAT is the true nature of the Danish Team Tournament which occupies more than 600 players every year. 

Denmark Backgammon Divisions

The elite-division is the finest place to play backgammon. Nobody just ’lands’ here after entering the tournament. All theh teams must work their way up the hierarchy by winning lower divisions. Each division has 12 teams playing each other twice during a season (home and away).

A backgammon match includes 4 players on each team. More than 4 players can be connected with the team, but only 4 players can play each time. 22 team matches means 88 boards over a season. Each board is a 17 point match. As you can understand, that is a lot of backgammon before the Champions is crowned. In fact, 3.700 matches in 7-8 divisions are played to 17 points before the last die is thrown and the last checker has been taken off the board. Amazing!

Season 2009-10 is the 20th season of team backgammon in Denmark. Since the beginning in 1991, Denmark has produced four world backgammon champions and many more winning personalities over the years.

Season 2009-10 was the season Team Play65 accomplished the ultimate goal for a team in Denmark, which is winning the elite-division and ending up as Danish Backgammon Champions.

Backgammon world champion and Play65 bot buster Masayuki Mochizuki (aka Mochy) had replaced Matvey Natanzon (Falafel), another one of Play65 backgammon programs detectors, at the top of the Giants of Backgammon list for 2009.

Mochy represents the young, analytic, computer-oriented generation in backgammon. At only 31, he has managed to attend dozens of international backgammon tournaments (and win some of them, including the last Monte Carlo world championship), read all recommended backgammon books, and practice backgammon daily, mostly on online backgammon servers, such as Play65 for example. In between backgammon tournaments, Mochy teaches schoolchildren in Japan about the wonders of math using backgammon, obviously.

Falafel, then, had dropped one place to number 2, as his giants of backgammon runner-up predecessor, Nack Ballard, dropped lower to number 6. The third place, formerly taken by Francois Tardieu, is now taken by Neil Kazaross, formerly number 5. Sander Lylloff remains at number 5, and on number 7 Stick Rice makes a fresh new entry straight from #63. Lars Trabolt, World Backgammon Champion for 2008, progresses to #8, and Michihito Kageyama (aka Michi) progresses to #9 from the 35 position. Play65 third bot buster, Robert (Bob) Wachtel goes down from #9 to #10, and closes the top ten backgammon giants list for 2009.

Falafel, Backgammon Giant #2