Well folks, I swept the board. I trounced every player that came before me today, and won both the main event and the one point side tourney.
£350 better off, thank you very much.
But sadly, only in my dreams.
I got off to a bad start, and things went downhill from there.
In the main tourney, I was drawn against Sean. He's a top player (ranked 32 at dailygammon)Sean beat me, 9 - 0. I scarecely managed to get a piece off the board. I was roundly trounced. Sean went on to be the losing finalist in the main tournament. I went on into the consolation tourney, the Liver Cup.
I played one of the locals, Angie. We know and like each other, and the match was much more light hearted than the previous tense one. First to 7 points, and I got myself into a strong position straight away. We'd passed each other. No further interaction was possible. It was a straight race to the finish, which I was leading, and the doubling cube was turned to 4. Then Angie rolled two consecutive double 6's. This turned the game right around and put her well ahead in the match. I don't remember the exact score but I think she won either 7-4 or 7-5.
Bugger.
I was now out of the main and the consolation. But I was still in the 1 point side tournament, and was automatically entered into the last chance tourney.
I played the next round of the 1 point tourney next. A close match against a guy called John. He won in the end and went on to win the 1 pointer. And fifty quid.
So that was almost that. Played three, lost three. And just the last chance tourney to play.
I was up against Noel. A cheerful Irishman, now living in the Isle of Man. I'd already met him the day before in the 1 point tourney and beaten him, but now we had a 5 point match to play.
At last the dice were with me, and I beat him 5-0.
My next opponent was David, but he was nowhere to be found, either inside or outside the building.
I went out into the garden and read Catch 22 in the sunshine.
Eventually David appeared and we played our match. And again, I got the upper hand. This one went to the wire though.
So then came Martin. Martin is a blunt, slightly caustic person. I can imagine him being a lawyer or something. He's obviously clever, and he's a pretty good backgammon player too.
Our match hinged on one roll. He had a piece on the bar, but I'd been forced to leave a blot - a single piece on a point. Martin doubled. I took the cube. He had to roll a 5. This meant he had a 1 in 3 chance of hitting me. 6 numbers, 2 dice...
Martin rolled a 5 and eventually won.
And that was that. My Liverpool Open had come and gone and I was heading back through the Mersey tunnel with empty pockets.
Great fun though. I won;t be getting hugely into live tournament play. It's an expensive hobby if you're not one of the very best players, but I will be entering the Liverpool Open again next year I hope.
A lot of photos were taken during the tourney. When they get posted, I shall grab some of them and post them here.
driving lessons in Wallasey?
Showing posts with label Liverpool. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Liverpool. Show all posts
Monday, 23 July 2012
Saturday, 26 November 2011
Backgammon IRL
I've been playing backgammon for donkeys years. I started in my late teens, or possibly early twenties. A few friends together, with beer or pot or both.
We would experiment with variants, such as acey deucey, and tric trac, and with different starting positions, like starting with all the men off the board. We'd even play for small amounts of money. But we never used the doubling cube.
Dutch coffeeshops used to almost always contain backgammon sets. Why backgammon? I really don't know, but they did. Last time I was in Holland, this custom was rapidly disappearing, and they seemed more like cyber cafes. I hope it doesn't die out completely.
Anyway, when I discovered the internet, one of the first things I did was start playing backgammon online. I've done so ever since, and I've gradually improved as a player, and now I'm capable of holding my own against some good players.
Backgammon is a mixture of luck and skill. You use the dice rolls you're given to maximise your chances and limit the options for your opponent. It's called Backgammon, or "The back game" because if one person ends up far enough behind in a game, they often get the opportunity to turn things around. Using the doubling cube properly is another important thing to be able to do. The stakes are initially set to one. Either player can double the stakes by offering the cube to their opponent. The opponent can either forfeit the game, and lose the current stake, or can accept the cube, after which the stakes are 2. The player that doubled can not double again until their opponent has doubled. The doubling cube is a form of psychological warfare!
Anyway, tonight, I went to Liverpool, where the Liverpool backgammon club holds a monthly meeting. There were about 12 people there, and I got to play real matches against 6 of them.
Some of them take things very seriously! There are rules and etiquettes to follow that just don't occur in online play.
For example, a player's turn doesn't end until they pick up their dice. If you roll your own dice before then, it's considered very bad form, and the player who hasn't yet finished his turn has the option of forcing you to either re-roll, or use the roll you took.
You must roll your dice onto the right hand side of the board. this presumably avoids confusion, although given the previous rule, how the two sets of dice could mistakenly interact is hard to explain.
Most of the players there tonight were of quite a high standard. A few were less so.
