USBGF NIC 2011 Report in first person, by Svilo

The rules: double elimination, best of 3 11pt. matches etc. are to be found here.

about-national-internet-championship

The Players
111 players. 2 world champions. The world's best PR player Jacob Rice. Dozens of World class players. It was an honor to play in such company. See the list of Players

The Drawsheet
usbgf-national-internet-championship/nic-open-drawsheet

Announcement of the winners
usbgf-national-online-championship-follow-the-finalists

Here are the 3 sets of best of 3 11 pt. matches played with Dorn Bishop. All in all 7 matches to 11!
I have passed them all through a World Class analysis of XG. You can view the HTML export online with any browser. You can run them with a XG online too. If you like to study further, you can download the XG files or JF files. You can also download printable files.

Round 7. - final of the Undefeated bracket
dorn-svilo-2011Nov 0:1
dorn-svilo-2011Nov 1:1
dorn-svilo-2011Nov 2:1

First challenge of the Once defeated Champion to the Undefeated Champion.
dorn-svilo-2012Jan21 0:1
dorn-svilo-2012Jan21 0:2

Match for the USBGF NIC champion.
dorn-svilo-2012Jan28 1:0
dorn-svilo-2012Jan28 2:0

Special thanks to the former World champion Joe Russel and Justin Nunes for carriyng this tournament out. 195 players took part. In the Open division where I took part there were 111 players. I had the chance to meet and prevail over fine palyers and World Class opponents.

My progress was as follows:
Round 1 svilo- SuperDavek 2:0.

Round 2 svilo- MUTAR 2:0.
Strong Turkish player.

Round 3 svilo- bor742 2:1.
Boris Dekhtyar is a world class US player who played many live open events. In this tournament he had already eliminated Stick (Jacob Rice) - the player with the best PR (Performance Rating) on earth. And Phil Simborg the first and only backgammon University professor in the world. Phil Simborg has won many open events. If I remember well he was at least once winner of the annual ABT (American Backgammon Tour). This was a bloody set of 3 matches. It was wrongly represented in the drawsheet that I won 2:0. I won 2:1 after a doggy fight.

Round 4 svilo- Rumen1 2:0.
Rumen Rashev is a very strong young Bulgarian player. I do not know if he played live events.

Round 5 svilo- Noctogammon (Alan Grunwald) 2:0.
Alan is a world class US player. His highest rating on GG is 2030 .

Round 6 svilo- Peever (Paul Weaver) 2:0 .
Paul needs no presentation. A Backgammon Giant, Paul has won tournaments on the 5 continents in the last 25 years and continues to travel.

Final of the Undefeated bracket:
Round 7 svilo- Dorn (Dorn Bishop) 1:2.
Dorn is one of the strongest world players. Immediately after he beat me, Dorn was a semifinalist in the live New Mexico Open in December. In the third match of this best of 3 set he outplayed me (and intimidated me with a 1.93 PR!)

Final of the Once defeated bracket
svilo- Frigo 1:0.
Frank Frigo is a former World Champion and a backgammon Giant.

After I won the Once defeated bracket, defeating Frank Frigo, I was entitled to challenge Dorn again.
Challenge of Mr. Once Defeated to Mr. Undefeated
svilo- Dorn 2:0.
Just luck.
Two months had passed since our last encounter with Dorn when he eliminated me convincingly from the Undefeated bracket. My form was deteriorating in the last 2 months. For the first time in this tournament I had a loser attitude before the match. In the end of the day I won 2:0 thanks to the appreciation I had for the opponent. I won one of the matches by taking a bad cube. My reasoning was that Dorn is clearly the better player so I could take more loosely...

Best of 3 for the title!
After I won the Championship challenge set, we had to play the Grand Final for the Championship.
svilo- Dorn 0:2. This time my worsening form gave out and Dorn just took his dues.

Enjoy!