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Odkazy:

The 2011 Czech National Scrabble Championship

Kadaň, CZ, Sat-Sun Nov 26^th & 27^th 2011

 

 

Yippee – let's go! I have qualified for the championship, and remembering what a lot of fun it was a year ago when I qualified for the first time, I couldn't now wait. Last year I ended up 3 – 8 and 28^th of 32 – hopefully this was the fate of a newcomer – and oh well, among the qualified championship élite and this year I'm gonna aim higher! Although among this 32 best players, the qualified élite, even the last-but-one place is nothing to be ashamed of.

 

The only drawback to this year's championship was that the scrabble association hasn't gotten a contribution from Mattel this time. So we had to pay for accommodation, the co-organizer having asked for a substantial discount for us.

This co-organizer was an ardent player from the bottom of the chart – Viktor Hagenhofer, and we'd better call him the main organizer. His company, that's to say, sponsored this championship, proving it can as well be done without Mattel.

 

Kadaň being on the other side of the republic, though, I have to spend a night in Prague. Or maybe even two nights – one on the way back, too. It would have been possible to spend them right in Kadaň, of course – but that way I would have to pay even more for accommodation. I preferred to spend the night in Prague from where there's a nice train connection to Kadaň, and on top of that, my cousin is kindly going to put me up for both the night before and after the championship and we're gonna have an opportunity to spend some good time together.

 

We did, indeed – as always. But he took my breath away – as we were sitting in a pub drinking beer, it wasn't just one of those “beer chats” about little or nothing, or “shooting the shit” you are used to. Over the years, he's gained such a lot of experience, such a staggering overview of the current political situation in the world your eyes would pop at. He had his say and it made me glad I was able to contribute just here and there. But it just always fit – like a hand in a glove, he said.

 

He bore in his mind I had to get up early to reach Kadaň by noon when the participation check starts, but even so, we sort of didn't manage to get back from the pub in time, there being so much to discuss (I guess you've been there, eh... even without being there with us). But oh well, we did so by one AM, so there's at least five hours of sleep ahead of us.

 

So you can guess how surprised I was at first to hear the alarm clock five hours later. It's the time already, is it? I staggered out of the bed, splashed some cold water on my fucking face and brushed my teeth, having promised to my still half-sleeping body it could take a nap on the train in an hour. You're going to take part at the national championship, man! You've gotten qualified for the second time in your life, so seek to do better than last year!

 

Luckily I did manage to take a couple of hours of sleep on the train. And even more luckily I woke up JUST on time – to find out I'd better get right out! Kadaň-Prunéřov – hell, I'd almost miss it! Anyway, it's so strange to get off on the outskirts after 200 kms of one straight route and change trains for the last few kilometers to get downtown … a kind of local peculiarity :{)>

 

As the national championship is used to taking place a whole weekend, one of its advantages is that it doesn't begin until 1pm on Saturday. So we had time for dinner before that – but if we didn't talk that much, it was, as you might guess, just because of nervousness before the championship. We didn't have the slightest idea about the fact that we would make up for the lost fun during dinnertime the next day...

 

I was seeded at the last of 16 tables at last year's championship – probably as the championship newcomer – , today I am watching the first round match-up with astonishment: table #3 – against our team capo Pavel Žibřid!

 

I did the best thing I could before we began our game: I remembered what he said after our very first game at the club and before we last played against each other at a tourn, respectively: “You're a talent, indeed. You simply have to play in tournaments” and “at last a proper opponent.”

So let's not get intimidated – whether by his 9^th position on the chart or by his three bronzes from the past national championships. Or by the bingo he throws as early as in his fifth move. I get a blank in the meantime and seven turns later come up with a bingo too. The tile fairy obviously started to root in my favor since then. He set me up for a triple, which I took a full advantage of by playing čumy for 42, bookish for “snouts” – the dogs sure went the right way when sniffing for points! Pavel just bursts out laughing at the helpless situation. I win 324:434: it sure delights you to see yourself in the top five in the continuous ranking of the national championship, although we're only through the first round yet.

Although “only through the first round”, it was full of surprises! The tourn veteran Jana Vacková has just been beaten by the championship newcomer Jiří Matějček, qualified for the championship for the first time in his life, and what's more, last year's champ and the triple National Champ, the lucky ass and #2 on the chart Pavel Podbrdský has just gotten beaten by #3 on the chart Břeťa Basta. Serves him well!

Round #2: Martin Hrubý. Perfect! No doubt he's dangerous, qualified for the championship every year since 2006, but I have a positive 2 – 1 win – lose ratio against him so far so there's no way he could intimidate me.

After a series of 18 neck-and-neck moves, he uses a blank and sixtuples a 8-point Ď, which gives him 61 points. I, though, strike back with a pure bingo. Ths puts me in a 20-point lead, which I extend to a 40-point one later on. I win 378 – 339 which pushes me up to 4^th place in the continuous ranking. Being such a killer at the National Championship puts you in a state of ecstasy. “4^th @ the continuous raking after 2^nd round – greetings from the frog phantom killer Ribbit.” Mom laughs her ass off, while I get ready mentally for a killer 3^rd round opponent.

And here he comes. Michal Přikryl, is another newcomer to the championship – qualified for the first time. We all know, though, that qualifiacation for the Nationals is where he's long belonged.

The neck and neck run typical for national championships takes place, though, just for the first five turns of ours. Then an 80-point pure bingo neustálý comes to him all by itself without him having been working on it. Yeah, no doubt I'm holding a blank, but such shit to it that a bingo is something I can only dream of at the moment.

Then, though, he sets me up for a triple. The best I can hope for if I can't bingo, eh? I can get rid of both the awful accented U's – the five-point Ú and the four-point Ů – by playing súsků, a genitive plural of súsek, a kind of chest used for storing cereals. The only drawback to it being that I have to sacrifice the blank. Oh well.

“Nice,” he said, although – or because, eh – he's never seen the word before. “Let's challenge.”

“Should be a kind of chest used for cereals,” I hand the definition just so he knows I don't just cram words without knowing their meanings, like it's done in America.

“That's possible,” he responded with a tone that was saying '...but I'm gonna check it anyway.'.

Of course it was good. He, though, was too far ahead of me to catch up on already.

He wins 362 – 320, making me fall to the to the 6^th place of the 32 championship participants. Which, though, is still pretty good, so let's not lose our head. We'll take it out on the next opp!

Jiří Kamín. Yeah, the classic scrabble veteran who hates bingo players and who said that the didn't want to qualify for the championship this year. He did – for the eleventh time in his life – for the very reason that he didn't pursue the qualification desperately this time...

In spite of getting an X, he makes a bingo with it in his 7^th move, expertu, with a blank for the other E. Sometimes one can be glad for the seven inflection cases, eh? To the word EXPERT in Czech you can add an A, an E, an I, a U, a Y, or the endings -EM and -ŮM to make a valid word. However, I'm after him with a few fat moves, so soon he's busy getting rid of me again. This is not that easy though. We're neck and neck even at the brink of the end, so everything now depends on the endgame.

Jiří keeps thinking for the whole two minutes allowed for the move, which is not his style at all – as he himself said, he likes blitz scrabble. With this carefully thought-over move, though, he signs his death sentence. That's to say – he set me up exactly for going out on a triple. I win 343 – 321.

“Hm. Had I chosen the other plan, I would have won by a bit,” he frowns, congratulating me. Eighth at the continuous ranking of the national championship still looks pretty good, eh? That's where this win has kicked me to.

A first continuous statistics were printed out. I rejoiced upon seeing that I had a bigger sum of scores after the four rounds than Milan Kuděj, Katka's uncle and a triple national champ.

I shouldn't have rejoiced comparing my then results to his. I shouldn't even have given him a mere thought...

Yeah, you're right in guessing. I get Milan for my next opp and what follows is a lame game, one of those in which you can't do anything and get all the possible (and impossible, too) crap while your opp keeps lucky-assing. A primitive bingo coming all by itself to him as soon as in his fourth move is only the beginning. A beginning of a hopeless fox-and-hare chase which isn't worth losing a lot of words about. He kicks my ass 454 – 247 and confirms he's been there – there just are games in which all you can do is watch your opponent play. Which, indeed, was exactly this case.

Let's take it out on the next one. But first of course, there's a need to go next door for some yummies to wrap up my nerves.

I meet Katka Rusá on my way. She's just been through the game with Zbyněk Burda: she's won, but it didn't seem like a winning game for her since the very beginning; quite the contrary.

“I just thought I was meant to lose,” she laughs, “until that moment when I flashed the light into the hippo's eyes. Then the tables turned at once.”

This needs some elaboration, I guess. What light? What hippo? Well, that was so: you sure remember the “pygmy hippo affair” when there was this strong disapproval over the scrabble invalidity of the word hrošík, which is, for one thing, a part of the scientific name for the pygmy hippo – hrošík liberijský – and, for another, a diminutive of the noun hroch, “hippo”. Well, but the dictionary sources are dictionary sources, and so hrošík has remained an invalid word in spite of being a zoological term. Like did, for example, hydrošok, “hydroshock”, in spite of being a term too...

And so this made Zbyněk get himself a talisman of this kind – a little plastic hippo to bring him luck at scrabble tournaments. Now, Viktor, besides sponsoring the whole championship this year, had these topic-related pens made, in which there are little light bulbs installed. Which Katka “misuses” masterly by flashing it into the hippo's eyes...

“He then complained that I enchanted his hippo,” Katka guffaws, “by flashing the light into its eyes. And so I say, ‘try flashing the light into its ass’...”

“What's wrong with Thirst?” she wonders. Thirst being Pavel Žibřid's nickname, coming from the first syllable of his surname (the Czech for thirst being žízeň, or colloquially žíža, the latter being used as his nickname) – indeed, at the end of the fifth round, he hadn't had more than one win.

“He's been playing like a fool,” Zbyněk Burda grins.

“He's gotta do better, else he's worsening my Buchholz criterion.” Katka knows her way through the mathematical trivia of tournament ranking cold...

My sixth opp, and last for today, is “The Old Shrew”, Milena Filipová. After six championship games I was already done in and quite satisfied with my current 16^th place in the continuous ranking, but with her you always know it's gonna be a hard fight.

Phew, I didn't know it was going to be that hard. I get a blank and throw a bingo for 71 in my 11^th move: what for? Only to be chased again by Milena shortly after. We're pushing it hard until the very end, and indicating how fucking close the game is, onlookers start gathering behind our backs, recruiting of those championship-qualified players who have already finished their games in this round.

Now, guess what I've drawn. Guess what! At the bottom of the bag. Crap, you expect? Right, that's how it usually goes. But now – could you believe it – the other blank!!! Of course I have the kind of letters to it that make you unable to go out within one single move, but let's hope we're gonna make it in two. Don't you dare go out!

I've managed to get rid of all the high-point crap towards the end. As I said, the two blanks I drew accompanied a highly incompatible bunch of letters, so I just got rid of the high-value ones.

And no, she didn't go out.

I win! The most lamely you can imagine – by one point with both blanks but what the hell, every win counts – and especially at the championship! 365 – 366.

“I can only blame myself for the loss,” she relieves my lame feeling for winning by one point thanks to both blanks. “I should have gone out in two steps.” Oh well, but you never know...

 

I bump into Zbyněk Burda. He's grinning like he's got something to say.

“I had such horrible letters at the beginning [of this past round]. Still, I played TAX for 32, getting solemnly into the lead. We went on down the board, until I played this yv [plural genitive of yva, IVY], ví [“knows”], and víz [genitive of VISA], with Z behind the triple word. I say to myself, Z as a second letter [for a triple triple], such a difficult position... [and he still played] ozvučené [“with sound added”] for 203! But – a pure one! He had 550 [total points] and I didn't even have 300 … I'm gonna be the biggest fool [of the tourn] with the biggest difference [between the player pairs game scores]. To top it, he then got both blanks...”

 

Now guess what. I've just afforded this lame win by one point with both blanks, which sprang me up to 11^th place of the 32 people qualified in the continuous ranking of the championship. Who do I get? Martin Kuča...! In the eyes of many of us the best Czech scrabble player ever, the 2008 national champ and a fivetuple runner-up.

Oh well. The best games are against those you don't even expect to win against. Indeed. After five turns he leads 126 – 60 without any particular effort. I've been working on a bingo, duh. But I didn't know he had gotten both blanks in the meantime. So before I play mine, he comes up with one of his and thus even after I shoot my bingo he's still ahead by 50. The art of someone many of us consider the best Czech scrabble player consists in beating you in a way that you don't even notice you're getting beaten, slowly but steadily. At the end of the game he's already killing me by a hundred. No doubt he's had both blanks, but in his case you can be sure that this is not what decided the game. And you can be glad for being killed only by not even 100 – like in my case, 326 – 432.

