Two division 2 matches to report.

At Swavesey on Thursday, Michael and Phil had a league match appetizer before the chouette. Phil got an early lead and Michael used the cube well to claw it back to 9-7, but despite getting a good early double in Phil hit a fly shot and closed it out.

Oct 17th:  Michael Skinner  7  Phil Cohen  11

Then on Saturday Michael hosted Neil in Peterborough. The players achieved a 60% gammon rate, leapfrogging each other until Neil stole it with two gammons in a row from Crawford 3-away. It was a fun contest in which the trap play was successfully deployed (albeit slightly inaccurately), but it was beaten out for “strange play of the match” by this beauty:

XGID=bCBACaB−B−A−b−−aab−dAb−−−−:0:0:1:55:8:10:1:11:10

Covering the 3 point is obvious. After that, bring the checker on the 20 out, hitting, then just do something safe, no need to be fancy as gammons don’t count at Crawford 3-away, right?

Wrong! XG says hit two leaving the 5 point slotted. It’s worse for wins and gammons but better for backgammons! The score made this is a particularly bad oversight – 3% match chances – always assuming I could’ve judged that the extra backgammons were worth it, which is highly unlikely – but for money the moves are close.

Oct 19th:  Neil Foston  11  Michael Skinner  10