BGFed.be

The Final of the Red Beaver League was looked forward to with much anticipation. Insiders expected smooth sailing for Marc Van Damme, as he had scored amazing PRs in his Level 1 duel. Geert Van der Stricht, however, has years of international chess experience under his belt, plenty of stamina, and is by no means a pushover.

With the dice on his side (Luck Rates of +5, +2,6 and +3,8) Geert quite easily won the opening three matches, but did not manage to do so with below-5 PRs. Astonishingly, Marc (feeling slightly out of sorts after some days of illness) failed to take advantage of this as he ended up with (marginally) worse PRs. In each match he made just one error/blunder too many. The result: a bewildering 6-0 lead for Geert.

Surely Geert was not going to become BGFed.be UBC Champion with an 8-0 whitewash? M4 was therefore crucial for Marc, who showed commendable resilience. He was able to remain positive, regrouped and won M4 with a winning PR of 2,5: 6-2.

After all these trials and tribulations Geert is clearly in the driver’s seat: he only needs two points out of the three remaining matches. Marc will be looking for a match win with a better PR in M5, hoping to close the gap to 6-4 and thus keep his chances to become the first winner of the RBL alive.

— Michel Lamote

The Red Beaver League season is getting into its final stages. In Level 1, Marc Van Damme slaughtered Michel Lamote 10-2 while in the Level 5 barrage duel, Maurits Pino came back from 2-4 down against Alain Chif to win 6-4. In RBLQ Nick De Ruyck narrowly defeated Sonja Custers in a crucial promotion duel.

Marc Van Damme has been the standard bearer of Belgian backgammon for more than 20 years. In the beginning of the century, he was already competing in the international arena and today, after long spells of absence (covid, other interests such as chess) he is back. And how…

In his first appearance in the RBL Marc started off his Level 1 duel (seven matches to 7) against Michel Lamote with two SGM (= Super Grandmaster) PRs of 1,94 and 2,57, good for a confidence boosting lead: 3-1. In M3, however, Marc’s 4,25 PR was not enough to take the PR point, but luckily a 17-to-1 shot from the bar saved the match so that it was not 3-3, but 4-2. Then Match 4 proved to be the match too many for both Marc and Michel. Marc won the match point and was unhappy with his 7+ PR, but Michel suffered a complete mental meltdown (dejection, fatigue…?) and played a 17+ PR (!). This meant that the opening session of the duel (four matches) ended with a 6-2 score. With his better OPR (= Overall PR), Marc would only need two points out of the last three matches to reach Level O (= the Final).

The week after, on Tuesday 21 February, both players met again at the Sandeman (Ghent) to play their duel to a finish. Marc delivered the coup de grâce by winning M5 with another SGM PR of 1,77 so that Michel’s PR of 3,00 was of no consequence: 8-2. Although the duel was thereby decided, M6 was played as a gentleman’s gesture: 10-2.

In short, Marc mercilessly steamrollered Michel into insignificance with a first-rate OPR of 3,43 and progresses to Level 0 where he awaits the winner of the Level 1 duel between Belgium’s numbers 2 and 3, Geert Van der Stricht and Johan Huyck.

Meanwhile, in the lower regions of the RBL, Maurits Pino staged a remarkable comeback in his Level 5 barrage duel against Alain Chif. After the opening session (three matches), Alain was 4-2 up, but saw his advantage evaporate as Maurits won both M4 and M5 with better PRs: 4-6. Maurits thereby secures his spot in the 2023-2024 RBL Playing Grid whereas Alain will play the runner-up of RBLQ (= the qualifiers) in a last-ditch effort to stay in the RBL.

In the RBLQ, Nick De Ruyck won a nervy duel against Sonja Custers (3-3/Nick wins narrowly on OPR) and stays in contention for promotion to the RBL. Nick will meet the favourite, Itzhak Solsky, on Wednesday 1 March in the Sandeman.

Please find the updated Results and Leaderboards by clicking on the RBL tab.

— Michel Lamote

On Tuesday 20 December 2022, Robin Bilderbeek and I (Michel Lamote) met at the Sandeman to play the opening three matches of our Level 2 duel (TR: Geert Van der Stricht). I started off well by narrowly winning M1 (7-6), but Robin took the PR point by a tiny margin (PR 4,44 v PR 4,59): 1-1. Robin went on to win M2 with a PR of 2,8 (!) which would have been enough for a 3-1 lead, had it not been for my better PR of 2,14: 2-2. Finally, Match 3 also went to Robin, albeit with an outlier PR of 8,57: 3-3.

Then, five weeks later, on Tuesday 31 January 2023, this Level 2 duel was played to a finish. In the monastic quiet of the Sandeman I won Match 4, but some inexplicable checker play blunders (“oversights”, “lapses of concentration” – think up your own euphemism) resulted in a disturbing PR of 8,00. This not only gave Robin the PR point, but also narrowed the gap in overall PR to 0,5: 4-4. All to play for…

For Robin, a major upset is in the making. He started the RBL season in Level 5, but excellent performances against Maurits Pino, Bert Van Kerckhove and Johan Segers catapulted him to Level 2. If he can somehow win M5 with a better PR, he would move up to Level 1 and achieve the unthinkable.

Fast forward to the climax of this match. It is DMP and we are in the bear-off. Robin is a huge favourite with 95% winning chances. Moreover, albeit unbeknownst to either Robin or myself, Robin is also leading on PR (!). In other words, in 19 out of 20 cases, Robin will win M5 and take the PR point for an astounding 6-4 victory and a Level 1 encounter with Belgium’s best player, Marc Vandamme.

However, after a blood-curdling sequence of dice rolls, M5 slipped away from Robin’s grasp. This brought the final score to 5-5. Now, the overall PR was going to break the tie. Here again Robin was tantalizingly close, but to the open-mouthed bewilderment of all present, a fractional difference of 0,18 meant that Robin’s ascent had come to an end.

Still, Robin’s RBL odyssey continues. He now has a barrage duel to play against Paul van Dijke (five matches). Dipping below the 5PR mark would certainly give his amazing run even more polish. For Paul, this duel presents an ultimate opportunity to make his RBL season a success: a win would secure a spot in Level 2 for next year and send RBL’s potential Player of the Year back to Level 3.

— Michel