 

This being the end of the first day of the championship, I say to myself I can be satisfied with my continuous ranking of 16^th – JUST halfway through. Good – at least to round up the first day with.

 

I'm rooming with Radek Mannheim this time. If you think this is an improvement in comparison with last year's championship when I was assigned Zbyněk Burda to share the hotel room with, you're badly mistaken.

“Make sure you read something on the sleep apnea syndrome,” he had told me before while chatting with me during an online scrabble game. A worse snoring caliber than Zbyněk, eh? God forbid.

 

We go and have a beer together in a nearby restaurant. As we chat, Radek browses through the menu. He finds an ice-cream cup called “Hot Love”.

“Let's have that one,” he suggests.

“Now, after having a beer?”

“Why not?”

 

I sort of do have a tooth for it, after all. But when the waitress comes, Radek acts like it had all been my idea, the naughty one: “My colleague here would like a Hot Love.”

When the ice-cream cup is brought, I suppose he's gonna wanna try a bite. He didn't.

“So, like, you order me something, let me pay for it myself, and in the end don't even want a bit?”

I grin.

“No, but I'm gonna order you one more,” he laughs.

Haha. Just try.

As I dip the teaspoon into the ice-cream hill, a creek of hot raspberry juice springs out.

“Hot Love... hm, the poor virgin,” I can't not comment the obvious association the raspberry juice creek evoked in me along with the name of the cup.

“You're a beast,” Radek laughs his ass off.

 

We agree it's necessary to go to bed by midnight. We do, and in the morning we manage a coffee before going. The championship is almost around the corner after all.

When we are leaving the next morning, the receptionist, while doing the checkout, routinely makes us pay. As she leans forward to the counter, you can easily see all the secrets her bra was hiding. Her breasts are small but beautiful and enough to excite you, along with her pretty face and petite body. I had to gather all my will to keep me from getting a hard-on right in front of her. I didn't but she turned me on enough so that I actually paid – completely forgetting that I had already paid the day before. I actually wondered how little money I had left – but under the spell of excitement I didn't even chance upon the idea that I could have already paid before. Luckily, she quickly found out and told me so.

Madam, we're checking out. Can I check out your breasts, too?

We quickly make off. See, I don't want to hear her adding something like “I'm sorry sir, there's a fine for jacking off in the shower” and want the CZK 300 back... ha, I'm kidding, but anyway, we have to arrive by 8.25 so it's just about time we left.

 

We do arrive on time. Soon the match-ups are printed out and pinned up, only to make us all shocked: the number of players being suddenly odd, there's the so-called BYE ascribed to the player at the last table. (Not to mean, of course, that the player should leave the tournament – BYE is just a way of denoting the odd player, usually the one with the worst current performance at a certain point of the tourn.)

This means one obvious thing – one of us must have overslept or simply not arrived for whatever other reason, which has never happened yet throughout the whole Czech scrabble championship history.

“Who hasn't arrived?” I ask the pressing question.

“Guess who? The drunkard,” I get the answer straightaway. They mean Ivo Hradský – you remember him coming drunk to several tourns in the past, and now, probably he had been burning all the past night long and he's “overslept”, or overshot the mark a bit...

 

With regards to the odd number of players, the match-ups have to be remade, too. So as soon as I've prepared myself mentally for Hana Filipová, I can forget about it – I get Petr Landa instead.

I've beaten this ardent top player, who's as high as 6^th on the Chart, several times already, but needless to say, as you can see from his chart position, too, the number of tourn games you've won against such people doesn't really help you take it easier when it comes to playing them, not even when you have a positive win – lose ratio with them like I have now with him (3:2).

Phew, such a straining neck-and-neck game right in the morning! Chasing each other with point blows, racking our brains over the racks; no fun, no quips, no jokes. A sip of coffee from time to time.

I come up with a 35-point ďul in my 11^th move, the plural genitive of ďula or dyula – an African language. “Hm, well, now I'm shit outta luck,” Petr grumbles. Too early for such judgments, I guess – and I tell him so.

Indeed. Three turns later, he comes up with a bingo.

“Told ya it was too early for judgments,” I say.

“Well, couldn't see it at all at first. Made it out of total squat,” he tells me with relief.

I can't catch up on this anymore. I lose 372 – 325, falling to 19^th in the continuous ranking. At the championship, the usual comfort after losing a game doesn't work – that is, the one that you would get a weaker opponent. Here at the championship, you always get a killer no matter how good or bad you're doing. It's only that you get a bigger killer after you win.

And so do I now, too – Martin Vacek, the Praguean scrabble veteran who has attended just about every tourn since 2000 and qualified for every championship since that year.

“Good morning, Mr. Doctor,” he sneers. As the grin I show back shows lack of understanding and signs of being perplexed, he adds: “You're that doctor of Romance studies, aren't you?”

Most Czech doctoral degrees, that is to say, are four-letter and end in Dr., wherefore my surname looks like one, too. Why Romance studies? That's because of the first two letters of the surname of mine, duh...

If my game against Petr Landa was a neck-and-neck one, this one against Martin was genuinely that. When I got a blank and composed a bingo in my 8^th move, milujme with the blank for the U, a 1^st person plural imperative of to love, he was right back threatening me again. Let's love this kind of games!

Towards the end of the game, when I still think I have it under control, I realize at a glance at Martin's score sheet that our records differ.

 

Without having to tell him, I quickly check my sheet for a miscount and unfortunately discover one on my side. Ouch. I got ten points less. And I thought I had you nailed.

Ya remember when an opponent was in my current shoes? Yeah, Tomáš Fanta at the tourn in Babice. He, though, then didn't discover his miscount until after the end of the game. I did mine early now, so I guess there's at least something I can still do about it.

I do what I can. I can't go out though, and he does when the score stands even and I have one tile left in my rack. Thanks to this one fucking tile, he wins by two fucking points … 360 – 362.

“At least a good neck-and-neck game,” I say, congratulating him.

“My previous opponent told me so as well,” he grins. “But from a defeated opponent it sounds frank at least.” Indeed – he lost his previous one by two points for a change, against Věrka Majtánová.

 

“As you have noticed,” Petr Kuča, the main referee of the championship, the IT manager's husband and the 2008 National Champ Martin Kuča's father, has his say to us all, “The BYE has entered the championship, as Mr Hradský has not arrived to finish the championship. It is going to stay so until the end, because even if he came, he wouldn't be allowed to play here today any more anyway.”

 

Again: what I said just a while ago confirms now. You lose to Vacek, and still, get Martin Daněk to play against in the next round – the 2001 National Champ.

The best games are those you don't even hope to win: you stay completely relaxed and calm while playing, and so, paradoxically enough, this often causes you to stand tall to your opponent.

He starts the game, to which I respond by playing a “welcoming” bingo. The pure nejídati, an infinitive of “not to be used to eating”, gives me 62 points, but Martin doesn't let me enjoy my lead for long – he bingos back with pozdvihů for 64. A pozdvih is when you lift something up, but still it sounds peculiar enough for me to challenge – just in case. Martin says he would, too, if he were in my position.

It comes back good, and so I didn't enjoy my lead from playing a bingo for very long indeed. This was just the beginning, though. A beginning of a long neck and neck run. When I start getting some 20 points behind at around the 10^th turn, it's only so I can be right back with three fat 30-ish moves which put me neck and neck with him again. Until the very end of the game! When I go out in my 14^th move, our scores stand at 365 – 365.

His girlfriend and a top player herself, Iveta Vondrátová, comes to our table to complain, having finished her game earlier.

“My opp played a bingo in his very first move,” she grins.

“So did mine,” he blurted out concisely. As she glances at his score sheet, she knows that he is probably not going to be very talkative now.

Martin is the kind of man you would call a “scientist” by sight. Tall, slim and clean-shaven computer programmer with glasses and sharp face features, the sharpness underlined by an broad, hooked nose and a strict look you would hardly ever see smile, especially not when there's no reason. Which there's surely not at this moment from his point of view...

“One,” he utters when showing his leftover, to denote it's worth one point. A single one-point tile causing him now to lose by two.

“364 – 366, right?” I check.

“Yeah. Congrats.” He confesses a tactical flaw towards the end.

Yippee! The loss to Vacek was sure worth beating Daněk now. 19^th in the continuous ranking before the last round, I say to myself, it would be nice to push it into the first half. But let's go outside first to take a breath of some fresh air.

Ivo Hradský arrives. Yeah, he does...! He apparently overslept a bit, eh... as Petr Kuča said, he§s not going to be allowed to play in the last round anyway.

When I come back from outside at the brink of the beginning of the last round, Dana the IT manager calls me up.

“You put your carbon paper the wrong side up in the previous round,” she says. When I come home, I find a kind gesture from her in my mailbox – she's scanned the 10^th round score sheet records of my game for me. Sure a delight to have a living proof of such a game ending in such a scalp...!

Last round before the final ones to which only the two best players are going to be allowed. Michal Sikora. Owww. The 2004 National Champ and a feared-of bingo thrower my age, a student of sinology (not to mean the science of sins) at a university who regularly qualifies for the championship every year since 2000 and is currently #9 on the Czech Scrabble Association chart.

What do you think – yeah, he gets a blank right in his second or even very first move and plays a bingo in his third. Luckily I'm already used to this so I don't let this sicken me, while I'm getting together one of mine. I come up with it no as soon as two turns later, after hesitating for a good minute between letenská and netleská. Netleská is one of those bingos Zbyněk Burda calls “primitive” beacause of its being a common negative verb, a 3^rd person singular present tense of not to clap. Not only would it be primitive but on top of that it would also end in front of a triple column (luckily not in front of the triple itself). But compared to letenská, a feminine geographic adjective of a Prague suburb called Letná, netleská has this one big advantage – it's 100% valid. Letenská – well, I'm almost sure, but it could be one of those damned exceptions, or not be included in the dictionary sources for whatever reasons, etc.

And so I go for netleská, getting 70 points and neck and neck with him. According to these 1000% reliable Murphy's laws, I know he's now gonna get a 4-point Š to extend it with and put something downwards on the triple at the same time.

Of course! Of course he does get it. My lead is up and gone in a minute and we start the even-chance fight practically all over again. I come up with another bingo in my 9^th move. This puts me in an about 30-point lead. I seek hard to keep it and so I keep blocking all possible spots where he could play a bingo or even a promising move. Don't get me wrong – mucking up ALL such spots is a hell of a job, too! Especially in games against him – he being a bingo thrower, he likes wide open games, so wide open that in Czech scrabble world they even gained a nickname. “The Sikora harakiri”, hinting at Michal's degree in japanology and sinology.

I did manage to block most of them, but as it seems, he's not after a bingo anymore. He tries to shrink my lead instead, quite understandingly. Even at the brink of the end, the scores are quite close, but not so close as to make me afraid of him catching me. If I go out now, I should still win by about ten. Yeahhh! 383 – 374. Beating a former national champ is always a delight, eh? Especially if he's a #7 on the Chart.

I was looking forward to the place I leaped to by means of this nice win, now at the end of the Championship. The ranking, though, I was told by the referee, is to be kept a secret for us all until the end of the final round of the finals, where the top two players of the championship are going to fight each other for the 2011 Czech Scrabble Champion title.

“Don't be so impatient,” he tells me. Okay – if it were just for a piece of info of whether I've made it into the first half!

Now, who do you think has gotten into the finals?

The current #2 on the Chart, Pavel Podbrdský, a triple national champ. That's not much of a surprise. But to stand tall to him – the 2003 Championess Katka Rusá, whom I had spotted for this year's Champion, although she said this was a bit of a courageous spot as she originally was on the brink of not even qualifying, and anyway, she doesn't enjoy the game anymore. But I wished she would make it – she'd sure deserve it. Unlike Pavel, who, as you remember, won last year's Champ title thanks to being fucking lucky in the final rounds.

But before the final rounds we're going to have dinner. I'm dining with Věrka Majtánová, Martin Kapler, and Jarda Buksa, which turns out to be hazardous, as old Jarda is apparently in a philosophical kind of mood:

“It's a beautiful life. It's a wonderful world. It's just this scrabble that's ffffucccked uppp....”

We burst out laughing, while Věrka, who unfortunately had a mouthful of dinner before that, almost chokes. The conversation turns to chess and comparing it to scrabble: there is no element of luck, but as it turns out of the discussion, it's just a matter of memory.

