Women's & Men's Championship Qualifier #2

Want to be the Portland Champion for 2024? Yes, yes you do!

You will note this is called "qualifier #2", meaning it is the second of a series of planned tournaments, culminating in a tournament to select an annual champion! Top 2 players from each event are entered into the annual champion tournament in December. Enter and place in more than one to get an automatic bye in the championship tournament! That is, if you win more than one qualifier, you start in round 2 of the championship, roughly doubling your chances of winning there!

Entry fee is $20. But the structure is different from our monthly event - the plan is for longer matches, and it is a single elimination event (one loss and you're done). Length of the matches to be determined - I expect 7 point matches, but if we have more than 8 players I will drop it to 5 point matches to allow us to finish in a timely manner. Most of the entry fee will be saved for prize money in the championship tournament, but the winner will get $40 and second will get $20.

This is two events in one: that is, it is both the Women's Championship Qualifier #2 and the Men's Championship Qualifier #2. Why are they two events instead of just one? As you may know, I am strongly supportive of the goals of Women in Backgammon. The number one recommendation from their 2022 survey was to create women-only tournaments to help players become more comfortable with competing. They are working at the national, ABT level; but I see the same thing in our local club. My estimate is that about 45% of the people who are in this meetup identify as female, but the percentage showing up for tournaments is closer to 20%. So, we're having a Women's Only event! But I personally identify as male, and I would get bored, so there's also the Men's Only event! It was all well received last year in our inaugural year, and I hope it will be even bigger and better this time around. Come check it out!