 Another great tournament by the team at Worcester. This time an event held to raise money for the awful tragedy in Turkey brought together at short notice. A good response from the friends of Worcester means that we raised a total of £1520 for this cause. A tournament borne out of a simple Facebook post. One of our members had to withdraw from our usual online tournament to mourn the loss of family, friends and their fellow citizens. ‘I can’t play during 6 weeks depend on mourning. I lost my friends and members of family. Pray for to Turkey Thanks.’ The tragedy became very immediate. Not just a story on the news, it was something that affected someone close to the club, someone relatively new to the club, who had joined us for our intermediate tournament and had won the final chance. The touch of the human tragedy was palpable and Mochy was mobilizing in his own way an online tournament to raise funds for Turkey-Syria. We could not see why we shouldn’t do something too, to raise funds at this crucial time for our friend and her people. Ever the action man, Sean Jones decided to buy an ArtGammon board and offer it as a prize and Ian Gwynne, always the generous sponsor of Worcester Backgammon club, offered food to the tournament and David Sanders offered his professional expertise in putting together a website and the necessary spreadsheets etc. to get the registration and donations recorded and coordinate the tournament during the day. A lot goes into arranging a tournament. At Worcester we have all the skills to bring together a tournament at short notice. With a lot of support from our sister club in Birmingham, we had a good number of people register and many donated even though they knew they were unable to attend. It was a real inspiration for the club to see the support we got from players around the country as well as our own club members. One very brave member made this the first tournament she attended, and hopefully not the last!  We all arrived in the morning hopeful of taking the ArtGammon board home with us, but that is not in the slightest bit true! I should be a BBC reporter! We were all there to have some fun and raise money for a good cause. Sean started by explaining how to roll dice (again). Then got to the substance of the day, raising money for the earthquake victims. An issue with charities is you do not know which ones to trust. Sean explained his POA (Plan of Action) for the money raised. He had been given the name of a non-governmental charity with a good track record in helping victims. We also had our friend who was taking stuff out to Turkey, direct to the victims. It was agreed with those present that we would send the first thousand pounds raised to the nominated charity and the rest to our friend to spend on items to give directly. The tournament started as a round robin group stage followed by a straightforward knockout. This meant a lot of matches for the players. In the end the finalists were Julian Minwalla and Ian Gwynne. After some excellent and enjoyable matches, the final was played between Ian Gwynne and Julian Minwalla on the prize board. The match had more twists than a crafty corkscrew, particularly in the last two games with multiple jokers and anti-jokers, until eventually Julian came out as the victor. The XG transcript of the final can be downloaded here: ian_gwynne-julian_minwalla_9_point_match_18-03-2023_replay.xg The full results are available on the website at https://wbgc-earthquake-appeal.weebly.com/brackets.html If you would like to donate to this cause, please contact Sean at [email protected] and we will make sure your kind donation reaches those in need. Many thanks. TEAM WORCESTER.
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