I beat a good player in my first match, partly because of some outrageous good luck. I lost to a very good player in my second match. Then to a less good player in my third match. I lost by the shaving of a gnat's whisker in my fourth match, to a very good player, and again in my fifth match, before beating a poorer player in my final match.
It was good fun, and I shall try to go to more in the future.
driving lessons in Wallasey?
We would experiment with variants, such as acey deucey, and tric trac, and with different starting positions, like starting with all the men off the board. We'd even play for small amounts of money. But we never used the doubling cube.
Dutch coffeeshops used to almost always contain backgammon sets. Why backgammon? I really don't know, but they did. Last time I was in Holland, this custom was rapidly disappearing, and they seemed more like cyber cafes. I hope it doesn't die out completely.
Anyway, when I discovered the internet, one of the first things I did was start playing backgammon online. I've done so ever since, and I've gradually improved as a player, and now I'm capable of holding my own against some good players.
Backgammon is a mixture of luck and skill. You use the dice rolls you're given to maximise your chances and limit the options for your opponent. It's called Backgammon, or "The back game" because if one person ends up far enough behind in a game, they often get the opportunity to turn things around. Using the doubling cube properly is another important thing to be able to do. The stakes are initially set to one. Either player can double the stakes by offering the cube to their opponent. The opponent can either forfeit the game, and lose the current stake, or can accept the cube, after which the stakes are 2. The player that doubled can not double again until their opponent has doubled. The doubling cube is a form of psychological warfare!
Anyway, tonight, I went to Liverpool, where the Liverpool backgammon club holds a monthly meeting. There were about 12 people there, and I got to play real matches against 6 of them.
Some of them take things very seriously! There are rules and etiquettes to follow that just don't occur in online play.
For example, a player's turn doesn't end until they pick up their dice. If you roll your own dice before then, it's considered very bad form, and the player who hasn't yet finished his turn has the option of forcing you to either re-roll, or use the roll you took.
You must roll your dice onto the right hand side of the board. this presumably avoids confusion, although given the previous rule, how the two sets of dice could mistakenly interact is hard to explain.
Most of the players there tonight were of quite a high standard. A few were less so.
I beat a good player in my first match, partly because of some outrageous good luck. I lost to a very good player in my second match. Then to a less good player in my third match. I lost by the shaving of a gnat's whisker in my fourth match, to a very good player, and again in my fifth match, before beating a poorer player in my final match.
It was good fun, and I shall try to go to more in the future.
driving lessons in Wallasey?
Saturday, 5 November 2011
Monday, 18 July 2011
Saturday, 26 February 2011
Streetview Fail!
Exposed! They tried, but they failed!
Take a look for yourself.
This is the approach to Kingsway, the more modern of the two Mersey Tunnels.
First thing to note is that Google's camera car uses the bit reserved for motorbikes, and goes through the toll plaza without paying.
Cheeky buggers.
Then it enters the eastbound tube towards Liverpool, and straight away, it's struggling with the lower light levels. The picture quality quickly deteriorates, and at some point, the camera car appears to jump from the eastbound to the westbound tunnel. Then, the viewer is unceremoniously dumped without warning on the mean streets of Seacombe, without so much as a by-your-leave.
I tried again from other directions, using both tunnels. In each case streetview either jumped to the surface, or just stopped, as if it had hit a dead end.
I have a couple of theories for this.
My first theory is to do with the low light levels. Perhaps some software or human interpreter detected the poor image quality and decided that it was too poor quality to use.
Another theory is that the fact that it goes well below what Google believes to be the level of the land has triggered some kind of error.
Thirdly, Google's card have a complicated camera thing on a pole. I think it's more than just a camera. I think it also contains either GPS, so that it can relate each image precisely to a location. It may even be some kind of uplink. Rather than risk losing data, it is streamed to some remote location via satellite or mobile broadband uplink. Car enters tunnel. Satellite link is broken (satnavs don't work in the tunnel either, although mobile phones do) and the system can no longer function.
Edit:
I thought I'd found an explanation. But if so wouldn't it be consistent? I mean, if a tunnel is long and deep enough, Street View won't be able to deal with it right?
The Dartford Tunnel is covered by street view, though, and although it's shorter than either of the two Mersey tunnels, it's still long and deep enough (and dark enough) to be stymied by any of my explanations.
So why not the Mersey Tunnels?
Take a look for yourself.
This is the approach to Kingsway, the more modern of the two Mersey Tunnels.
First thing to note is that Google's camera car uses the bit reserved for motorbikes, and goes through the toll plaza without paying.
Cheeky buggers.
Then it enters the eastbound tube towards Liverpool, and straight away, it's struggling with the lower light levels. The picture quality quickly deteriorates, and at some point, the camera car appears to jump from the eastbound to the westbound tunnel. Then, the viewer is unceremoniously dumped without warning on the mean streets of Seacombe, without so much as a by-your-leave.
