BGFed

Tag: speedgammon

  • Vlissingen Masters Rapid and Speed

    At the occasion of 60th birthday, Paul van Rooijen organised a great backgammon weekend in the Arion hotel at the waterfront of his home town, Vlissingen, on 4 and 5 January 2020.

    There were two tournaments, in Swiss format, with finals between the top-2 to determine the winner:

    • A Rapidgammon tournament on Saturday: 7-point matches, Bronstein timing with 5 minutes for the match plus 11 seconds per move;
    • A Speedgammon tournament on Sunday: 5-point matches, Bronstein timing with 2 minutes for the match plus 10 seconds per move.

    The tournaments also counted as the Belgian and Dutch rapid and speed championships, with BGFed.be offering the belgian trophies. Congratulations to the winners, Geert Van der Stricht (rapid) and Toon Van Herrweghen (speed). Toon also won the Open Championship of the speedgammon tournament.

    Organiser Paul van Rooijen addressing his guests at his 60th-birthday-party-and-backgammon-weekend in the Arion hotel in Vlissingen, January 4-5, 2020. Picture by Frank Viergever.

    Paul’s friend Frank Viergever took some beautiful pictures: http://www.frankviergever.nl/VBM20/index.html

    On Saturday evening, Paul invited all his guests to a fantastic dinner. Thank you, Paul!

    Results Rapidgammon (40 players)

    • Open Champion: Paul van Koningshoven, Runner-up: Marcus Reinhard
    • Champion of The Netherlands: Paul van Koningshoven, Runner-up: Misja Alma
    • Champion of Belgium: Geert Van der Stricht, Runner-up: Johan Segers
    • Ladies Prize: Tansu Alper, Runner-up: Eileen Mulvany
    • Best Irish Player: Tom Schnittger, Runner-up: Eileen Mulvany

    Results Speedgammon (28 players)

    • Results Speedgammon (28 players):
    • Open Champion: Toon Van Herreweghen
    • Champion of The Netherlands: Ed Baars
    • Champion of Belgium: Toon Van Herreweghen
    • Ladies Prize: Claudia Göhnert
    • Best Irish Player: Eileen Mulvany

  • Paulus wins Speedgammon event in Dubrovnik!

    Paulus (l) with tournament Director Arda and opponent Vincent.

    64 players entered the Speedgammon event in Dubrovnik, Croatia. In Speedgammon, players get 2 minutes  thinking time with 10 seconds increment for a 5-point match.

    Paulus Van Rooijen (Brugge BC) was able to string 6 victories together, winning the final against Vincent De Nardi (Fr).  A more than noteworthy achievement!

     

  • BMS : Johan Huyck launches Belgium Speedgammon (+ video).

    For many years, speedgammon has been a side event in international tournaments. At the 2017 Nordic Open, speedgammon even replaced the traditional Last Chance event. Also in Monte Carlo (the World Championship) and Reykjavik (the European Team Championship), speedgammon proved very popular.

    In Reykjavik, Johan Huyck reached the semi-final in speedgammon and made it his mission to introduce this fun but challenging backgammon variation in Belgium.

    Johan Huyck, inspiration behind Belgium Speedgammon.

    Johan : Speedgammon is exactly the same as backgammon, but with less time on the clock. Instead of 2 minutes per point and 12 seconds increment, players only get 20 seconds per point and 10 seconds increment. So for a 7-point match, each player only gets 2’20” in the time bank instead of 14 minutes. As a consequence, time management becomes of utmost importance.

    M : So this means that you have to play backgammon without thinking?

    Johan : Well, you certainly cannot spend 30 seconds doing a pip count or something. You have to manage your time well, which means that you have to feel intuitively where you can spend time thinking and where not.

    M : So what did you do exactly when you came back from Iceland?

    Johan : Well, I was able to convince the BMS Committee to introduce a Speedgammon Grading Table and a separate Speedgammon ELO Ranking. This was implemented on 1 November 2017. The main purpose of this initiative is to see in how far PR’s deviate from PR’s achieved under normal playing conditions.

    M : Was anybody interested?

    Johan : I was pleasantly surprised by the enthusiastic response. 7 players have already taken up the gauntlet and accumulated 422 EP, which is equivalent to about sixty 7-point matches. Geert Van der Stricht and Paul Van Dijke even played a 49-point speedmatch [16 minutes and 20 seconds on the clock], but since the maximum match length is 21, this match could not be validated.

    M : And the PR’s?

    Johan : It looks like PR’s will deviate from normal PR’s by about 1 to 1,5 PR-point. For the moment Marc Van Damme is the only exception. He managed to play 4,82 PR over 63 EP, which is very close to his acknowledged skill level under normal playing conditions. But all in all it is way too early to draw conclusions.

    M : Ok, thank you Johan for this initiative.

    Note : The Conditions of Play for Speedgammon are the same as for the BMS Grading Table and can be found by clicking on BMS(BE) in the black banner above.

    Also : watch the video below to get an impression of Tuesday evening backgammon action at the Sandeman Club in Gent. The video was made by Robin (‘Rain‘) Bilderbeek :