Magriel's NYT Columns

The annual spring Clermont Club Tournament began in London last weekend. This year the event, which always attracts a strong field, was limited to exactly 100 players competing for $100,000 in prize money.

As is common, even in the most important tournaments, many of the best players were eliminated in the preliminary rounds. One of these unfortunates was the Irish champion, John Garratt, whose first-round loss illustrates the so-often-frustrating nature of the game.

In the diagrammed position, Garratt (Black) was trailing Gilbert (White) 7 to 6 in a 13-point match. Black has already doubled and reached a highly favorable position; Black can soon begin bearing off, but White still has three men stuck behind Black’s blockade.

7 MATCH TO 13 6

Black to play 5-3.

With the roll of 5-3, the obvious play for Black is 4/1, 8/3, covering the exposed man on the 1-point and bringing a five into his home board. Garratt, however, after careful consideration made a superior play, 8/3, 8/5, clearing the 8-point completely but still leaving the blot on the 1-point. He felt he had nothing to fear if White reentered with a 1 and hit this man. He was confident that he could reenter White’s shattered home board long before White could extricate all three of his back men from behind Black’s 5-point prime. Indeed White’s position was particularly weak, not only because he had already taken men permanently out of play on the 24-point, but also because he had no spare men on the 20- or 21-point. Thus White was likely to be forced to break his home board further. In fact Black might easily pick up a fourth man as White’s board collapsed.

The point of Garratt’s play is that he actually welcomed being hit on the 1-point because it greatly increased the likelihood of gammoning White. Besides hitting additional men, Black created gammon possibilities in another way by allowing White to come in on the 1-point; White could be forced off Black’s 2-point with a six and then be closed out altogether.

Garratt’s reasoning was correct, but the results were disastrous. The remarkable sequence that followed shows the perversity inherent in a dice game. White next threw a 2-1 and unthinkingly fell into Black’s trap by playing bar/1*, 22/24, hitting Black on the 1-point. (The more prudent play is bar/2, 22/23, simply reentering on the 2-point and ignoring Black’s blot.)

Black stayed out and White next rolled 6-6, bringing two of his back men out from behind Black’s prime and on to the 14-point. Even at this stage Black was unworried because White still had a man trapped on the 1-point. Black’s next roll, however, was a surprising blow.

Black to play 6-5.

He threw 6-5 and reentered on the 19-point with the six. He was unable to move the same man forward with the 5 because White now owned the 14-point. Instead, he was forced to break his bar-point (7-point), destroying his prime and leaving multiple shots. White eventually won the game after redoubling and so took an insurmountable 11–6 lead in the match.

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