Look at this



never filmed before ..... 

    
Probably the most amazing piece of backgammon video ever seen - here are the final minutes of the final match of the 2007 World Backgammon Championship in Monte Carlo, played between Alvaro Savio of Brazil and Jorge Pan of Argentina.

Why so special? Firstly, keep in mind that the two players and a referee are in a sealed room playing the final. GammonLife’s Marjorie Serrano Blanco filmed what you will see off the big screen in another room where one or two hundred other players are watching as Backgammon Giant #4, Matvey “Falafel” Natanzon, does the commentary.

We take you right to Move 8 of the final game, when, after rolling a 6-3, Savio attempts a move and uses a checker to push aside the die with the 6 on it, off a point where he wants to place the checker he is moving... the die tumbles over landing on a 5 and neither player nor the referee seem to notice... but the spectators do! (You will hear Jürgen Orlowski sitting next to us saying “Six, six, six...”.)


You will observe that this was accidental because Savio continues trying to play a 6. However, perhaps confused, and caught up in all the excitement of such a paramount moment, Savio eventually tries to move a 5. Savio told GammonLife after the match that at this point, referee Luigi Villa, told him to put the checkers back to the original position and that he must play the numbers currently showing on the dice, a 5 and 3, and not a 6 and 3!

The crowd reacts! Pan does not object and there’s no turning back. Stuck behind a 5-point prime, and then a 6-point prime seconds later, how does Pan go on to become the 2007 World Champion? Watch and see...

Took me two days to get this downloaded and watched, because I was busy with other things in between, but was worth the watch!  Thx, Tomawaky, for the link, and who says backgammon isn't a game of chance!?     Or, could it be the dice gods turned their backs from the indecision?   

socksey



"There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom." -- Robert Millikan, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1923