“Such a thing as marathon,” Martin Kapler pipes in, inspired by memory being mentioned, “seems fair to me. Hardly any marathon runner runs the marathon race for himself in advance.”

“Chess pissed me off more and more. That's why I turned to scrabble,”says Jarda, a 61-year-old receptionist, who hopes to be able to win a few more championship bronzes before he retires.

 

The playing room is rearranged for us like a little “movie theater” – the chairs are put into several rows in front of a screen to which the final rounds are to be transmitted. The ones who think Pavel is gonna win tease us who believe Katka is.

“I'd be glad for Katka to win the title too,” says Věrka Majtánová who has ended up with seven wins. “But we both know this is rather just a wishful thinking.”

Are you kidding? Of course it's not.

Nothing, and not even what Věrka has just said in spite of being Katka's good friend just like I am, is going to shake my unshakable belief in Katka's win.

The board is stuck to the table with a glue in the room where they are going to play so it's not moving while the final games are being recorded.

The biggest shot on the screen records the games, and two smaller shots do the finals players' racks. Beside them you can see score sheets. Almost everything's solved and ready, but –

“How are we going to know whose rack is whose?” somebody rightly asks.

Whereupon Luboš Vencl, who, quite like Pavel Žibřid, has bombed out this time, having only three wins, pipes in, laughing, with a solving suggestion: “Look, you're gonna know according to their fingernails.”

Indeed! We can't help laughing too on acknowledging he's right: Katka's black nail enamel is something distinctive enough to prevent us from mistaking the racks for each other.

 

For the first five turns, both Katka and Pavel get comparably awful crap. They cope with it the way tip of the top players do, before guess what happens. Yeah – it wouldn't have been Pavel, the lucky ass, if he hadn't drawn a pure bingo right out of the bag without any preparation. He even has a choice between vodnice – a colloquial expression for a water pipe – and doceniv, an ancient past participle of “to fully realize”. We spectators burst out laughing. After playing the bingo – he chooses doceniv – he gets away with a word a few of us (including me of course, ha...) damn straight away as invalid. The IT managers check it and it's plain to see we are right.

Katka just keeps cool and plays as best as she can – she was one of those who spotted Pavel for this year's champion, and now she fights him in the final rounds. Now it's her turn to get bingo-prone letters. I myself see two bingos she could play. She, though, goes for a completely different one – folks, a triple triple!!! Hodívalo, with a blank for the í. Something hardly anyone would think of: an imperfective past form of to suit [someone]. A triple triple always suits anyone, eh? Except the opponent...

Pavel challenges – duh. It's good. A hundred and thirty-one points! We want to give Katka a big hand and are told we can (but I guess she can't her it over there in the final rounds room anyway). She gets forty points ahead thanks to this. Pavel plays a beautiful bingo hardly anyone would think of either – pýchnul indeed spelt with a ý, pýchnout being a bookish ecpression for “to blow” or even better “to gust”. Katka bingos back with nevrknou, a 3^rd person plural future of not to [utter a] coo.

“This is what a proper scrabble swing looks like,” Katka's uncle and a triple national champ Milan Kuděj laughs.

Thanks to her last bingo, Katka wins the first final game 366 – 436. This first game of the final round didn't even take half an hour.

 

She appears for awhile among the rest of the championship-qualified people; we congratulate her for this awesome game of hers. One more scalp of Pavel the Lucky Ass, and she's gonna be a double national champ! Of course chances are that Pavel would win the next two – but that would be a cruel game of Murphy's law, eh...

 

The second final game. Katka goes first, which is surely not a blessing with CDGSŠÚV. She plays the obvious ŠÚS, a direct downhill skiing technique, for 20, and draws ŘTL.

“Some might find it weird, but if I were Katka, I'd swap tiles,” says 1670-rated Martin Hrubý (not the famous Czech poker star – just happens to bear thewho ended up 22^th with a 5 – 6 balance.

And she does, indeed, turning in all seven.

“She didn't even keep a single Ň,” somebody cracked. Some of us who sit near enough to hear that let a laugh at it. She didn't have a Ň on her rack, duh, but, “not a single Ň”, or the onomatopoeic “ani Ň” in Czech is simply a metaphor for “not even a tiny bit” and the cracker just took this idiom literally. In the meantime, Pavel plays a 25-point move. He didn't even once have to change tiles. The lucky ass.

“If [Katka] had had a M instead of the Y, she could play pébrinám,” Martin Hrubý makes our jaws fall with one of the tons of weird words he's learned. Once I caught him whipping various minerals into the electronic scrabble dictionary, and as each and every of them came back good, I asked then whether he had studied mineralogy or what. “No,” he says, “I've studied the scrabble science.”

Dana Kučová the IT manager was damned right when she said we – Martin and me – where the two biggest scrabble freaks...

But hey, now Katka starts pushing. She draws a blank and is evidently about to make up for the lost lead (and even for the lost iron). She sets up SE?YÁNI and there being a free P on the board, it's obvious that she's aiming at sesypáni – a 1^st person plural passive of to scatter together. The IT manager's daughter, rather jocularly, checks the validity sexypáni* – like “sexy gentlemen”, but that would of course be written as two separate words.

In her next two moves, we discover even better ones than she plays – by about two points each – but we agree on the fact that sitting there, in the final rounds of the finals, against the biggest lucky ass ever, we would be able to see anything at all.

As of now, they're still neck and neck: 185 – 184. 209 – 208 after the next. Katka still leads by one point, getting an X.

“If she had an O, she could have exostery.” Who said that? Of course, Martin Hrubý. The walking talking scrabble dictionary. Pavel Žibřid laughs – he has never needed to cram the dictionary for his three bronze championship medals. Not that Martin did, either – he just does so out of scrabble eagerness.

Believe that – Pavel Podbrdský is swapping letters! Well, but you know what his swapping looks like. Remember that moment when, in a game against me, he swapped three times to get three times exactly what he wanted – the rest of a pure bingo?

Luckily this doesn't happen now. If he was fucking lucky last time in the final round of the Finals, now, against Katka's scrabble art, he's lost. Now it's her time to get a piece of deserved good luck. After an exchange, she gets DIKLOV? – a rack she could get easy bingos from, like kladivo (a hammer) with a blank for an A, or odvykli with a blank for the Y, a 3^rd person plural past tense of “to unlearn”, “to disaccustom”, or even odlivka, a piece of chemical dishes, with a blank for the A again. She chooses the middle one. And what about Pavel and the bingos he is used to drawing as wholes right from the sack? Of course he does have one. Luckily for Katka, he has nowhere to put it.

“I'm surprised that he just draws the whole thing,” Martin can't help remarking. You bet – everyone is! But now he's shit out of luck, and his drawing whole bingos out of the bag isn't going to help him.

Katka plays one more move we can see a one-point better version of, but on the other hand, she gets rid of a seven-point Ť. Yes, yesss – she wins again – this time by seven points only but, at a staggering score on both sides – 402 – 395!

 

“Kateřina Rusá becomes the winner again and the 2011 Czech scrabble champion,” goes the final result announcement. Beating an opponent she herself proclaimed impossible to compete with, she confirmed her 2003 scrabble champ title. She's the only Czech female scrabble champion – now a double one.

Everyone is positively shocked: I'm positive too, but not shocked – I knew it from the beginning, duh. I knew she was gonna make it, and I didn't doubt it even for a second. In my scrabble championship profile, I was the only one who spotted her for the title, and I turned out to be right. She gets heartfelt hugs and ever a few kisses from us all. Great job!

“Next time, we'll ask you who the winner will be,” Luboš Vencl jokes.

 

The bronze goes to Martin Kuča: he being a sixtuple runner-up and the 2008 Champ, the bronze is the only medal he hasn't won so far at the championships...

Pavel Podbrdský, the fresh 2011 runner-up Katka has just beaten, had the biggest average score – almost 400.

“Well, is it worth playing him at all then, eh?” Petr Kuča comments on that.

Michal Přikryl, who qualified for the championship for the first time in his life, finished eighth – we just knew he's long belonged here. Jiří Matějček, another championship-qualified newcomer, ninth. Same with him, then...?

With six wins and five losses. I finished 15^th. Ain't that good, too – the top half, and after all, when I first qualified for the Czech scrabble championship in 2010, I finished 28^th . Ain't that a mucking good leap!

 

Well, folks, I'm leaving for Prague to flush it down with my cousin. Cheers!

 

 

poslal scrabblista, 20.01.2012 23:02:00, Komentáře (0)

The Fall Prague Qualification Tournament

Praha, CZ, Sat Nov 5^th 2011

 

I had long hestitated whether or not to go to this tourn. I had long been qualified for this year's championship, so why bother going? But hey – I was so fed up with online scrabble. So fed up with the tile-handling machine which always seems to be biased. If I am to get crap, I want to draw the crap myself. Wanted to go play live again, hear the rattle of the tiles and feel them, instead of moving virtual ones with a mouse. And I wanted to see my scrabble friends live, too, not just on the scrabble site or Facebook.

On top of that, I was too busy at work, taking lessons for a colleague of mine who had left for Australia – taking them although I wasn't very well. And so I said to myself, hell, if I'm able to go to work and teach for eight hours a day in spite of being unwell, why couldn't I as well go to a tourn? I'm gonna get better by Saturday anyway, and oh well, it's just nothing but a bad cold after all.

 

I found these 18.09 and 18.13 trains which I hoped to catch on my way back from the tourn so I wouldn't need to look for a place to stay overnight. I hit the sack early and next morning at 3.50 I take my backpack and head to the train station, not having the faintest clue that this is the place where the total ineffability of the day begins. From an evidently still sleepy conductress I buy what I think to be a two-way ticket to Prague and, not having any mind to sleep anymore, I sink into a book to kill the time for the succeeding hour until we reach Starkoč, a tiny town where Jirka Kracík was to get on according to what he had said.

He did. I had had some tea tags and teabags ready for him as he's an ardent collector of things, having infected Zbyněk Burda with tea tag collecting, too. Zbyněk, though, drinks them all teas he collects, too – even when they don't taste good...

I have taken along the booklet we got at the World Scrabble Championship. Zbyněk skims through it, and seeing the prizes for the first ten places, says with a grin:

“Wasn't there a prize for the 11^th anymore? Not even a rotten salami like at the Volyně tourn?”

 

I found Martin Hrubý, the ardent scrabble player and tourn veteran from Western Bohemia, whom I had promised to bring copies of score sheets from the World Championship. He said he'd study them and take part in the Prague English scrabble tourn the year after...

 

Oh nope. Žaneta … even worse than to lose to a hard opp is to do so against one who is not that hard but who, for a change, distracts you with her charm and beauty.

Which she's always done, without even knowing. Now, though, apart from having those secret female weapons at her disposal, the tiles kind of flew her way on top of that. I try a bingo. It gets challenged off but she plays one of hers in its stead, a good one this time. I answer with another one of mine, which she challenges as well but which comes back good.

But this was the end of the up till then neck and neck fight. The tile gods forsake me in my gorgeous opponent's favor and she comes up with a tripled bingo, while I get what's left – the crap of the bottom. I believe the bingo good; I challenge it “just in case”, in vain though.

Towards the end of the game, leading by 150, she plays this word dačo on a triple for 21. Dača being a not very much used colloquial term for a cottage, this vocative case of its, dačo, is identical with a colloquial Slovak word for “something”. That's what I rely on to perplex her, as I grin and say: “Hey, ain't that Slovak?”

She hesitates. Her Vietnamese descent makes her unsure about certain words from time to time, which, though, doesn't prevent her form being a pretty good (meaning “pretty and good at the same time” in her case as well, which is a deadly combination, especially for young singles like me) player.

“Stop trying to fool me,” she sneers back, still hesitating. “Like, that's not very nice...”

Yeah, not very nice, just like your PDAing with that Sikora of yours.

“You got your female weapons, so I gotta resort to the linguistic ones,” I laugh.

“Drop it,” she tries to challenge the fact. “I'm wearing this jumper of mine just for this sake, so that the things underneath don't distract you, and, like, I'm getting pretty hot.”

Honey, you aren't just getting pretty hot. You have always been pretty hot, even in winter.

She kills me 471 – 320. I have brought a copy paper to keep a memory of this tourn – just like I had known something – but didn't use it yet in this first game. Knew why, eh? It wouldn't have been worth preserving.

 

If you lose a game, it always leaves you something to hope for – an easier opponent in the next round. Which is not by far a rule after the first round, though., as many a “favorite” might have lost due to the “total coincidence” rule of first-round match-ups...

And so I get Pavel Palička. Although he's never qualified for the Nationals, he still remains a pretty dangerous opp – at one tourn he made it as high as the 5^th place.

