Big winners on the night - our new boards and Henry!

The tough crowd that make up our club put the 6 new ArtGammon boards through their paces in their first outing at the August grand prix last night.

After prodding, poking, rattling and rolling for a bit, it was evident that even the most hardened amongst us grudgingly had to admit the boards, checkers and cups were 'quite nice'. Others were more enthusiastic and from the queue of players having a chat with Aydin Kolcak, the UK seller of ArtGammon boards, it looks like it will be good for business.

Twenty players lined up at the start of the grand prix and with 5 rounds of 5 point matches, it was soon clear that this was going to be a night of full-on barrier crashes and frustrated traffic waiting behind slow moving vehicles. By the fifth round there were only 10 players still playing - and this was a Swiss tournament!

There is a steward's enquiry into how we might overcome these issues from next month on.

Congratulations to Henry (pictured above left) who zoomed ahead of everyone to take the chequered flag by beating Andrew (right) in the final round, playing on the new board variously described as being purple, pink or claret. With his win, Henry has manoeuvred his way into 2nd place on the leaderboard. Tariq still leads overall.

To the rest of the field, go home and kick those tyres, put in some new spark plugs and see you next month for more screeching and rolling.