Standings for After Nine #1 (Tourney #3679):06-Nov-2010 -- Week 1 Season 1
1.
diane 
2. yonay
3. Backwoods DeaDice
7. Tanika zulu LuckyDice Toado
9. PortWine sixtie rif_raf TriAtma_III
Congratulations to
diane,
A9 Kick-off Champion who wins an invite into
Season Playoffs.
Phenomenal run for runner-up,
yonay!! Great finals, fibsters!
A9 premiere - tournament officially kicking off A9 Season - took place today with total of 12 players:
DeaDice, diane, zulu, yonay, TriAtma_III, sixtie, rif_raf, LuckyDice, Tanika, Backwoods, Toado, PortWine. Rather nice turnout in first edition, and strong one too: all four of latter semifinalists were 1745+ and two of them 1840+ ratings.
While first round brought surprises with
sixtie and
TriAtma_III early exits (nice wins by
zulu and
Toado respectively), second round provided
Dices derby (
DeaDice vs.
LuckyDice) -
Dea walking away with win after fantastic match against A9 Preseason Shuttle Two Winner,
Lucky!
diane and
yonay, finalists to be, proceeded strongly further, whilst
Backwoods (highest ranking player at the tourney) def
Tanika in Round 2 to proceed to semis.
And what a semi-finals those were:
yonay vs. Backwoods and
diane vs. DeaDice.
Atomic backgammon was to be seen in both matches, revealing
A9 raison d'etre of featuring fun, skills, humor and competition towards well-reputed players, ones that “play well, play rapidly, play quietly, smile, talk a little, never complain about their luck and believe that luck and skill is the just, the inevitable, reward of the skillful” (hommage to Georges Mabardi, 1930).
yonay and
diane went into finals, which presented fast paced side of the game. In a match that just may be decided in its first game, when double cube went to gammon,
diane took early lead in match (4-0) and kept it up in Crawford game, winning A9 Kick-off Champion title. It was the end of fantastic performance for
yonay, runner-up today and one of the stronger contender for future A9 Champ titles!
A9 Kick-off Champion will wait for other A9 Champions of
first season's 16 weeks in order for them to proceed pursue of
A9 Season Champion title in
Season Playoffs starting late March 2011. Until then, we hope to have all players taking part in A9 premiere tonight back for every edition - special thank you for all of you today - and we invite all others to join us and have fun in this new regular weekly FIBS tournament.
PS. Reporting from A9 tournaments will strive to provide fine mix of well-established formats of other FIBS tourneys with personal 'TD perspective' in order to, hopefully, make tourneys more appealing to every potential player out there. A9 core aspiration remains to be fun with popularization of the backgammon and FIBS, thus we'll try to communicate this reports in a manner that at least reflex a bit of excitement, positive and respectable rivalry and fun surrounding every FIBS tourney. There might be more personal testimonies and experiences at
A9 blog though this thread will remain to be official place for all A9 related stuff.
See you all next Saturday at 2100 UTC

Full matches listing for After Nine (Tourney #3679)
T3679R1M2 (3-pt): Tanika (1586) def. PortWine (1599) 3-0
T3679R1M4 (3-pt): zulu (1467) def. sixtie (1742) 4-2
T3679R1M6 (3-pt): LuckyDice (1706) def. rif_raf (1527) 7-0
T3679R1M8 (3-pt): Toado (1497) def. TriAtma_III (1724) 3-0
T3679R2M1 (3-pt): Backwoods (1857) def. Tanika (1586) 4-0
T3679R2M2 (3-pt): yonay (1746) def. zulu (1467) 3-0
T3679R2M3 (3-pt): DeaDice (1844) def. LuckyDice (1706) 3-1
T3679R2M4 (3-pt): diane (1769) def. Toado (1497) 3-0
T3679R3M1 (3-pt): yonay (1746) def. Backwoods (1857) 6-1
T3679R3M2 (3-pt): diane (1769) def. DeaDice (1844) 5-1
T3679R4M1 (5-pt): diane (1769) def. yonay (1746) 7-0