I tried again from other directions, using both tunnels. In each case streetview either jumped to the surface, or just stopped, as if it had hit a dead end.
I have a couple of theories for this.
My first theory is to do with the low light levels. Perhaps some software or human interpreter detected the poor image quality and decided that it was too poor quality to use.
Another theory is that the fact that it goes well below what Google believes to be the level of the land has triggered some kind of error.
Thirdly, Google's card have a complicated camera thing on a pole. I think it's more than just a camera. I think it also contains either GPS, so that it can relate each image precisely to a location. It may even be some kind of uplink. Rather than risk losing data, it is streamed to some remote location via satellite or mobile broadband uplink. Car enters tunnel. Satellite link is broken (satnavs don't work in the tunnel either, although mobile phones do) and the system can no longer function.
Edit:
I thought I'd found an explanation. But if so wouldn't it be consistent? I mean, if a tunnel is long and deep enough, Street View won't be able to deal with it right?
The Dartford Tunnel is covered by street view, though, and although it's shorter than either of the two Mersey tunnels, it's still long and deep enough (and dark enough) to be stymied by any of my explanations.
So why not the Mersey Tunnels?
Liverpool
As the crow flies, I live perhaps a mile or two from a bustling, cosmopolitan and vibrant city with a huge range of cultural activities. Being unable to fly like a crow, if I want to go over to Liverpool, I have to get across the river Mersey, which means either driving through a choice of tunnels, or getting one of the frequent trains (every 5 minutes from Birkenhead, every 15 minutes from New Brighton) Or if I wanted to really push the boat out, I could get a ferry, although they're geared up for taking tourists on expensive jaunts up and down the river, rather than taking commuters and shoppers from one side to the other these days.
Yet I rarely get over the water, and when I do it tends to be either on the way to somewhere else, or to give my step daughter a lift to work. Or to give Bren a lift with her stuff for an exhibition or craft fair.
Today though, I actually got off my arse and went over with Bren. First of all we had to pick up some of Brens work from an arts centre in Toxteth, but having done so, we walked a mile or so into the city centre, and went for a meal at "Egg", which bills itself as the city's premier vegetarian and vegan restaurant. I had tandoori mushrooms, which came with mint raita, pasta, salad, and couscous or chopped nuts or a mixture of the two. The world on my plate!
On the way back we went to a Chinese supermarket and bought a few bits and bobs. It was an interesting experience, that supermarket. There were the occasional incongrously familiar things, like jars of nescafe amidst the unfamiliar packages. We bought some bags of star anise, for their fragrance more than anything. Bren gets frequent migraines, and artificial perfumes are a major trigger. So having a magic tree dangling from my rear view mirror is out of the question.
I also found some cans of drink called "Grass Jelly drink". Just had to give that a go, so when I got home I cracked one open. First surprise was that it was not in the slightest bit fizzy, despite being in a can. Second surprise was that it tasted of... well, grass. The kind that cows eat, rather than the stuff you put in bongs. So it shouldn't have been that surprising when a big glob of jelly landed in my mouth. I won't be buying any more, but we will have fun giving the other cans to our friends.
Sunday, 2 January 2011
Sherlock strikes again!
Today, the weather was clement! So I girded my loins, and wound my merry way to the allotment. I was digging up the last of the spuds, when I noticed a curious thing.
You can see the skyline of Liverpool from the allotment, and today, the concrete pole that used to be called St John's beacon, but what is now the Radio City Tower looked almost as if it were on fire, except what appeared to be rising from it was not smoke, but cloud. This column of vapour rose from the horizon right up to the cloud base. I briefly toyed with the notion that someone had nuked Manchester, but that seemed unlikely, and there are no reports of such a thing occurring on the BBC's news website.
So I suspected a power station. But how could I be sure? I couldn't drive in a straight line from the allotment to St John's beacon, and then beyond. Too many buildings and fences and gardens and rivers in the way. But I could create a line using the power of Google Earth!
I made a placemark at the base of the beacon.
I made another placemark at the allotment.
Then I lined things up and let the "camera" drift eastwards.
We passed over Wallasey and Seacombe, then out over the river to the centre of Liverpool. Then out of the commercial heart of the city and into the suburbs. To Wavertree and Netherton. To Tarbock Green and Farnworth. And there! Directly in front of me was Fiddler's Ferry Power Station. I placemarked that too!
And as you can see, they line up perfectly. Google Earth was also able to tell me that the direct, as the crow flies distance from Allotment to Power Station is 15 miles. Or, if you prefer, 2,415,015 centimetres.
The wonders of modern technology!
