Full Moon, Scant Post

Well well well!

Here is a quite small post of backgammon content:

stevieweller.tumblr.com has been posting a few pilfered Instagram photographs, including #catgammon, #oldgammon, and #backgammonhearth!  That's right people, actual pictures of backgammon boards with fireplaces!!!  Seriously, people, #backgammon on Instagram is just fantastic.

BKGM.COM is more fantastic.  I don't even know how much this is true, cause I haven't yet read everything on  this site, Backgammon Galore!  Did I already talk about Backgammon Galore! in another post?  I certainly hope so.  It is the best backgammon website, IMHO.

I will close with a tale.  Once upon a time, there lived some gods.  We know about them because they were worshiped by the ancient Egyptians.  Now, at this time there was some royal family drama, and maybe there was a king who refused to die, ah, it was Amen-Re. I forget all the details, but Thoth, the god of Th, told him that Nut was going to give birth and one of these kids would take his place, to which Amen-Re replied "Nut won't give birth in any month! Lock it in!!"

So of course, Thoth went to the Moon, where he found Khons playing backgammon or something like it and listening to "Yourself or Someone Like You".  The two threw down for a few high stakes games, and Thoth came away a big winner.  His prize? Moonlight.  Enough of it to create 5 days.  And just to be the smart-alex that he was and had always been, Thoth made these five days exist outside of any month (all twelve of which had exactly 30 days).  Take that, Amen-Re.  The babies who're going to take your place as the new rulers of Egyptnow have a landing pad on the calendar. Here, sign their birthday card, will ya?

The connection between backgammon and the moon is inexplicably strong to this very day, but our calendar has reverted to an odd collection of months with 28, 30, 31, and sometimes 29 days. If you stare long enough at the moon while holding a backgammon board, or perhaps if you take a long bike ride all alone in the middle of the night, you might come to the conclusion that perhaps each of our 12 months should once again have 30 days, and the leftover 5ish days in one year should be just that that, left over and out of any months.  Days outside of months, a powerful loophole.

And with that, I will say that I am writing this in a state of late night space madness, and I'm going to schedule this blog to auto post this, because on the 22nd of this month I'm leaving on a trip to the Jungle.
When does Jungle Madness become Space Madness/
When does Jungle Madness become Space Madness/
When does Jungle Madness become Space Madness/
When does Jungle Madness become Space Madness/
When does Jungle Madness become Space Madness/
When does Jungle Madness become Space Madness/
When does Jungle Madness become Space Madness?

E Bob Oboe Tournament Update

I've got to make this quick:

Four matches have been finished! Congrats to Beth L, Kyle S, Lauren B, and Erin W!  As far as I know, there are three other matches in progress.

If you haven't started playing your match yet, consider doing so soon :)!  This tournament is anti-pressure, so consider that a suggestion.  Additionally, if you no longer want to play, then please let us know.  I'm going on vacation for 5 days, but after that I'll start emailing people who may have not started their games to check in on their commitment.

If you are in the loser's bracket, look for your next match up in one week!

Doubles,
Stevie

E Bob Oboe Tournament Bracket

See it here: Bracket

The tournament can officially begin as you now have your match ups!  If you feel pressured, please don't.  I'm hoping everyone will really take their time and this tournament will last at least 3 months.

Send me an email; wafflewednesday at gmail dot com, and I'll email you the email of your opponent.  You can then figure out the details of when you will play.  And if you need any help, I'll help.  Try to finish your match in a week, but if it takes longer, that's ok.

Some people have an extra game to play.  We have 36 people signed up for the tournament, and these extra games were necessary to make the bracket work out evenly.

Alexander Vittal had the honor of being the first one to lose, and he's started the Consolation for Losers bracket.  So if you lose but you want to keep playing, you can!

Remember, we're playing 5 point matches using the doubling cube and counting gammons and backgammons.  Let me know if you have any questions about this.

March Madness: The Cube

Tonight at midnight (Colombia) the bracket will be released!

Here's a basic intro to the doubling cube. We will play 5 point matches, and we will use the cube and count gammons and backgammons. (And remember the Crawford game: once you get 4 points, you get one game with no doubling for a chance to win. After that game, doubling is legal again.)

E Bob Oboe Tournament: First Game!

Well folks, the official bracket will not be released until Friday, and there's still time to sign up (or drop out) for/of the tournament. But last night the first match of the tournament happened!!

In a match that was 7 years in the making, Beth Lokken defeated Alexander Vittal with a score of 5-1. They played three games, each winning a 1pointer, and then Beth scored a 4 point game for the match victory. I don't know what happened in that game, who doubled, any gammons or any other details. Actually, I was in the Seahorse Grotto at the same time as they were playing, but for some reason I couldn't watch their game.

A quick back story. In January of 2006, I started playing backgammon with my friends in Arizona. Beth refused to lean how to play for several years. Then she moved to Turkey, and that quickly changed. Now she is engaged to a man from Turkey, and she's added backgammon to her long list of games in which she can kick your butt!! And thanks to the modern scruples of her fiancee and her fierce competitive streak, she's not afraid to hit your blot and run to a safe point.

Hopefully everyone finds this very exciting and invigorating. Keep your eyes peeled, the bracket comes out on Friday!!!

Play in a really easy BG Tournament!

**sign up by sending an email to wafflewednesday a@t gmail .d.o.t. com or tweeting at @stevieweller .  Deadline is Midnight Bogotá/EST Thursday night, 3-7-013.**

"really easy": I'm not sure what adjective to use, so I said "easy".  I don't mean to excite people who want to win because the skill level will be low.  I mean to say that it will be easy to participate.   (It is online, which may be tricky, so I'll help people find an online game server that's not complicated.  I'll make that part easy, I promise!)

The idea is to have a tournament that doesn't interfere too much with the rest of your life by taking up an entire weekend or an entire day. Also, you can play from anywhere, and you might know your opponent. There's also no prize money and literally no prestige involved in winning.

Imagine that you're playing a tournament at your family reunion or with a group of friends in someone's house, except it might be online and you might not know the people you're playing against.

Here's how it works: The tournament organizer (me) emails/harasses/recruits people. By next Friday (3-8-13) I'll make a bracket and put it online, and I'll also tell people who they're playing against, introduce them if need be, make sure they know where they're going to play their match (Yahoo Games, Spreadsheets, PostGammon, etc).

I'll also help people who aren't sure how to play online or who don't know how to play.

I guess we do need some rules.
-Play your own game: Don't use any backgammon computer programs that can analyze moves and tell you the probability of which move is best. Don't get help from other people.
-You will have four days to finish your match. Or maybe a week. Or if you don't finish your match and everyone else is done we will start sending you dirty looks. Just don't take forever. Once you have a winner, email the name of the winner to the tournament organizer. Maybe there will also be a publicly editable tournament bracket.
-Matches will be 5 points. The doubling cube will be used. We'll play with the Crawford rule, but not the Jacoby. If you don't know what this means, I'll explain it in another message soon. The Crawford is basically this: if someone is one point away from winning a match (4 points), both players can't use the doubling cube for one game. After that one game, you can use the doubling cube again in that match.
-The tournament will be single elimination, unless people in the losers bracket really want to keep playing, in which case it will be double or triple elimination as the case may be.
-The winner will get something cool as a prize. Maybe. Otherwise they will get something not cool or nothing at all.

Who will be playing? I'm going to invite friends and family, feel free to do the same! The final bracket will be released on Friday March 8th at 12:01 A.M. Bogotá and Eastern Standard Time.

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Life is good, especially today!