As I drew my first rack of seven, I thought I'd die. What's worse – to be pissed off for the absence of good luck, like in the first round, or for feeling lame for being lucky?

That's to say, I draw BEHJMOO. Hobojem, duh. Just about every fool would see this instrumental case of the musical instrument, heh (hoboj, the Czech for an oboe) in it.

“I'm so sorry... just luck,” I say as I lay it on him, collecting my easy eighty points.

“Don't be,” he calms me down. If I only knew! For then, I just thought he was so calm by nature. But he was, because he was holding a blank and forming a bingo of his at that very time. At his fourth move he comes up with korzetům, a blank for the M, a plural dative case of the corset.

As he plays TAX, doubling the X on the double-letter near the triple-word, I say to myself, ha, he's asking for trouble. Holding an O and a V on my rack, that's to say, it's just a matter of time till I get an Á, an É, an Í or an Ý to make a killing taxový, taxoví, taxová, or taxové – an adjective of TAX – for over fifty.

And I did, right in my eighth move – the neuter gender variant, with the É. Four turns later, I turn ANI (nothing to do with the anus in Czech – just an ordinary conjunction meaning “nor”) into aniž (“without -ing”), hooking bože (a vocative case of god) on a triple. Bože! 120 points ahead. Whew, it doesn't look like he was after catching up.

He wasn't, really – there was no way anymore. Not even a 40-point move towards the end prevented him from losing 387 – 298.

Moving to table #20, I expect a butcher for my third opp. What a (nice! ha) surprise to find out I am to play against 1170-rated Gabriela Gugová now.

Hey, how's that possible? She must be 1 – 1 then now, having beaten someone a lot stronger.

Indeed. She's won over Martin Hrubý – even played a bingo against him.

Oh well, shit happens. I'm gonna take revenge for him.

I said to myself there was no reason to be gentle then. And so for the first five moves I beat her with steady 30-point blows on overage, thus getting ahead by seventy not even needing a bingo. And so I even was in a position to afford to act tactically: after three moves with 9, 5 and 12 pts. value respectively, I got what I didn't need at all for the intended bingo – a six-point Ň. Well, I've learned quite a few lessons so I knew it wasn't worth pushing and throwing the Ň off. I saw a good spot for it – which would even almost make up for the bingo. Making vsuňme, “let's insert” or “let's put in”, using the blank for the V, thanks to the sixtupled Ň I get 56 points, making the gap between us yawn even more – 219 – 96. Getting some bingo-friendly letters again, I thought, with such a difference I can afford some tacticalness again. 11 – 6 – 4 – 10 … and yes – here it comes. Pure ocezení for 78... “strained around”, like with a sieve. Not that the bingo at this point of the game would decide anything, let alone the win or lose. I smash her by nearly two hundred – 445 – 251.

But I've asked for trouble by this. Of all the opponents present – Pavel Podbrdský, the up till recently number one on the chart and a triple national champ. The one infamous for having shitloads of good luck apart from the brains. But oh well, at least I know what to expect.

And indeed. Of course he draws the blank right among his first rack of seven. The bingo he makes with it right in his third move is too primitive – not worth a “top” player at all. Zatrhuj – just an imperative of an ordinary verb (to tick). The blank is a U for Ursula. Seventy-four. But hey, you ain't gonna get me that easily. I play a pure one of mine a move later, which he challenges but comes back good. Prokrven, “with blood running through”. Seventy.

“I'd rather have a look at that one,” he says. It's good, of course. BLOODY good. If blood can run through something, why couldn't that thing be run through by blood, eh...

Well, what so you think happens only five turns later? Of course. He picks the other blank. And plays another primitive bingo, right on the triple. I assume there's not much I could do about this ineffable luck of his, so I just let it go and play the best way I can to shrink the difference at least. I lose 426 – 329: ha, the first one on the chart needed both blanks and heaps of luck to beat me not even by a hundred.

And no relief after that. I get Jiří Kamín now, who's made it into the Championship ten times – i. e., every year since 2000 when he entered the scrabble scene – and now he's in the top 20. However, having beaten him several times already, I got no time to fear. Keeping him busy running neck and neck for the first seven turns, I come up with a pure 76-point doubled bingo after that. He challenges; it comes back good. When he plays a 43-point MANX three moves later, I'm already a hundred points away – too much for it to be a threat to me.

In my 14th move, still a hundred points away, I get what I don't expect at all – both blanks. It takes two “strategic” moves to play off two unsuitable tiles, whereupon I come up with the bingo nekvačíš, a present 2^nd person singular negative of “to be outta here”.

“You all just can't play without them blanks,” he grumbled. Haha! Like, hadn't I played this second bingo, I would've still been in the lead by 70.

I smash him 426 – 276, hitting the first third in the continuous ranking of the tourn – 21^st of 64. This kicks in another dose of optimism – let's move even higher.

Tomáš Fanta, I read on the 6^th round match-ups. Oh yeah, the better you do, the tougher it gets. Let's make another cup of coffee … you're gonna make it, and this time I don't mean the coffee!

I was expecting a tough one... but not that tough. I was sweating like a pig, my brain at the brink of overheating, trying to get the shit out of the tiles. In the 12^th move I come up with a 59-point possessive-case bingo idiotova, “[an] idiot's”, but as it was quite lame point-wise, he was right back breathing on my neck with his score again.

There was this spot on the board which we both saw and watched – all it took was to add a D and it would make you 40 points. The one to get this D was Tomáš – and no, I don't mean me :{)> I, though, shot back with a 40-point fonuj, which his eyes popped at. “What weird words you're playing on me today,” he comments on that as he's picking himself up from the chair to challenge.

“The imperative of fonovat – to phonate, to carry out phonation,” I hand the definition even before validating the word.

The main surprise, that's to say, was to come at the very end, during our last moves. I worked out a most efficient plan to go out but said to myself, oh well, if he did before me, I still got little or nothing to deduct so I should still be okay.

“Eight, out,” says Tomáš. Where's that usual pissed-off expression on his mug he has when he loses? That's strange. Maybe he's changed, you say? Haha! As House, M.D. would say – people don't change.

“So, it's three zero five to three two two, right?” I check. In my favor, of course.

“Eh? I got three two five to three two two.” In his favor, for a change.

“Let's check.” Hopefully it's not me who's made the mistake!

“Here it is,” I say after awhile, rejoicing in my mind to have found the error. It's him who's miscounted it, so the win is mine. “Sixty-eight plus forty-one.”

“And? What's wrong with that?” he tries to make a marveling grimace. Ha! Are you tryin' to fool me?

“Well, that's definitely not one two nine,” I grin. “It's one zero nine.”

A few second of deadly silence. A straight look in my eye, and he knows he ain't gonna convince me with this attempt at bullshit. You can read on his face what's going through his mind. How could I be that full of shit and lose this game because of this one stupid miscount of mine?? Fuck, shit, fuck, guess I'm gonna hit the roof.

“I suppose you were so laid back when playing cuz you thought towards the end that you had the game nailed, eh?”

“You bet!”

Tom went and unburdened his stupid loss to just about every person he bumped into. Chit just happens...

Eighteenth in the continuous ranking of the tourn – that's an ordinal number I kind of like! But well, which cutthroat am I going to get now?

Marek Lašťovka. Oh okay. A tough opp but I've beaten him quite a couple of times, both at tourns and at the scrabble site.

Remember this 43-year-old black-haired archivist and typesetter with glasses, moustache and beard? No? And, you say, what makes him so special that I should remember him among the loads of opps you've had over the past four years you've been playing tournament scrabble?

Well, it's like this – he was my very first opponent at my very first tourn. Back in Volyně in 2007, and Pavel Žibřid said that day I was a poor, unlucky fellow to have gotten matched up downright against him. That was long ago though – I have beaten him several times since then, so no reason to fear now.

And I say that all the time: it's all about attitude... I've just told myself I had nothing to fear, and here I come with a 45-point AXON as early as in my second move. He, though, shoots back with a 28-point tógo, a vocative case of tóga, TOGA, to be neck and neck with me again for the next few moves. I start getting behind, but as you might guess, just because of cooking a bingo.

Heck. I just can't make one up... save this poor one for 58 points. Grrr. There must be a fattier one, come on.

There just isn't one. So I play this bookish nezkopit, “not to put into a pile”. Fifty-eight. He challenges. “Let's have a look at nezkopit,” he pronounces it thoroughly, which was just a sign of how weird he finds the word. Of course it's good. Among my new rack of seven I find the other blank and use it in my very next move for rolbu, for 33 points, the accusative case of rolba, which is a special vehicle for removing snow (“snow cat”). He plays an invalid word which I challenge off, so instead of catching up, he still stays 34 points away. Although he tries hard to catch up (his 27-25-22 series towards the end of the game looks pretty threatening), I win this hard hell of a fight 332 – 306. 11^th in the continuous ranking... sweet. But well, less sweet is a mere thought of who might await me in the next round.

Věra Majtánová, say the mach-ups. Great – I couldn't wish for more: if I'm supposed to have my ass kicked by a top player now, then at least by a nice one.

“We've both already qualified for this year's championship, so let's just have a nice game,” I say, speaking her mind.

As soon as I let that one out, she throws a pure bingo. It seems weird, and indeed, I challenge it off. And play one of mine instead, a good one this time. 80. Whack. And then one more. Actually not a bingo this time, but of an equivalent number of points – 63. Thus kicking myself into a 104-point lead as soon as in the 3^rd turn, I don't relieve the push, going on with 24-30 and tightening the board with an inextensible word. Later on, I double-triple a word, which gives me 42, and squeeze the shit out of the X for 45 in my very next move. Getting far over 400, she, for her part, was glad to make it over 300 at least.

“How did you do?” A friend player stops by and asks. He gets astonished at seeing the score, looking at the sheets we are just signing – 305 – 439 in my favor.

“How could I have done when he played about twenty bingos against me?” she sneers.

“I made just one bingo,” I tried to defend.

“Well, this was a bingo,” she points at my 60-point ťapce, grinning, “this was a bingo,” – this time she comments my ex, vestě, and vy for 45 points in my 13^th move – “and this was a bingo,” she attributes the same quality to my tripled oči and uď for 42 points.

 

Radek Mannheim watched the qualification chart and said he had a “personal goal” – to finish above me in it. Well well – seems like you're going the wrong way, sir! You'd better turn around, go straight on and then turn left.

 

Last round. The obvious – could you please put the tiles back into the bag when you finish playing, turn off the clocks, etc …

Oh dear. Who am I gonna get as the last-round “present”if I'm 7^th of 64 in the continuous ranking of the tourn now?

 

Milan Kuděj, reads the verdict of the match-ups. Are you shittin' me??

You sure remember this stout bearded guy. Yeah, he's Katka Rusá's uncle and the talent for scrabble is running in their family, he being a triple National Champ.

I say to myself, I've already secured a place in the top ten of this tournament, so let's just have some fun now – anyway, it's improbable we'd win against Milan.

And so, while other players were frowning and racking their brains over their racks, Milan and I at table #1 were laughing our asses off all the time. And surprisingly, his good mood didn't freeze even in the 6^th turn when I played a bingo. I don't say threw on purpose – because I took it slow just to enjoy the act of putting a bingo against a triple National Champ. First I laid državá* on the board, stopping for awhile and pretending to hesitate. That's to say, this looks like a feminine adjective, and I meant to make him think for a few moments that I was going to play a non-word.

He just smiled into his beard. But for a different reason. “This is a good word,” he commented the non-word just before I pressed the clock. “Had you played državách, it would have been worse.”

He knew. He knew exactly that this was what I was going to do. And so, as I put a blank for the C followed by the H tile, we burst out guffawing together. (Državách, the locative plural case of država – a territorial possession.)

“You didn't buy it from the beginning, did you,” I said, wiping tears of laughter off my eyes.

“Not really,” he confirms. “Državá isn't a word, duh.”

But this wasn't going to be the end. I went on beating him with blows worth 30, 37, 30, getting into a 100-point lead after five moves. He didn't lose his good mood even then. Not even after the 16^th move when it was clear that while I have gotten over 400, he wasn't even going to pile up 300 points. That's to say, as I announced a pass, he deliberately played off one tile after one tile, to gather as many points as possible even though he knew was going to lose by more than a hundred. Now, there's this difference between the Czech verbs hrát and hrát si – both of which translate as to play, while the other one, followed by the reflexive pronoun si, is used generally for children and the activity they do most often (playing, i.e., with toys, etc.). And so, while Milan killed his tiles he had left one by one and I kept passing, he followed each of his moves by this question, “Can I keep playing?”, USING, as you might figure out, the reflexive verb, so it sounded like from a little boy asking his dad to let him play for a bit more.

