A backgammon club tournament held over one evening has three main aims:
In addition, it is sociable to play a fair number of different opponents during the evening.
A knock-out tournament satisfies the first and third aims but only works well with a power of two entrants, whereas a Swiss Tournament is difficult to run, especially with some matches taking much longer than othersand may necessitate some messy tie breaks to produce a winner.
After years of trying various formats the Liverpool club has come up with a good system.' I will describe their format, then discuss various problems and possible solutions.' i.e. an odd number of players, tie breaks and shortening the tournament.
At the Liverpool club the attendance is generally between eight and sixteen players.' The players are each allocated a number randomly (a pack of playing cards is useful for this) and then play six 3-point matches against a set of opponents determined by a schedule for the appropriate number of players.' At the end of this phase either the leading two or four players then play a knock out competition of 3-point matches for the prize fund and trophy.' This means that everyone gets to play at least six matches.' Those who have been unlucky can go home or play chouettes, while those who have played well finish the tournament.
Working out the schedule for the first phase is fairly simple, but unnecessary since I have a complete set of schedules for seven to twenty players which are available by e-mail.'(see end of article)
The Liverpool club plays its tournament on a Friday evening and it often doesn't finish until 1 a.m.'Obviously, this is unsuitable for most clubs, especially if they run on amid-week evening.' The length of matches tends to depend on the level of expertise of the players.
The rules for deciding who has qualified for the knock-out phase are
If an odd number of players turns up then there are some problems.' Liverpool plays a seventh round, which pairs up all the players who have sat out during a previous round.' This is the best solution for a four round tournament, but doesn't work for a five round qualifying.
Below is an example of a schedule for a ten player, four round tournament and part of the score sheet for entering the results of a qualifying tournament (partially filled in as an example.
Ten Player Qualifying (3 points) | |||||
| Round 1 | 1 v 2 | 3 v 4 | 5 v 6 | 7 v 8 | 9 v 10 |
| Round 2 | 1 v 3 | 2 v 5 | 4 v 7 | 6 v 9 | 8 v 10 |
| Round 3 | 1 v 5 | 2 v 9 | 3 v 7 | 4 v 10 | 6 v 8 |
| Round 4 | 1 v 7 | 2 v 8 | 3 v 10 | 4 v 6 | 5 v 9 |
'
| | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | ||||
| Name | John | Petra | | | ||||
| Round | Match Score | Points | Match Score | Points | Match Score | Points | Match Score | Points |
| 1 | 1 | 3-1 | 0 | 1-3 | | | | |
| 2 | 1 | 3-0 | 1 | 3-2 | | | | |
| 3 | 1 | 3-2 | 1 | 3-2 | | | | |
| 4 | 0 | 0-3 | 0 | 0-3 | | | | |
| Total | 3 | 9-6 | 2 | 7-10 | | | | |
| Points +/- | + 3 | -3 | | | ||||
I have a set of schedules available in word format by e-mail on request for anyone who is interested.'My e-mail address is lighton@btinternet.com
Acknowledgements ' thanks to the members of the Liverpool Club who devised this format, before I started playing tournament backgammon.
(1) It is possible to devise a schedule where 3 players play a round robin of 1 point matches between them, but this isn't practical for a short tournament.
Using this 3-player format could be suitable for a 9-point (or 11-point) Swiss tournament with an odd number of entrants where the three players currently with the lowest score (who haven't already played in a three way tie) would play two 3-point matches for ' a match point each.