2009 Australian Open Backgammon Championship

Results, report and Photos

November 7/8 2009, City Tattersalls Club, Sydney. Congratulations to Mick Dyett!

Ben Phillips (l) and Mick Dyett

Stephen Davy writes:

"On Saturday the 7th of November 2009, 48 of Australia’s finest backgammon players descended on the elegant surrounds of the City Tattersalls Club in Sydney to compete for the Prue McKay perpetual trophy and the right to call themselves the 2009 Australian Open Backgammon Champion.

Many players were reacquainted with old rivals from times gone and it was great to hear “...It must be 15 years since I last saw you… Hold on, make that 20!!!!”
Stephen Davy conducted a Calcutta that attracted some lively bidding from the rival Saab and Sampieri clans helping to build the Calcutta pool to $2,500. Players then settled down to the business of rolling the dice and offering the cube.

In what was to be the story of the tournament, highly ranked players such as Kevin Jessup, Robbie Solomon, Mick Dyett and Tony Walker were KO’d in the first round. Luckily for these folks, the rebuy format of the tournament allowed the unlucky to re-enter and fill the field of 128!

Also in round one, Sydney scene legend Eva Bitel accounted for pro poker player David Saab which set up a 2nd round match with a gentleman I am sure she has played on hundreds of occasions in Jim Bean.

Plenty of great matches in round 2 saw the likes of Grant Hoffman, Simon Woodhead, Michael Sampieri, David Reitzin and last years winner Jay Deva head over to Michelle at the registration desk with cash in hand, begging for another “crack” at the title.

Round 2 also saw a rematch of the 2009 NSW Open Final between Jim Gialussi and Steve Clarry. This time around Jim saluted at the victory post, which I am sure gave him a great deal of confidence as Steve had been in sensational form, winning both the NSW Open and the Queensland Open in his last two starts!

The excitement started to build during round 3 as some big matches were taking place. 1992 winner Alex Falon and Australia’s best female player Virginia Jones drew a large crowd as did Jay Deva vs Robbie Solomon and Pat Halpin vs newcomer Soner Geren. Alex, Jay and Soner all progressed.

The 4th round saw the introduction of 11 point matches and the final games for the day. Steve Davy, Terry Efthiniou, Paul Barnett, Luke Holscher, Mick Dyett, Ben Phillips, Sean Ghodsi and Grant Hoffman all went to bed with large smiles and big dreams of Australian Open success just a few matches away.

A warm sunny Sunday greeted our players as they began their quarter final matches.
After an hour or so of play, Terry, Ben, Sean and Mick were all that was left from the field.

Mick drew Sean in the Semi Finals and Ben took on Terry.
Ben and Terry was a fantastic match with Ben just keeping his nose in front at every turn to be the first to 13 points. Terry had a fantastic tournament and can hold his head high on return to his Adelaide club.

Mick took control early in his match with Sean, racing to a 5-2 lead. A rush of blood saw Sean offer an 8 cube to Mick when behind in the race and Mick snapped up this cube and made a mental note to move Sean up to number 1 on his Christmas card list. Mick then dutifully disposed of the young Sydney-sider.

The Final drew to players with very different resumes. Mick was the Australian Open winner back in 1994 and was looking to be only the 2nd player behind Tino Letich to win this prestigious event twice where Ben is part of the backgammon “Revolution” with dreams of bringing the sport of backgammon back to its rightful place at the top of the tree.

As was the case in the Semi Final, Mick “the monster” Dyett took control very early in the match up to 15 and Ben struggled to gain any momentum against the former champ.
Mick’s positioning of the pips and subsequent cube offers left Ben with no choice but to decline and try and reload for the next game. Even some magical double 3’s on the bear off from Ben only kept the wolves from the door until the next game and Mick pressed home his advantage to win the final comfortably 15-6.

A very excited Mick was crowned the 2009 Australian Open Backgammon Champion and pocketed $5,000 for the win plus $1,200 as a winning Casinorip.com registered player and $1,250 as the buyer of his winning lot in the Calcutta.

Thanks must go to organizers Ben Phillips, Alex Falon and Stephen Davy who ran a smooth event all the way through, Michelle Burgess who ran the registration desk with an iron fist and took some great photos, Tanya Lazarou who brought some classic beauty into the sport (and made more than one person’s day!) It was great to see many backgammon clubs represented including Canberra, Newcastle, Adelaide, Melbourne and a strong Queensland contingent. Also Shaheen Marootian who at 87 years of age still hasn’t lost his mojo and finally, last but not least, Per Petersen and the crew from Casinorip.com who provided a much needed spark of sponsorship and excitement to the local backgammon scene, along with some very handy merchandise!

Mick slapped a few hundred on the bar and a great time was had by all.

We now look forward to the 2010 NSW Open Backgammon Tournament (March 2010) and 2010 Australian Open Backgammon Championship (November 2010)."

* Click on photo for full size image...

Tanya with the Prue McKay memorial trophy, Ben with the Champion's trophy		Our hard working organisers
Plenty of silverware		Tanya hands out lots of goodies from casinorip.com
Grant Hoffman vs Malcolm Hutson	Paul Barnett vs Ben Phillips	Steve Davy vs Terry Efthimiou
Sampi and Dave with the lovely Tanya	Tony Walker vs Sean Ghodsi	Paul Barnett vs Ben Phillips
Sean Ghodsi vs Luke Holscher	Tanya with Sean Ghodsi	SF1: Ben vs Terry
Mick and Ben prepare to do battle
	Mick's off to a good start	and getting better...
...and better	Hang on, is this a comeback ?	Nope, congratulations Mick!
	Steve, Ben and Alex - organisers extraordinaire!
	Winners are grinners
Poker legend David Saab (in black) enjoys the chouette	Always plenty of opinions at the chouette table!	One final look at the, um, trophy