Chicago Open ABT Tournament

I had the pleasure of attending another wonderful backgammon tournament run by Howard Markowitz. Howard is best known for running the Las Vegas events, but this year he has also taken up the Chicago event and he will be a co-director of the World Championships in Monte Carlo. 

As always, the event was run smoothly and professionally. By the end of Saturday night, the tournament had reached it’s highlight for me, as my lovely wife, Randee, and I won the Open Doubles event.  

Phil & Randee Simborg holding the Doubles event trophies

The big news was the Open Division victory of Christopher Yap…one of the great young new players of the game, beating John Jennings in the finals. None of the top seeded players even made it into the semi-finals, and the list included some of the Giants of Backgammon including Mike Corbett, Petko, Ray Fogerlund, Perry Gartner and Stick Rice.  

The Advance Division was an all-Chicago final with Scott Casty beating Albert Yakovishvili. I was very happy for both of them, as I had bought both of their teams in the Calcutta.  Being the auctioneer for the Calcutta I gave away Play65 shirts and hats to the winning bidders.  

The Novice Division was probably the most interesting and exciting of all. It was very exciting to see Lauren Casty (Scott’s daughter), a recent honors graduate of Columbia U., enter and win her very first tournament. Lauren just recently took up backgammon, but she had a lot of coaching from her father, she watched a lot of money games the past couple of weeks, and she studied “Simborg’s Rules of Thumb” which I make available to all beginner and intermediate students. Lauren went undefeated which is quite amazing for someone who has been playing the game just a few weeks. 

In the Open Divison, in my second round match I had a very interesting play to make. As black, I had to play 4-4. How would you have played it?

I came up with the right play and went on to win the game and the match.  The right play is to bring two checkers in from the 7 point and take two checkers off the 4 point.