From tomorrow night (December 12th at midnight GMT) Play65 will be revealing its dark side. On every night on this coming week, the online backgammon room will be violently slashing the rakes to a maximum of 3% or €15. All of you owls, vampires, aussies and other sleep deprived creatures are welcome to take advantage and play backgammon until the morning comes.
Play65 Dark Week – from December 12th to 19th, 00:00 – 06:00 GMT
Play65 has added two new speed game modes to its online backgammon platform including a fast game (up to 15 seconds a move) and a lightning blitz backgammon games with only 10 seconds a move and no more than 30 seconds a game.
Backgammon blitz games (not to be confused with the blitz game plan, when a player hits the opponent’s blots in his homeboard in order to make it difficult for the opponent to re-enter from the bar) is commonly played as a side event in many tournaments worldwide, where it is limited to 1-2 point matches. One of the benefits of playing blitz backgammon online is that its speedy time limitation can prevents anyone from using bots.
BGblitz is also the name of the backgammon software used by Play65 when one of the players disconnects in real money backgammon games, or when the time ends before the game, to decide who is the predicted winner and how the stake should be divided between the two players. As you may recall, the software has been recently updated and adjusted to better suit Play65 needs and provide more accurate predictions.
To the thousand things you can do with a $1,000 you can add playing backgammon online: Play65 has recently raised the maximum stake in its backgammon games to $1,000 (or € or ₤) and at the same time lowered the rake to 2.45%. I bet you can do the math…
That means, that if, for example, you and your opponent play on $800 and you win a gammon, then your opponent pays $1,600 and you will earn a sum of $1560.8, regardless to the rating difference between you and your partner.
The backgammon boards exhibition "Art of Reconciliation", sponsored by Play65, was opened last week in Israel, at the municipal art gallery in Givatayim in the presence of the participating artists, the mayor of Givatayim and other respectable guests.
Originally raised for Israel’s 60th anniversary, the backgammon boards that served as the platform for the art pieces mostly did not ignore the exhibition title, nor the symbols attributed to the game, especially here in the Middle East, where backgammon was first introduced to the world.
For many of the 60 artists who gave their personal interpretation to the backgammon board, it was the first opportunity to see the exhibition live, since for the last year and a half, the Art of Reconciliation was exhibited in Washington DC and other locations in the US.
Here are some pictures from the opening night:
KevinJessup of Australia won Play65 ProGammon tournament held last night, the opening event of this week’s Knockout Weekend (formerly Supernatural Weekend). By following Play65 on Twitter, you could have get updated in the whole procedure that preceded the moment of winning, from the players’ enrollment to the first five rounds, quarter finals, semis and the suspenseful final.
By doing so, you could have learned that KevinJessup was not the immediate favorite to win the toughest backgammon tournament on Play65 schedule. Among the 73 entrants, there were 3 players with over 2000 rating, but an 1800+ rated player nicknamed Friznir of Israel climbed his way to the top, but dropped in the semis after losing to golfto, who eventually lost to KevinJessup in the 7-point match. By the way, KevinJessup, despite his down under location, is not new to Play65, nor to Play65 winning, and last year we posted an interview with the Australian backgammon champ, who is also a collector rare backgammon boards.
Play65 Knockout Weekend continues today with a six hours marathon of backgammon tournaments with total prizes ranging from €2750 to €5750, but I will be busy washing my hair, who is willing to twit one (or all three) tournaments in real time?
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.
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blindfold backgammon Monte Carlo 2009
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.
2009 World Backgammon Championship semi-finals Mochy vs. Lecomte
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
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).
* and soccer playing bots
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:
Special Warnings
Keep those magnetic checkers away from kids and credit cards.