It wasn't the first time I had beaten this triple National Champ at a tourn. The first time I did – at the tourn in Náchod in 2008 – I even won a by-prize for the “most surprising winner”. But it was by mere 17 then, while now by more than a hundred – 404 – 293.

 

Now, an only disadvantage of ending up among the first five became obvious: the results were read from the back, so I had to wait for the very end. But time was not what I had at that moment. I had a watch on my wrist but no time on my hands. And guess I've just missed the last streetcar which would have gotten me to the station in time.

I asked Katka whether the next streetcar would make it too.

“Well... if you're lucky enough,” she grinned. Hm. Which I'm not. I guess I've had my daily share of good luck at this past tourn, eh...

“The sixth place: Ivo Hradský,” announced Pavel Vojáček, the scrabble association director, a top player himself and the organiyer of this fall Prague tourn. Hey, starting with Ivo, these already are 7 – 2 people – my category! Those with seven wins.

“The fifth: Tomáš Rodr.” Cool. This time I was even glad not to have ended up any higher – cuz that way I would've had to wait for a few seconds longer and might have had a hard time catching the train. Which I actually already do!

I won a bottle of good wine. Said a quick good bye to Katka and ran, as she said I could manage with a bit of luck.

 

Of course I didn't. Of course I didn't catch it, but knew of one more going my direction four minutes later. The only drawback to it being the fact that it was going to be more expensive. But oh well. Fuck the money! I got my prize, got my fifth place of 64, and have had a great time!

 

As I was leaving, I heard the rest of the results, too. The tourn was won by guess who!

Of course – Milan Kuděj, his game against me being the only one he lost at this tourn. That's why! That's why he was in such a good mood and didn't even let his losing to me destroy it – cuz he knew it wouldn't have prevented him from being first!

 

Drenched with sweat I arrived at the train station. What about this renowned, omnipresent delay of Czech trains? Of course – it's up and gone when you rely on it. As I have already said, I had to take a bit more expensive one, but oh well. I should get away with my two-way ticket.

Now, as I arrived at the Pardubice station and got off to change trains, I had some time left, so I wanted to buy some of this renowned Pardubice gingerbread. There were two booths open at the station: a newsagent's that was full of it (meaning of the gingerbread) and a shop with various other things including a bit of the gingerbread, too.

Now, as I approached the newsagent's, the newsagent didn't care a hoot and kept on PDAing with a guy inside. Just takes the biscuit, eh? Or, actually, takes the gingerbread. When I said the store was full of it, I didn't know the attribute would fit better to the wench inside. And no, this time I don't mean gingerbread.

So I went to the other store. A lot narrower choice of gingerbread fillings and flavors but oh well, what the hell. I ain't gonna play a spectator to some showers-off just to get a better choice of fillings.

As I enter the Pardubice-Hradec passenger train, I hand the conductor my ticket.

“You may have given me the wrong one,” he gives it back to me.

What the hell? I have traveled all the way from Prague with this one ticket, with the conductor on the previous train acting like everything was all right.

“Not really. This is the one I've traveled with all the way from Prague.”

“And nobody noticed...?”

“No... not even me.” Not even the SuperCity Pendolino conductor...!

Grrr. So I just had to cough up my last bucks for a Pardubice-Trutnov ticket. And just because of the sleepy conductress on the 4.37 Trutnov-Hradec train who had apparently overheard me saying I wanted a TWO-WAY ticket...!

But oh well. The main thing is to get home safe and sound ... to recover the strength for the upcoming Championship!

 

Remember what Radek Mannheim said about his “personal goal”? Haha – in the end he finished 29^th in the championship qualification, while I'm 12^th. So we both qualified, duh, as the first 32 do, but he didn't finish above me as he strove to... see you at the National Championship, on November 26^th in Kadaň!

poslal scrabblista, 22.11.2011 22:43:00, Komentáře (0)

**bez titulku**

The Třinec Qualification Tournament

Třinec, CZ, Sat Aug 28^th 2011

 

 

When the tournament in Třinec was first announced, I instantly thought “okay, that's nice that there's gonna be a new tourn in a place it's never been before, but it's too far away for me to go.”

Indeed, it couldn't be put more eastwards – it was because it was its organizer's, Michal Sikora's, hometown. I commented it in such a way that it was probably going to be one of those two to three tourns per year I traditionally skip taking part in.

“You're gonna have to go there – there's gonna be team league.”

Oh well. Why not after all – playing tournament scrabble is so much better than sitting on your ass at the comp playing it online. And I'll still need a bit more qualification points, anyway.

What a crazy idea to put the third team league to such a faraway town – but it may as well be on purpose, for this tourn in the faraway town to gain more attendance.

Thank God for the university studies – it gives you friends from all over the republic. So I called Radim, a friend of mine from the halls of residence at the time of my uni studies, and he agreed to put me up for three nights in his place in the nearby town Karviná.

 

As I arrive at the Karviná main station, the first person I bump into is Radim's father. We know each other from last year when I first came to see Radim in December before the past-championship tournament of the top 12 Eastern players vs. top 12 Western ones in Ostrava.

We waited for a bit until Radim came – he works as as a cartography scientist in Brno where he had studied (that's where we got to know each other as we were neighbors at the halls of residence). We shook hands again, got in their car and headed to their place.

When we arrived, Radim's extremely nice mom was already awaiting me with dinner. What could I wish more after such a trip across half the whole republic. I planned on stopping by in Frýdek-Místek, a nearby town where another friend of mine from the university years lived but I sort of didn't find the time between the trains and Frýdek was a bit out of the way anyway.

 

After a delicious dinner we spend some time chatting and watching The Green Mile with Radim and his parents. I had already once seen it, but that was years before – just as long as to remember the only thing about it, namely that it was a great one.

It was. A moving movie – just as I remember. It was necessary to hit the sack quite early to get up fresh the following day. Radim willingly got up with me and so did his parents, whereupon his mother was ready with breakfast soon. Would you dare dream about such something in a best hotel?

 

Radim drove me to the station and waited till the train disappeared around the bend, being driven to a town I had never been to before. Radim, though, didn't even mind printing a map of the route for me. I found the place quite easily according to it, let alone when I met some other participants of the tourn. The ones that have already been to Třinec took the leading position and so we soon reached the place.

Not a very nice place to live. The first thing you see on getting off the train is the local famous steel plant with a lot of smoke that comes from it. We pass by it and go on, chatting on the way, about a mile further and find the cultural house the tournament is supposed to take place in. It was the first tournament Michal Sikora's ever held, so we were curious about how it was going to proceed. He promised to bring a lot of food to “come close to the Zlín tournament ideal”, so should anyone do bad at the tourn, (s) he could pretty well be sure of enjoying a lot of yummies.

 

If I thought the first game was going to be a piece of cake, I was mistaken – I don't know how it's possible but in contradiction with the common first round lot I got Marek Holba, a top player rated close to me (1798 – just one place over me, while I'm 1791 now) whom I managed to shatter at the 2010 Finals.

Now, though, I start off with an inexplicable failure. Getting the beautiful combo combination ADĚNRST, I miss the bingo it offers, and instead play strnadě*, which I think to be a present participle of the incompletive form of vystrnadit, “to hound sb out”. There's no incompletive form of it apparently, so it gets challenged off and Marek grins, saying, well, I have to block it in some way, as I can see a bingo there.

As soon as he uttered this, I saw it as well. Srdnatě, duh! “In a lion-hearted way.” Owwww... now it's too late. He's gonna mason it – play a word I can't use as a hook.

Of course. He plays the word KID, which in Czech is a kind of leather (or colloquial for “bullshit”, as well) and which, by the way, isn't extendable by any letter contained in srdnatě, of course – Marek counted on this. First I tried to hook it on kid making skid, which is possible in English but of course not in Czech – but as Marek I had to break this beautifuil bingo up. Luckily, though, I drew a blank, which was apparently meant as comfort, making me able to put together another bingo two turns later – stínané, “beheaded”, with the blank for the first N. As if pissed off at myself for the bingo I missed, I went for quite a couple of other strong moves, úlový, adjective “pertaining to a beehive” for 39, chuť , “taste”, with the sixtupled seven-point ť for 77 – mmm, that tasted sweet! But I bet it did bitter for ya, Marek! – and, finally, hájům, a dative plural case of “grove”, for 42.

The latest one mentioned, though, already had to face a tough stuff from Marek again – a tripled pure 98-point bingo porubaný, “felled to the last tree” – which is excactly how my chances of winning felt after this. However, I played the already mantioned 42-point move and got a bit closer again, or very close, to be exact. Three moves later he tried another bingo, one of which he, as a top player, must have known that it was wrong. Maybe he waited to see if I'd buy it. No I won't, hah. Ordinary people don’t know how to handle these ancient present participles but we scrabble players from the top 30 of the chart, we do. I challenged, saying: “This isn't going to be good.”

“Why not?” grinned Marek, playing the fool.

“'cause it's a perfective verb – they don't take on this kind of present participle.” Whether he just wanted to “quiz” me or whatever, I was right.

But if I rejoiced in my mind, the joy may have been what prevented me from thinking twice before making a blocking move. What I did, that's to say, was that I blocked the triple in case he'd rearrange the letters into a valid bingo this time. He, though, discovered another spot to put a good bingo in and then went out in his next move, so he won this exhausting fight with us enjoying an awesome highsore sum of 860 points.

 

If you expected “classics” at table #1, where the current #1 on the Chart Pavel Podbrdský was playing, i.e. that he'd shatter his opp to pieces, then you're mistaken. Břeťa Basta, who's the current #6, won over him 379:416. As I was writing this particular line, I thought, hey, how's that possible? It used to be that the players were cut in half – heh, I don't mean killed or beheaded, I mean the number of participants of the tourn as a group were cut in half and ranked according to their ratings, and in the first round people from the first half were to play against people from the other half. Since recently, though, the rules for the first round lot drawing have been based on a total random pick.

 

After the continuous ranking after the first round had been pinned up, Michal Sikora, the organizer of the tourn, announced a first of the many by-contests: “Every winner of the round is going to get a little winner cup.”

By the winner of the round he meant of the player who manages to be first in the continuous ranking made traditionally after every round. This time it was the 1781-rated Hana Filipová, who fights her way into the finals along with her mother Milena – both known under the nickname “The Shrews” (the Young Shrew and the Old Shrew).

Now, when I saw this little winner cup – I burst out laughing. It was a cup – an ice-cream cup!

 

For the second round I get the old Parnas co-member Pepa Grosskopf, who substituted Jirka Kracík in the team league when suffered from a long-time illness, recovering from a tumor in the throat. By the way, Jirka is back safe and sound, this being the first tournament he ventured to go to after the long break.

As I shoved a bingo onboard as early as in my 4^th move, Pepa let a smile from under his moustache, saying I had always been a lucky ass. Which I couldn't agree on, as I had to swap letters right the next turn – to be able to play a 34-pointer then. (I prepared the “soil” for it by playing a letter in front of a double-word and then used it in two directions at once. He answered with a bingo of his, so in spite of the rating difference between us – about 300 points – beating him isn't apparently going to be that easy.

It was, after all. When I got through the hard part – the beginning – the bag apparently got tired of trying me and I started my “standard” whacking the opp with steady non-relieving strong moves. I win 337 – 396, getting to the first half of the continuous ranking of the tourn – 24^th of 52.

Noon was approaching and it was getting hotter and hotter, which we felt in the playing room as well, where the air was getting thicker and thicker, and not only because of the competitive atmosphere. Saša Willerthová – the one known for her infamous dirty mouth – couldn't not comment on that in her noninterchangeable way: “Folks – don't y'all breathe or fart.”

 

I knew I was asking for trouble – I did not know though that it was going to be so much trouble. Right the triple National Champ – Martin Sobala, one of the best, if not THE best, Czech scrabble player, a fresh daddy and 5^th on the Chart.

However, I told myself I wasn't going to get intimidated, and started off in accordance with that: 38 points. Whack. 84 points. Shack. 40 points. Smack.

“You're on the roll,” he grinned. “That's gonna be a tiles-falling-just-one-way kind of game.”

As soon as he said that, he played a pure bingo for 92, which, on top of that, he hooked on that one of mine. And then three moves later one more, for 69. The game finished at an awesome score ratio 369:453, and as we discuss the game afterward, Martin sneers:

“It was about holding on and make it through the beginning, mentally: cuz you just went takkatakkatakkatakka, and then you were probably exhausted and I started having it my way.”

