Bill Robertie’s Blog

2017 Boston Quiz Contest Part 3

Apr 11, 2017 | Backgammon Quizzes

So far we’ve looked at Quiz positions 1 through 10 from the quiz contest at last month’s Boston Open. In this post you can test yourself on positions 11 through 15.

Stay focused!

Equipment Review: The BoneClub Set

Apr 6, 2017 | Backgammon Equipment

The modern backgammon boom continues apace, with new players, tournaments and clubs appearing on a regular basis. New players require new books and new equipment, and thankfully suppliers are appearing to meet the need.

I recently received for review a set from one of the newest suppliers, Bone.Club. The company is located in the U.K. but sells worldwide through its website, https://www.boneclub.co.uk. I picked a color scheme called ‘A Kind of Blue’ (blue, black, and yellow), but several other color schemes are available, such as Purple Rain (red, blue, and purple), Green Dream (green, black, and orange), and others. The colors are all sharp and vivid, which makes for a very impressive-looking set. Here’s a picture of the board I received, showing the striking colors.

Boston Quiz Contest, Part 2

Mar 23, 2017 | Backgammon Quizzes

Last time we looked at Quiz positions 1 through 5 from the quiz contest at last month’s Boston Open. This week we’ll move on and look at positions 6 through 10.
Good luck!

Boston Quiz Contest, Part 1

Mar 15, 2017 | Backgammon Quizzes

The backgammon boom continues apace, with new tournaments popping up on the calendar on a regular basis. Two new tournaments appeared in just the past month: the Boston Open (Feb. 23-26) and the Viking Classic in Bloomington, MN (Mar. 9-12). Both were well attended, with 82 players in Boston and 83 players in Minnesota, very strong numbers for first-time events.

To help kick off the Boston tournament, I created a quiz contest for Sunday morning, with no entry fee and a $100 prize to the winner. Marty Storer of New Hampshire took first place with an outstanding score of 17/20, closely followed by Dennis Culpepper of Virginia with 16/20.

The collection of problems in the quiz is a little unusual. There aren’t any weird, tricky positions or difficult cube decisions based on match score considerations. It’s just a group of pretty normal positions where the choice is between two or three reasonable-looking plays. The idea here is to understand where you want to put your checkers when there’s nothing decisive to do this turn.