Edit:
Wait! There's more! Those 2 million centimetres took me over hill and down dale. And Google Earth knows exactly how up the hills were, and how down the dales were too. And it's given me a topological profile of the terrain between Love Lane Allotments and Fiddlers Ferry Power Station.
My life is enriched! Thank you once again Google Earth!
As you can see, the river Mersey is a flat, sea level bit to the left of the profile. We head down to it, and up away from it, soaring up to a rarified 225 feet above sea level in the Edge Hill area of the city. Watch out for nosebleeds and blackouts before you float gracefully down to a mere 50 feet above the briny towards the end of the trip. 50 feet lower than the starting point, at an average slope of about 1.5%. Nothing that a good stout pair of walking boots couldn't cope with.
Seriously, I've been using this thing for quite a long time now, without necessarily looking deeply at every aspect, so it's still got some surprising tricks up it's sleeve! To access this function, click the ruler button on the top bar (between the planet button and the email button) then simply click on a point and move your mouse pointer to a different point. You'll see a line. When you want to make the other end of a line, click again.
But you're not just limited to individual lines. You can do complete and complex journeys by combining lines to make paths.
As you can see from the picture above, I've just found that we drive 2.5 miles to do our shopping run at Asda. I could use Google Earth to work out a shorter route. The possibilities are endless!
You can see the skyline of Liverpool from the allotment, and today, the concrete pole that used to be called St John's beacon, but what is now the Radio City Tower looked almost as if it were on fire, except what appeared to be rising from it was not smoke, but cloud. This column of vapour rose from the horizon right up to the cloud base. I briefly toyed with the notion that someone had nuked Manchester, but that seemed unlikely, and there are no reports of such a thing occurring on the BBC's news website.
So I suspected a power station. But how could I be sure? I couldn't drive in a straight line from the allotment to St John's beacon, and then beyond. Too many buildings and fences and gardens and rivers in the way. But I could create a line using the power of Google Earth!
I made a placemark at the base of the beacon.
I made another placemark at the allotment.
Then I lined things up and let the "camera" drift eastwards.
We passed over Wallasey and Seacombe, then out over the river to the centre of Liverpool. Then out of the commercial heart of the city and into the suburbs. To Wavertree and Netherton. To Tarbock Green and Farnworth. And there! Directly in front of me was Fiddler's Ferry Power Station. I placemarked that too!
And as you can see, they line up perfectly. Google Earth was also able to tell me that the direct, as the crow flies distance from Allotment to Power Station is 15 miles. Or, if you prefer, 2,415,015 centimetres.
The wonders of modern technology!
Edit:
Wait! There's more! Those 2 million centimetres took me over hill and down dale. And Google Earth knows exactly how up the hills were, and how down the dales were too. And it's given me a topological profile of the terrain between Love Lane Allotments and Fiddlers Ferry Power Station.
My life is enriched! Thank you once again Google Earth!
As you can see, the river Mersey is a flat, sea level bit to the left of the profile. We head down to it, and up away from it, soaring up to a rarified 225 feet above sea level in the Edge Hill area of the city. Watch out for nosebleeds and blackouts before you float gracefully down to a mere 50 feet above the briny towards the end of the trip. 50 feet lower than the starting point, at an average slope of about 1.5%. Nothing that a good stout pair of walking boots couldn't cope with.
Seriously, I've been using this thing for quite a long time now, without necessarily looking deeply at every aspect, so it's still got some surprising tricks up it's sleeve! To access this function, click the ruler button on the top bar (between the planet button and the email button) then simply click on a point and move your mouse pointer to a different point. You'll see a line. When you want to make the other end of a line, click again.
But you're not just limited to individual lines. You can do complete and complex journeys by combining lines to make paths.
As you can see from the picture above, I've just found that we drive 2.5 miles to do our shopping run at Asda. I could use Google Earth to work out a shorter route. The possibilities are endless!
Thursday, 11 December 2008
P
This one's in Liverpool.
This one was on my hard disk. Dunno where it was from now. I think the first one is better.
It's precise location is
53°24'13.29"N, 2°58'4.66"W - just by the Catholic Cathedral. Also known as the Mersey Funnel or Paddy's wigwam.abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
1234567890
Tuesday, 19 August 2008
I landed safely at Liverpool airport!
I somehow taxied onto the southern runway at Manchester Airport ( 53°21'7.80"N, 53°21'7.80"N)
Via the grass...
Took off... Went too far south. Found a city. This turned out to be Chester, but I thought it was Wigan or St Helens. But anyway, I recognised the canalised bit of the River Dee. I used to work nearby.
From there I was able to follow the A550 towards Ellesmere Port, and circle round a bit over the Mersey until I found the runway. And I landed it without crashing. On the grass. But it did finish on the runway. ( 53°20'0.65"N, 2°51'5.76"W)
Progress!!!!!
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