Personally I believe that you learn the most from your own mistakes. You made them – you own up to them. This is the first part of a series of blog posts called “Learning from mistakes” (LFM) where I will go into some of the errors I made in serious games.
XG Masters 2018
In Denmark we have a tournament running over the summer where a lot of very strong players attend. The main focus is playing well – not winning. You will get awarded one point for winning a match, one point for having the lowest error rate and one point for giving up the least match winning chances.
Each round is planned individually between players and it is typically played at one of the players home or at a cafe. All matches are recorded by video and later transcribed and analysed by eXtreme Gammon (the best backgammon software available).
Getting back into tournament backgammon
I’m participating in XGM this year with a hope of getting back into playing tournament backgammon again after a break for more than 10 years. In the meantime I have been playing a little bit with the computer and on my phone, but mostly single games and primarily to kill time.
Recently I realized that I’ve been missing playing tournaments a lot. Unfortunately I’m very rusty and have to dedicate myself to work hard on the game to be able to be competitive again.
Main focus points:
- Spend the time needed
- Play serious tournaments (record all matches)
- Understand my mistakes
- Question everything
- Make sure to learn something
- Play matches online to think about backgammon every day
- Discuss backgammon with strong players.
Personal goals
There are two tournaments in scope. XG Masters 2018 and BMAB UK in September. My main goal is to play below 6.0 (average Performance Rating) in those two tournaments together and below 5.5 in BMAB. My current level is around 6.5 which is unsatisfactory to say the least. I make too many unforced blunders.
My main weaknesses are cube action in general and match play in particular. These are typically the first things that you get out of touch with when not playing for a while.
Next blog
The next couple of blogs will go into the first match in XG Masters that I played against Ole Michael Nielsen yesterday evening. There are plenty of mistakes to learn from…