The winner of the third round, who got the “winner cup”, was Milan Kuděj, the triple National Champ, the current #10 on the Chart and Katka Rusá's uncle.

As I sit down against my fourth opponent, Lenka Paličková, it is announced that the team league starts here the following day at 8.30 AM – so as to be done as soon as possible to make us able to go and catch the last trains.

Tiles just went my way this time, and so although even Pavel Žibřid had said about her she was “dangerous”, I beat her quite easily by 50. I started off with a bingo, then played one more, a pure one this time and win 341 – 392.

The winner of fourth round becomes the tourn veteran and road engineer Iveta Vondrátová. Now, being 2 – 2, I don't think I need to be afraid of a top opp.

 

What...??!!!

Iveta Vondrátová, say the 5^th round match-ups. Oh well, I've beaten her at a tourn in the past, so let's see.

I set up a bingo on my rack early in the game, but as I got nowhere to put it on the board, I start being tactical and she, of course, smells what I'm after. So she starts jamming the board with inextensible words. I get quite busy creating a hook for the bingo of mine, and when I finally do (utavena – female for “finished being melted“, for 80, she's too far away – well, not too, just by about 50, but far away enough not to be caught upon. I lose 376 – 339, pissed off to the bone, as this makes me fall again as low as to the 36^th place of 52 in the continuous ranking of the tourn. Oh well, four rounds to go, it's gonna get better.

 

There's no advantage if you're playing at a tourn where the otherwise strong players don't do good. Cause if you lose, you're gonna get another strong player who has a bad day too.

And so, I get Pavel Chaloupka now. 38^th on the chart, 1732-rated, regularly qualified for the Finals (every year since 2000). As I'm going through my tournament recordings from the past years now, I find out I've actually never beaten him. If I don't count a few times online at the scrabble site (which I don't, of course).

My third move rack looks like a bingo to me. I try it but it gets challenged off. This throws me off a bit, as I had thought it good. Luckily I get a blank which helps me to a bingo five turns later. He, though, doesn't let me enjoy the slight lead for long and shoots back one of his. We went neck and neck until the 13^th turn which was a bit fatal – he challenged off a word of mine I had taken for good, and since then it felt as if everything started playing against me. There was this noun mix ending just before a double word, just as if waiting for someone to extend it by just any ending of that noun and put some other word in the other direction at the same time, but none of the possible endings kept coming to me.

Of course he was the first to get one. The double double-word got him as many as 52 points and decided the game in his favor, although he won just by 27... 357 – 384.

In the seventh round I get Richard Valent to play against: a 13-year-old boy but a great talent, so great that he even used to play the team league for the Sklípkani or The Trap-Door Spiders team.

At the Czech scrabble online site, he behaves like a pig – if you start off with a bingo, he leaves the game. Live, though, he turns out to be a nice boy. He shakes my hand, whereupon I strart butchering him. I don't even need a bingo to get in a 100-point lead, while he gets nervous and tries hard to whack some points out of a triple which I challenge off twice. To take the biscuit, I play a bingo to extend my lead to as many as 200 points. I kill him 236 – 425, jumping up five places in the continuous ranking. The winner of the round to get “the cup” is Petr Landa this time.

For my eighth opponent I get matched up against the Association president's son Filip Vojáček. I throw a bingo as soon as in my second move, vetchou with a blank for the H (the feminine accusative case of the adjective “decrepit”); he, though, shoots a pure one of his a turn later. Getting the other blank, too, I start working on another, by the time I have it ready, though, he escapes too far away from me. This game gets me most pissed off, as neither getting two blanks nor playing a bingo with each of them saved me from a loss – I burn it against Filip 382 – 416. In spite of the awesome sum of scores – it always sucks to lose against a lower-rated player, n'est-ce pas.

 

To relieve my pissed-off feeling, I shoot the shit (a situation the idiom can be taken most literally in!) with Věrka Majtánová, telling her about my first game at this tourn, which I lost 407 – 453.

“A losing score of 407 is common,” she triumphs me, “but try piling up 454 points and losing... [like she had done some time before that]!”

The winner of the last-but-one cup becomes Radek Mannheim.

 

Heck, I don't like being 35^th of 52 in the continuous ranking. I'm gonna smash my last opponent to the bone.

As if she, the 1593-rated Barbora Hrůzová, had heard me, she gets in a 70-point point lead as early as in her third move with a pure bingo. Probably to ease my hot blood this bingo started boiling, the bag gave me both blanks. To accompany a totally non-bingo-friendly combination, needless to say. As I get rid of these letters one by one, Barbora, of course, smells danger, and seeks to jam all the possible spots. One by one, too.

Now, there's this last one spot left. It's now or never – but I guess I can do it, the only drawback being the fact that the bingo has to start with an A.

Heck, there has to be one, I think, shuffling the letters to and fro.

 

Yessss!!! I can't help letting a laugh when putting it onboard, as I use one of the blanks for one of the most impossible letters most Czech scrabble players always seek to get rid of as soon as possible – the Ů. I play amantův, the masculine possessive case of the noun amant, a bookish expression for a lover. No wonder even she liked it and said nice with a trace of sincerity in her voice, with no heed to teh balnks. The game isn't secured though yet – it just made me a threat for her again.

This game is probably supposed to be thrilling until the very last move. She was still in the lead, but I knew she had high-value letters so she couldn't go out quickly. I counted the E's used on the board: 4 of 5, while I have the fifth; and the K's, two of three, while I have the third one. So in the right bottom corner of the board, I worked out a devilish plan – after getting rid of all the other letters in my rack, I could go out with the words fík (fig – the fruit of the fig) and kep (bookish for a raincoat), which, if her leftover consisted of one-point letters, could win me the game by two points.

 

It happened.

Stained with sweat, I check the final score on our sheets with her: 336 – 338. Oooopppphhh.

 

Heck, this ain't no good. 29^th of 52 with 4 wins of 9. I traveled those 300 kms for about three qualification points. But oh well, whatever – I'm gonna secure my qualification at the next tournament, held in three weeks in Brno. I need but just a few points after all. And besides – if you don't do very good at a tournament which is followed by a team league the day after, you're usually gonna shine there.

The tourn got won by the association pres Pavel Vojáček. An absolute surprise was the third place, taken by my 1691-rated friend Martina Iliasová. Her first scrabble medal ever.

 

And I did – but that's another story, or more exactly the next one. Coming soon!

 

Wait... hey, looks like this isn't the end yet. Ya know what...? As many as the first 30 get a price...! So I got one, too – an interesting-looking fiction book.

 

“Let me announce the results of the secret contests which were going on without you knowing about it,” Michal Sikora, the 2004 Champ and the organizer of this tourn, took us by surprise. Without having announced it, he ran a contest between the western and eastern players. The West won – it won 10 games more than us easterns. And, he ran a contest for the “best scrabble couple”, adding up the results of couples of players úresent at the tourn he knew dated each other. The winners of this by-contest were the suprise bronze holder Martina Iliasová and the Eight on the Chart – Petr Landa: the sum of wins of the two was 12.

 

Okay, back to packing my things for another tourn – the Brno one. See ya 2morrow – with the Třinec team league!

 

 

 

 

 

poslal scrabblista, 22.09.2011 10:48:00, Komentáře (0)

The Pardubice Qualification Tournament 2011

Pardubice, CZ, Sat & Sun Jul 16^th & 17^th, 2011

 

 

I looked forward to this one for another reason than to the Zlín one – this time for its length. The Pardubice tourn, that's to say, is traditionally a two-day, 15-round one. Lots of scrabble – and chances being that if you don't do good on the first day, the tables may turn on the other one.

The tournament is a part of a big annual game event in Pardubice called Czech Open where tons of other tournaments in various board games take place, enjoying attendance of participants from all over the world. So apart from 15 rounds of scrabble another thing for you to look forward to was an authentic big event buzz.

As I was looking for the most convenient train connection to Pardubice, I thought it wouldn't be necessary to take an earlier train than the 6.40AM one for this 100-km trip. I was mistaken though. It would have been possible to go by the 6.40 one but then, as it is necessary to take the Pardubice town bus to get me from the train station to the place of the tournament, minutes, even seconds would matter to me to make it to the tournament on time. So, not much enthusiastic about that at all, I gathered I was going to have to take the 5.40 train. Oh well – we'll take a nap onboard.

Having arrived to Pardubice, I had a while available before the town bus was due, so I went guess where? Right, of course – Pardubice is world-famous for its delicious gingerbread which I love, and a store selling it was situated right at the station. I stuffed my bag with tons of gingerbread packs and hurried to the town bus stop when a car stopped right next to me. It was the scrabble veteran Jirka Kamín, heading here from Prague, and offered me a lift to the place of the tournament. Good – at least I don't have to take the trouble finding the way myself, not to speak of having a good company and sparing a few bucks for the town bus.

When we all arrived (well, not all, actually – about three of the ones who had applied for the tourn were missing) though, having followed the arrows and signs saying SCRABBLE, we discovered all the large rooms have already been taken. The organizers have probably heard that there isn't more than 63 of us including the IT staff, so we had to make do with a small room jammed between two other ones and seats for the go tournament onlookers. Well, we did, but there was this adventurous moment where we had to climb over a traverse between two sections of onlooker seats to get us to the room. Luckily it was quite low so we all managed.

We knew we were going to have a good time so this obstacle was soon forgotten, as well as the fact that we were going to play in the hall owned by one of the biggest Czech power companies that sucks an arm and a leg from us all for consuming electrical power, while its managers all enjoy astronomic salaries.

Gathering that the three people missing aren't probably going to arrive anymore, Dana the IT manager drew the lot and we started, the first round opp pairs being matched up as usual – every “upper half player” was to get a “lower half opponent”. Back then when I was in the lower half the first round used to be a tough one, of course. Now that I'm among the top 35 players on the association chart, I know that the first round is going to be a rest – just to get me going.

František Růžička. Oh well – this guy can get dangerous, no doubt, but otherwise – his 1593 rating ain't gonna intimidate me, although he shone last year at the East-West Championship of the top 30 players where he even beat me and a lot of other strong players around.

As if he was telling me not to underestimate him, he started of with hooking a pure bingo on my first move. I was just about to appreciate it with a “shit” or something when I actually looked at the word he had played – I knew at first sight he had spelled it wrong. Ha! Don't you know poddajné, “submissive”, is spelt with a double D? Of course it wasn't good. He has to take it back and miss the turn – sure a dose of optimism for you when your opp starts off with a forced missed turn. Great – a way to go, man! Stay this submissive. Or “submisive*” if you like.

Five turns later, he does manage to play a good bingo. I challenge just in case but it comes back good, which makes the rest of the game a thrilling strive for a bingo myself, which I realize is the only way to catch up.

First, I make some hooks with non-perspective letters. Keeping only the “bingo-making” ones, I soon have a rack which does look promising. Still no bingo in it, though, but hey – in my freshly drawn letters from the bag, I welcome a blank to complement my promising-looking rack. Still not able to come up with a bingo, I make one last hook – to set me up downright at a triple. I say to myself, of all the hooks I've made, this is the one least likely to be left unblocked by him.

Revealing the seventh letter I've just drawn, I breathe a sigh of relief. A secret one, of course – not to be plain for him to see. This makes my bingo secured – and my win secured, as well. What if he blocks it here? Well, I can play it there. What if he fucks the spots up here and there at the same time? Well, I can play it over there.

You're destroyed, old man, I smile to myself. And yes – what he left for me of the hooks I had made is the one with the triple word!!! I shove the word lisknou there, a future tense of a colloquial verb meaning “to slap”. The colloquiality of the verb makes him challenge – well, maybe also the fact that it turned the tables in my favor.

I afforded a little “swinehood within the rules” with one word in this game. I played the word jenový, which could be an adjective made of the noun jen – the Czech for yen, the Japanese currency unit. I then hooked a word onto it with a M, making it the singular instrumental case (jenovým). When he yet extended it – with an A to make it a dual plural instrumental case. Now, what do you think I did? Ha! “I guess I'll challenge.” My own word, haha! It went off, but to his pity, not mine.

All of this contributed to a final deciding but well-deserved win of mine, 309 – 373, after which I had to acknowledge he's really been becoming a hard opp – which we saw in December in Ostrava at the Top-30 East-West tourn after all.

10^th of 53 in the continuous ranking of the tournament – not bad to charge me with optimism after the first round. But hey, cool down, there are 14 more rounds to go. And a tough guy for an opp in the upcoming round.

