Thursday, 29 May 2025

Tuesday 27th May 2025

 We had 30 players tonight.

We welcomed to new players to our ranks, Payam Zekabat and Peymon Most.

John Symon was the drawn jackpot but was thwarted by Peter Voulgaris in the second round.

Gary informed the players that this would be John Symon's last regular night as he is moving out of Sydney. Gary took the opportunity to give this short potted history of the club.

Gary first joined the group when John Hedge was running a very successful weekly tournament at the Persian Rose.

John Hedge decided to split from the Persian Rose and take the tournament to the Woolloomooloo Hotel. A sizeable group followed him.

After disagreement regarding the running of the Federation, John Hedge removed himself from the group.

By then our numbers had dwindled to 5 regulars, Eva Bitel, Carol Wakelin, John Symon, Jim Bean and Gary Stavrou; the Magnificent 5 (just short of being the Magnificent 7)

The Hotel advised us that they were going to do renovations and we would be displaced.

The Magnificent 5 decided not to give up the game and instead look for a new venue. Fortunately, Carol found North Ryde RSL.

For some weeks the Magnificent 5 played among themselves with Gary emerging as coordinator. The name Sydney Backgammoners was chosen for the group and Gary established a web page.

In the early days, even as numbers grew, play was a combination of round robins with scores kept on pieces of paper.

Eventually grew this format became unwieldy.

Gary developed a new scoring system and a computer program that incorporated the scoring into a Swiss format. The system proved popular and our group grew over the years to our current players being regularly numbered in the 30's making Sydney Backgammoners one of the busiest clubs in the country.

FINAL TOT
R3 RANKINGPTS
David Reitzin313
Mehdi Kiani312
Morteza Shaabanifar307
Peter Voulgaris306
Mahnaz Rostami211
Yalli Pleshet208
Susan Wan206
Sean Ghodsi205
Jim Bean203
Zhiman Rahmati202
Angelo Voulgaris202
Mike Baldwin202
Payam Zekabat201
Ben Anderson200
Peymon Most196
Kee Yio Wan103
John Symon100
Antonio Andolfo99
Paula O'Connell97
Mohammad Nejati97
Robin Lanesman97
Nick Macoun96
Michael Raptis96
Carol Wakelin95
Gary Stavrou94
Koosha Hedjripour93
Jeremy Whitelaw-7
Ken Kershaw-10
Robbie Baudish-11
Sarah Bauling-16


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