The 7th round of our 7th “Backgammon Proficiency Test” was held as “BGTV Proficiency Contest” on Saturday, January 13th, the middle day of the Istanbul Open 2018.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t join it, but the test was supervised by our Turkish friends, Arda Fındıkoğlu (the host of the Istanbul Open and the president of WBF Turkey) and Cüneyt Argun Genç. They carried that out smoothly and all went well. They always cooperate with us, so we are really grateful to them.
Well, that was the sixth consecutive time our test was carried out there.
This year, 19 participants with various levels from various countries challenged it.
The result says that Jalil Khalili (Iran) answered 30 problems correctly (out of 50) and was ranked first among them, although he was ranked second last year. Claus Elken (Denmark) got second place at the contest, and then he got second place at the main championship. Martin Barkwill (UK) was ranked third, although he got the highest last year. Onur Vurur got the top score among the Turks this year.
Here are the details of this round.
| Rank | Total score | Total errors | Name |
| 1 | 30 | 2300 | Jalil Khalili  |
| 2 | 28 | 2245 | Claus Elken  |
| 3 | 27 | 2520 | Martin Barkwill  |
| 3 | 27 | 3252 | Onur Vurur  |
| 5 | 24 | 3662 | Abdullah Sorgüven |
| 6 | 22 | 4010 | Burhan Cumhur Bektüre |
| 7 | 20 | 3432 | Tuğrul Sezgin |
| 7 | 20 | 3510 | O. P.  |
| 9 | 19 | 4479 | Fady Asmar  |
| 9 | 19 | 4521 | Fuat Hakan Uncuoğlu |
| 11 | 17 | 4336 | Hakan Aksu |
| 11 | 17 | 4530 | Cynthia Roberts |
| 11 | 17 | 4609 | Mustafa Dikgöz |
| 11 | 17 | 5269 | Alparslan Göktay |
| 15 | 16 | 5459 | Göksel Kılınç |
| 16 | 15 | 4254 | Refik Vural |
| 17 | 14 | 4196 | Ender Can Avcioğlu |
| 18 | 13 | 4713 | T. B. |
| 19 | 12 | 4715 | Kemal Aksu |
| Total 19 | Ave. 19.7 | Ave. 4001 |
It was unfortunate that I couldn’t go there this year, but I am happy that many people joined it.
Akihito
(Updated Saturday, January 27th)
Arda Fındıkoğlu, Cüneyt Argun Genç and Gökhan Güneş have challenged the same test after the Istanbul Open 2018. They said that they strictly monitored each other to play fair, so we decided to list up their scores on our official results just as before.
Arda’s score was so good as in the past, while Cüneyt and Gökhan didn’t do better than last year.
We really appreciate their cooperation during “BGTV Proficiency Contest”.
Thank you again! 😉