Something shocking has just happened at table #1. That's where the 1442-rated loser Milan Svrček had been seeded, to play his first round against the triple National Champ, Pavel Podbrdský, who apart from being good has been known for being a lucky ass. And guess what – yeah, Milan beat Pavel. Not by much – 337 – 312, but still, it's probably gonna remain the best scrabble scalp of Milan's life. As I said, the first round match-ups are done in such a way that the “lower half” players always get “upper half” ones to play against to get an “introductory kick in the ass”, but when shit happens and they kill the butcher – it's a hell of an event. Just like now.

 

Okay, up against the second round butcher.

Oh, I knew that. The scrabble association director himself – Pavel Vojáček. I do have beaten him quite a few times but with his 1760 rating he still remains a dangerous threat – I remember how he killed me last time we played. But hey – my rating is just 6 points lower than his after all.

And so, just like any other two about-the-same rated players, we start a cutthroat neck and neck fight. When on my seventh turn I shoot a bingo at him, he shoots back with one of his – which is even by 15 points fatter than mine.

As we run on, an interesting point turns up later on in the game. I feel my rack to be bingo-prone again, but I can't come up with one. I realize than even if I had one, there'd be nowhere on the board to play it. So I make what some would call an amateur move – a hook for me for two points.

 

It's a kind of funny feeling but I felt like since that two-point move of mine everything changed. I ran ahead again and this time left him behind. When I looked over my shoulder, he was forty points away. I win 383 – 337.

In his Word Freak bestseller about scrabble Stefan Fatsis noticed something about the different scrabble players' behavior after their game has finished. High-rated players discuss it, while low-rated ones break right right away and form the required ten-times-ten tile square on the board so the next player pair coming to the table know they haven't lost any of the tiles.

And so whadya think – of course Pavel and I do discuss the game. When I had thought the 2-point move of mine was a strange point in the game since which everything went my way, I was right – the 2-point move, that's to say, was actually enough to thwart his then plans.

“I had a 38-point word there,” he tells me. Oooophhh! Now I don't really mind not having managed to play the second bingo.

 

Tenth of 53 in the continuous ranking after the first round – well that ain't bad, is it? Sure good enough to inject optimism in your veins.

Three tables higher – to #6 for the third round. As I check the third round match-ups right after they are pinned up, I chuckle as there's another little soldier for me to kill. Little soldier – that's what vojáček means, and right after killing Pavel Vojáček, I now get his son Filip to play against.

Filip is nowadays said to be playing better than his father, although he has never qualified for any championship, while Pavel has been doing so regularly since 2003 with the only exception of 2006.

 

As we shake hands before the beginning of our game, I notice something shocking. Who usually appears here at the front tables are usually the well-known faces of us from the top of the chart, so regularly it almost looks tedious. But hey, what kind of ineffability is it today – not only one but downright two low-rated players – Viktor Hagenhofer and Milan Svrček right against each other are sitting there as high as table #3!

I knew this kind of game had to come. I didn't expect it that early though – as early as in this third round. I fight with shit – shit I keep getting all the game long. I fight bravely though – I keep up with Filip even with this shit. It's said that you know a good player when you see one not by what they can do with good racks – but on the very contrary by what they can do with shit. Well, but what good is it that I am probably a good player if I lose to Filip? Now he's still neck and neck with me but only thanks to having used a blank.

Now guess what. Now towards the very end, he gets the other blank as well. He uses it for an about 25-point move, which is enough to keep him ahead. He wins 309 – 287 – with both blanks, shame on him! With both blanks by mere 22, against all the shit I kept getting.

And hey – at the table next to us, Viktor has already piled up more than 400 points in this game against Milan and wins – to confront the triple National Champ Martin Sobala at table #1 in the next round! What kind of ineffability has been happening?

 

Despite the loss to Filip – probably due to the fast it was just by these damned 22 points – I fall just two places down in the continuous ranking of the tourn, to 10^th place of 53. I complain to Luboš Vencl, the top-21 player and nutrition advisor my age who I bump into after the round.

“Don't worry – a 14 – 1 record is still enough for the first place,” he grins, making me laugh – heh, I don't really expect to win this tourn. Although I ended up silver at the last one. Luboš tells me about his last game which was really exciting – he's just won by four points after all the hope for a win having abandoned him as at the end of the close game he got stuck with a 4-point Ý in his rack. He had to pass the three following turns of his and just watch his opponent adding points. What a relief it must have been for him to still eke out a win by four.

 

A loss, though a close one, always has a bright side to it – getting an easier opponent to play against. This time it was to be the pretty Zuzana Strnadová. She comes from Trutnov and occasionally turns up there so we have a game of live scrabble from time to time. Unofortunately, if I expected another of our good-time games, this was everything but a good-time one – at least for her, as she was probably getting similar shit to the one I kept drawing in my previous game. Securing a substantial point distance from her, I got a blank and tried composing a bingo but didn't manage in the end. I burned the blank when going out in my last, 18-point move – but even so, I won by 130. 368 – 238 – as I check the score statistics which are computed after this third round, I find out my current sum of scores is higher than that of the triple National Champ Pavel Podbrdský. This fills me with optimism – and when I find out my fourth opponent is going to be the scrabble devil Petr Vejchoda, I just lash my hand, oh well, this is the trouble I've been asking for.

Not sure if you remember him, and I don't think so – the only tournament he attends in the course of a whole year is this two-day Pardubice one. He's a star, no doubt, he's kind of too lazy to attend the other tournaments (luckily, we should say) and so he just attends this Pardubice one as one tourn per year is enough to keep him at the top of the chart. Hadn't he been lazy, he could already have qualified for many championships and perhaps become the National Champ – but he just prefers to sit at home playing scrabble online and be a star on the scrabble site.

Playing against such aces, quite paradoxically, puts you at ease – because you just know winning over them is next to impossible.

Opening my first handful of seven, I rejoice in my mind – having a blank since the very beginning helps. And not bad tiles to accompany it, either. I feel it's quite bingo-prone – so I play off one tile, which he accompanies with a grin of a classic scrabble player that he is, as opposed to us bingo throwers.

Not getting what I wanted, I decide to get rid of more tiles with a proper move – and only then, absolutely unexpected, the tiles for a bingo came. Life's just like this sometimes – you get what you pursue only after you give up the pursuit. I set up p?zděte in my rack, having a choice between pozděte – a 2^nd person plural imperative of “to be late” – and pizděte, a 2^nd person plural imperative of “to muck up”. For sure that I liked the latter better – although bookish, it comes from the vulgar Romanian pizdă, “a cunt”. He challenges. It comes back good and I hope a classic scrabble player with classic scrabble weapons doesn't catch up on this. He being, as I said, an excellent player, though, he did – I was glad to get the other blank to help me to a 30-point move towards the end, which – yes, YES IT DID – secured a win for me. 313 – 345 – no big deal with those both blanks, but against such a scrabble butcher a blank usually doesn't even help. Hearing congratulations from such someone as him was real music for my ears.

 

”I've beaten Vejchoda,” I can't not boast the first scrabble friend I bump into during the break after the game.

“Yeah... he told me so... he told me you mucked up his victory,” he grins, hinting at the word which won me the game.

I'm now sent as high as table #2. And yeah … asking for even more trouble. Trouble in the form of who we believe to be the best Czech scrabble player of all, the tip of the top and #2 on the chart – Martin Kuča. As I brought the previous round score sheet to Dana the IT manager – who is aactually his mother – to process them, she told me I was likely to get him for my next opponent. She was right.

As I had told myself before – I ain't gonna let anybody intimidate me, whether by their achievements – Martin being the 2008 national champ and a quintuple national vicechamp – or by their position on the association chart (his is stable – the second).

I was at the brink of pressing the clock after putting a five-letter word on the board, when I said to myself, wait, man. Why content myself with a sixteen-or-so-point word when I possibly got a bingo...!

The word “possibly” isn't something I utter just for kicks to describe the word: pozbytu. Frankly, it's so impossible I almost doubt it, needless to say it has probably never been used in a sober text, but it just sounds so grammatically probable it makes me think, if not this, then what's the correct completive accusative-case feminine adjective form of the bookish word “forfeit”?

Martin challenges. If it sounds impossible to one of the best Czech scrabble players, well, then it's really weird.

But....

… it's good, folks.

I breathe a sigh of relief; but hey, how long until this scrabble devil throws a bingo too?

What do you think?

Yeah. No more than one turn – he throws a nice adjective telnické, a place name derived from a Telnice town which I haven't heard of and so I challenge. (I have already mentioned in one of my stories that adjectives derived from place names are written with lowercase initial letter, wherefore they are not considered proper names and thus are allowed in scrabble.)

Three turns later he throws another bingo. As his lead grows to some 140, I say oh well, I know who I'm playing against after all.

Or not...?

As I draw a fresh couple of letters from the bag, I say to myself, hey, I smell a bingo in the air, but this time on my side again for a change. If things work out fine...

I make myself a hook under the left-hand corner and hope for the best.

Yesss. What has just come from the bag is not the usual shit but one of the high-probability combinations I had hoped for. Vískaje – what a nice bingo this will be, a nice ancient masculine present participle of the bookish verb vískat, to caress (one's hair).

 

Of course...! Grrrr. Of course he goes there with his move. Now where do I go with my bingo...? I am probably destined to stick it up my ass.

I spend a few seconds of my move tossing lightnings from the dark clouds in my eyes. Then I cool down and think, hey, there must be a way.

 

More than a minute later, after a thorough inspection of the board, the bulb switches on. Skvívaje! Man, is that possible? Another of those impossible ancient present participle forms of mine, this time with a repetitive infix in it on top of that. It sounds good to me though – in concordance with the grammar rules. But again, when I tell my mom later on the phone about this cutthroat bingo fight, she laments she wouldn't have found these two bingos in her wildest dreams.

 

I'd say the extra points the triple Martin had blocked in fact decided the game – he wins by 30. Even so, we reach this awesome score 379 – 409. And hey – he had both blanks! I guess I'm mucking satisfied with such a result.

The 1^st player on the Association chart, the triple National Champ Pavel Podbrdský, who is also infamous for being fucking lucky, is now 3 – 3 – looks like after his loss to a 1442-rated player in the first round predestined the way he was gonna do at this tournament. For example he lost to this half-Vietnamese beauty Žaneta Leová in the 4^th round.

“We have to win a lot to avoid Pavel!” Luboš Vencl, a top player himself – 21^th on the chart – tells the nice top-rated woman Věrka Majtánová with a grin.

Now, being 4 – 2 and 12^th of 53 in the continuous ranking of the tourn, who do I get?

Jiří Matějček . Ever heard that name? I don't think so. He hasn't been around the tournament scrabble scene for more than five years and all that time he had been nothing but just an average good player. At this tournament though, he had so far been doing extremely good – tiles just have been incredibly falling his way. He had beaten Jiří Kamín, Jana Vágnerová, and Pavel Vojáček, and now stands up against me (or sits down to be exact).

What do you think – after I play my first move, he gets a 101-point pure bingo into his rack without any work on it – just to throw it onto the triple. And shortly after that one more. My blood boils, I'm so pissed off I have to gather all my will and strength to suppress it. You fucking lucky bastard!

But this is not meant to be the end yet. This lucky ass, that's to say, has recently made moves on Dana the IT manager's daughter Petra who, for a change, had broken up with her boyfriend before that. And so, while Petra has been busy all the time since the beginning of the tourn, helping her mom process the results, all he did was annoying her and she, on top of that, seemed to be glad.

A few tiles before emptying the bag, a blank feigned to come to me, while I had long been thinking he had it as well. I managed to compose a last-minute bingo with it, but it only saved me from ending up under 300. To make the experience from this game even more sucking, Petra the IT manager's daughter, whom Jiří recently picked up in such a poor way, came to him and shamelessly put her arms around his neck. I didn't think you were into PDA. Go to hell with your showing off.

 

But I just grit my teeth and aim my sight into my rack. Whatever – I'm gonna lose anyway, now it's clear, no way to catch up anymore.

I did, but pissed off as I was, I could just as well tell myself there was not much I could have done about it. He has apparently been kissed by lady luck right on his ass this tourn.

I lose 329 – 442. Oh well, sometimes I feel like there's a great lot of destiny and predestination at the tourns.

Being seventeenth of fifty-three in the continuous raking of the tourn may not sound that bad to some of ya. But hey, I aim higher – especially after being beaten by such an average player...!

Still staying quite high – at table #12 for the eighth round – , I get another rather weak player doing good today – yeah, the one that beat the triple national champ Pavel Podbrdský in the first round: Milan Svrček, this old greying completely average-looking chap who met this beautiful young gal at a scrabble tourn and hit it off with her, the two getting married at once. What the heck was it she saw in him???

