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Stuck indoors in these trying times? Cabin fever starting to close in? Getting uncomfortable watching The Andromeda Strain and too scared to watch the market?
For a change of pace with a backgammon theme, try watch a little-known but unexpectedly charming film called The World is Big and Salvation Lurks Around the Corner. If you can’t find it on a streaming service, Amazon usually has it in stock. You won’t regret it.
Phillip grew up in England, attended Sherborne School, spent three years as an officer in the British Army, serving in Germany, and finished his education at Lincoln College, Oxford. During those years “Phil” became an excellent Rugby player, representing his county, Cornwall, and capped by the Greyhounds, the Oxford University second fifteen – for those interested he played fullback. Further in that vein he also became an excellent skier, and did in fact live for some years in Switzerland.
Post university Phillip Martyn began to travel, Europe first and then the USA, eventually living in New York City. It was there and then, in the early to mid-1960s, that he (and I) learned backgammon, and swiftly got hooked. Phil struck up a camaraderie with Ted Bassett a smooth and amiable golf and backgammon expert, whose own year divided into segments — Palm Beach, St Moritz, Monte Carlo, Biarritz and the airports between. Phil saw nothing wrong with that and so for the next three decades his lifestyle was set.
Gino Scalamandre passed away last month at the age of 87. Gino was a member of the very first group of backgammon giants who dominated the game in the 1960s and 1970s, along with players like Tim Holland, Oswald Jacoby, and Joe Dwek. Gino was a fixture at all the big international tournaments of that era and won many. In the first ‘unofficial’ listing of the world’s best players in a 1972 issue of Harper’s, Gino was securely in the top 10.
The interview with Paul continues with a discussion of tournaments and tournament strategy.
Zelman: Do you dream of backgammon, do you dream of games in your sleep? Do you ever come home afterwards and sit down and think where you went wrong?
PM: In tournaments sometimes you get knocked out and you just can’t get a certain roll out of your mind. It’s like a nightmare and you just go over and over it.
Zelman: Do you have video equipment to tape all your games when you play people in tournaments?
In the fall of 1975 Paul Magriel was living in New York and putting the finishing touches on the book he and his wife Renee were writing. The working title was The Complete Book of Backgammon, but it would be changed to simply Backgammon when it finally appeared in November of 1976. Sometime that fall he consented to an interview with Aubrey Zelman, who was creating a new magazine called Backgammon Illustrated. The one and only issue appeared in April, 1976, priced at $1.95.
The highlight of the issue was the interview with Paul, which ran for 18 pages. Paul gave very few interviews for magazines, and what appeared about him in the press was generally brief and uninformative. This interview was very different.
The Zelman interview gave some great insights into how Paul thought about the game at that time, and conveyed a real sense of what talking with Paul was like. Paul would often start a conversation with very brief, sometimes monosyllabic comments. But once the conversation moved to an area where he had real interest, his whole face and manner would change and he’d start talking with enormous energy and enthusiasm. You’ll get a sense of that here, as well as a sense of how exciting the whole backgammon scene was in the mid-1970s.
I’ve broken the interview into two parts because of its length. Part 2 will follow in a couple of weeks. From time to time I’ve added some brief comments in brackets to make Paul’s meaning clearer to a modern player.
A couple of months ago I asked readers of this blog to send in their suggestions as to what would make an ideal tournament in their view. I received many responses, some brief and to the point, others long and thoughtful. Rather than try to summarize all the various responses, I’m going to discuss tournament structures in general and how they might be changed or improved, working in some readers’ comments along the way.
