Quite late in the day I realised that Monday Night Backgammon coincided with the last day of the London Open tournament, my first big tournament of the year. But I knew there were several matches already lined up and that the boy Freddy would be able to take the boards to the pub so there was no reason to rearrange. And anyway, I felt pretty confident that there was little chance that I'd still be competing at the business end of the London tournament so I'd be back in plenty of time to set up at the Slow & Steady. However... the dice gods were with me in London and I was was still rolling dice in Cecil Sharp House at 7pm, after which I collected the Consolation tournament trophy and hightailed it back to Oxford as fast as a VW T6 could carry me.
Meanwhile, back in Oxford, 13 players had gathered in my absence, which is pretty good for a warm Bank Holiday Monday. 8 league matches were completed, 6 in OxBG11 and 2 particularly consequential results in OxBG7.
In OxBG11 4 players recorded multiple results, 3 each for Fred North and Mark Seal, 2 each for Wyon and Ben. Fred North had the best night recording three straight wins, 2 against Ben and the other against Mark who recorded three reversals on the night with the other two defeats coming against Wyon and Tony Lee. The other result in OxBG11 saw Wyon score a second win of the evening, this time against Dan. Fred's two wins put him into second place in the table and Wyon's brace moved him up to third. With a month to go there remain six out of the eight players with at least mathematical chances of winning the division.
In OxBG7 the two results were reported by the division's top two, Ardi and Stuart, with honours shared. Whilst Ardi and Stuart have the two best records in the division it is still anyone's to win although, with just a month of the official season to run, it looks like it may be a struggle to get all the matches completed.