Whatever. I'll just kick your ugly old ass for this, old fart – at least scrabble-wise.

Of course this all is just what's on my mind and I'm not gonna speak it. He lets a faint smile and shakes my hand. Heck. I could do without the handshake in this particular case, but whatever, it's just a custom, none of an expression of a personal relationship with the player.

It was an easy – or, if you like, he was an easy game. And an easy prey. The fact that he had beaten a triple national champ in the first round – that was something I took for a lucky strike of his, which is indeed what it actually was, and nothing but it.

I told ya. I didn't even need a bingo or overrack my brains to make it 400. I win 327 – 411, this being the end for today. The second, “smaller half” of the tourn is going to take place the next day. 13^th place of 53 in the continuous ranking halfway through the tourn is something I can content myself with for the time being cuzzzz … I'll be back!!! Right tomorrow, with a new full stamina pack. And then let's push it even higher!

 

I have a friend in Pardubice from the university years, who stayed at the same halls of residence; he was on an archaeological business trip at that time, though. So had to travel to Hradec, which is quite nearby – about 25 km far away, to be put up for the night by my grandma.

 

She didn't mind to get up as early as 5.30 to remind me of the way to the train station and spend some time with me – she's an early bird after all anyway.

 

I didn't seem to have much of a choice as far as the morning trains to Pardubice were concerned. I headed for the 7.05 AM one, but as I arrived at 6.45 to the station, I saw a fast train coming right in my direction. Doesn't often happen, eh? An earlier train in your direction, let alone a fast one. I jump on, but if I looked forward to a short but nice and enjoyable trip, I was disappointed. The train was full of awful diesel smell. As I entered the nearest coupé, I noticed the seats were in different color than in the other coupés. And no, I haven't entered the first class...

To put it more exactly, the seats here weren't red as in the other coupés – they were grey. Put together with the diesel smell, I let a laugh, saying it looks like this coupé's been smoked.

 

With still a lot of time on my hands, I decided to save some further bucks for the town bus and go to the place of the tourn on foot. What's better for clearing up one's brains before a tournament than a proper walk on fresh air?

Having arrived, I still had like an hour before the other half of the tourn starts. But if you think I'm about to have to wait here and kick my own ass in boredom, you're – luckily – mistaken. The room had already been open, as downstairs there was a chess tournament in progress. And soon – minutes after me – Martin Hrubý arrives, another keen scrabble player, one who has been attending each and every scrabble tourn since 2003. Being a private investor, he travels a lot so he doesn't mind attending a tourn even if it's held say on the very other side of the republic. The games and clocks having been left where they were from the previous day, so Martin suggests what's obviously on our minds – what about having a “warm-up game”. We do; a good one as always between us. Just as we finish, Dana the IT manager and her daughter Petra come.

“Well, I just exactly expected that the two of you already would have been waiting here,” Dana grins. Yeah, two scrabble geeks, eh?

 

Looks like it's gonna take awhile to set up the coffee machine. Which is a shame, as a coffee's what I'd appreciate right now – I'm gonna get a butcher for an opponent. A scrabble butcher of course I mean: Martin Kapler, currently 29^th on the chart, hunts the scrabble scene since 2005 and since 2008 he regularly manages to qualify for the finals every year.

Tiles fell my way, though, in this game – even I myself had to acknowledge it. I got a blank in the very beginning, waited for some good tiles to come, then composed a bingo with it (psíkovi, a locative case of the noun meaning “little dog” the blank substituting the S), whereupon the new handful of seven gave me the other blank, too. With its help I soon compose another bingo, nekovech – a plural locative case of the noun nekov, denoting the opposite of a metal (from a chemical point of view). I've always been into chemistry :{))>

A few turns later he punches me with a pure bingo, but as it had taken him some time to compose it, it just shrank the difference between us to about a one-bingo one: 328 – 390.

As always, with my blitz-style I am done long before the end of the round, so I go and hang around among the tables. I stop by the table #7 where the final move of the game between Michal Přikryl and Věrka Majtánová is taking place. Michal is losing, but he's going out with the word zadek – buttocks.

The other observing players let an amused chuckle, one of them saying, “Well, you've shown her, right!”

 

Yeah, he's shown her – the ass :{))> at least in letters.

Another great game to watch in progress is in its conclusional phase – surprisingly – at table #1 (as always … and as it should be, after all), this time between the scrabble site devil Petr Vejchoda and a young talent Břeťa Basta, a handsome man my age living a double life. Their score is fucking close, so a few of us gather around with bated breath. Petr wins thanks to the letter G which Břeťa has to deduct from his score...

 

As I'm now 10^th of 53 in the continuous ranking of the tournament with a current 6 – 3 record, I can now expect … well not a butcher but downright a scrabble grim reaper, eh?

You may remember whom I once called that – the old-as-hills top player Jarda Kodym who really does look like one. However, he quit tournament scrabble last year, saying it turns out too expensive for a pensioner.

So if I now call my upcoming opp a grim reaper, it's because of his scrabble rating an achievements. A triple national champ, last year's vicechamp and the current #3 on the Chart, who had to cancel his participation at many of this year's tournaments because of his wife expecting a child. Yeah, the one who won the Slovak championship last year as well – Martin Sobala.

We get both blank each right in the first few turns of our game, which makes it even more interesting. Martin uses it as early as in his fourth move in a bingo – how typical of him, eh – but as I reckon on that, I don't let him enjoy the lead for long. Five turns later I come up with a bingo of my own. Nepábila, with a blank for the E – a negative past tense of the verb pábit coined by the world-renowned Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal, which means “to talk in one long, not much reason-controlled complex sentence”, let me approach to his current score again.

But then something happened. In the scrabble set of every language mutation there are some letters which are generally felt to be sort of “unwelcome” whenever they come. In the Czech set they are the 2-point C (three in each set) and the 4-point accented Ý. Now, I swapped them in about the middle of the game and got them again towards the end when there already was nowhere to burn them – only to get to know during our after-game talk that originally it was him who threw them back into the bag at the beginning of the game. So I now deduce them from my score – I'd lose anyway but thanks to them the difference is higher by eight now. Even so, I'm more than satisfied – it's not that bad, against a triple national champ and generally one of the best, if not THE best, Czech scrabble player – 342 – 378. I did the right thing at the beginning of the game, which contributed to this good final result – I had a “bingo-prone” combination of letters on my rack, but no bingo being possible to make of it, I just let it go and played the best move the combination offered, instead of playing small moves and waiting for a bingo forever as I did back at the beginning of my tournament life.

Eleventh in the continuous ranking. Heh, I fell just by one place in comparison with the previous round. And I get the 1500-rated beer-bellied Pepa Nerodil for my next opponent, who as I can see, has been dong pretty good too.

For some reason, he stays on sir/madam terms with most players, so when we shake hands, he's like “good morning, Mr Rodr”. So as a bonus to my greeting, I start off with a more than 100-point bingo, *xantypu, with the X quadrupled – which I thought to be the accusative case of the Czech for a xanthyppe , a shrew. However, the Czech shrew is spelt with an I, xantipa, unlike the Anglophone xanthyppe (and the spellcheck here wants an I, too – huh? I've seen the English version in a dictionary with a Y, and unfortunately it stuck in my mind.). So Josef challenges it off to my surprise. Oh well – I use the X in another nice move, though not a bingo, and play a bingo three moves later – and this time a tripled one, for 86. I race forward, leaving him behind by like 200 points, and even though he plays a bingo later on too, in the 14^th move (přistál, the maculine past participle of the verb “to land”, with a blank for the á), but this does not stop him from losing by more than 150. I get far over 400 and with with my highscore of this tournament, 451 – 300. Being seventh of continuous ranking sounds far better!

As I record this game into my scrabble note-book, I have been doing so for the past four games on its carton cover as there was no more room to write in, and now, after the game with Josef, there wasn't more room even on the carton cover. I thought about a way to continue recording my tourn results and prevent myself from losing it before I reach home.

And hey, I've got an idea. How about using the other side of the score sheet of the game we played before the other half of the tourn, the “warm-up” with Martin Hrubý – this could even enable me to save this “unofficial” game of ours. But I just have to get a shot of Scotch – oops, I mean a piece of Scotch tape!

 

Well, I'll just ask the IT managers, Dana or her daughter Petra – they're always ready with just about everything.

“Do you happen to have a piece of Scotch tape, please?”

“It depends,” Dana answers something most unexpected. Like, either she does have one or not – what could it depend on? Heh. But she puts a clarification to this mysterious answer right away, when she sees I just need to fasten the score sheet into my note-book. “Okay then, here you are – I just thought, had you needed to fasten together your shoes, this Scotch tape wouldn't have been strong enough to do so. For paper this one will do.”

 

It worked. Thanking her, I run towards the noticeboard in the hall, where the match-ups of the upcoming 12^th round have just been pinned up. Now that in my note-book there's room enough to record it in, I'll kick the upcoming opp's ass – on the ass, there's always a lot of room to kick!

 

Oooooppppsss. Guess I aimed a bit too high now, being 7 – 4. Whodya think I get? Of course, the triple National Champ Pavel Podbrdský, who's apparently gotten over his initial bad luck and now he's back again kicking asses.

And yeah, it wouldn't have been him hadn't he shoved on a pure bingo early in the game – postáli, a 3^rd person plural past simple of “to stand for a while”, and another one, this time with a blank, four turns later. Bingo-prone combinatio not coming to me, I just had to rely on the “classic“ wepons such as bonus squares, so for instance, a word with a sixtupled Ř yield 42 points for me. Not giving a fuck about bingos helped me – I shrank the difference between us to a one-bingo one. Now, when I turned the bag the wrong side up to show it was empty, what do you think I held among the last handful of tiles? Yeah – the blank. ONLY now. Typical, eh?

At least it allowed me to go out with a nice word even this player who shines at the top of the chart didn't know.

As he was staring at the word – tátoš, a kind of horse – , he started laughing, “you're playing for beauty, eh?” Well, what's left for me, if the winner has already been decided. “It's like,” he turns to Katka Rusá at the neighboring table, “you once played [the word] exošach [exochess, a game resembling chess].

Jiří Matějček, the average good player doing extremely good today who recently picked up Petra, Dana the IT manager's daughter, has just played the word sexujme – colloquial for “let's have sex” at the nieghboring table, #3.

I lose 409 – 343 – which, against a #1 on the chart and a lucky ass in one, ain't that bad at all, is it.

 

Instead of a “weaker player”, though, I get another butcher – well, okay, just because everyone's weaker than the guy at the top of the chart I've just played against. Jarda Buksa, an old scrabble veteran is currently 23^rd on the Chart, and has fought his way nine time into the finals so far – every year since 2002. So far though, I have a positive win-lose ratio with him – 3:1 in my favor, and the only loss was by 9 points – at last year's finals as you sure remember.

I get a blank right at the first draw, but chit to accompany it, so I just save it for better times. They come at the most unexpected moment: four turn later, that's to say, I start drawing the following shit from the bag: the 8-point Ď, the 4-point impossible uniquely-Czech letter Ř, the 3-point accented É, the 2-point accented Á... so as a result, this is what I hold in my rack: ÁĎEÉNŘ?. Even to those – or especially to those – of you who don't speak Czech it's probably clear that this looks anything but rosy – too many accents in a rack is just like having too much of anything anywhere.

Butttttttt.... heh, do I mean but or butt? Guess! Ha. BUT – I say, this is SOMETHING! I behold a Ž at the H11 position on the board. The double-letter square right under it could help me to a pretty bunch of points if I play the 8-point letter Ď as a part of the word žďáře, an ancient masculine present participle of the verb žďářit, to burn woods [in order to gain room for a new agricultural area]. I started counting my points, knowing it would make me about as many as seventy of them thanks to the sixtupled Ď, when --- hey!!!

I stopped counting and took all of my letters back. Ya think I've just gone crazy? Nope! On the very contrary, I've just gone sensible. Contenting myself with only about seventy points would be way too humble when there's much more … right there!

That's to say, the previous world I nearly played, žďáře, inspired me of a bingo I could make of these at-first-sight-impossible letters. If you burn woods, they're burned, duh – ŽĎÁŘENÉ! The plural passive adjective made of this verb, to burn woods. Hands trembling, I count the shitloads of points. You know, I've put these fat letters on double word. Ninety-four!

This having pumped elan into my veins, I race forward unleashed. I get the other blank, too, and play another bingo, vyhojili, the third person plural past tense of “to heal [esp mentally/one's anger by bitching up somebody]”. Jarda shrinks the difference to just a one-bingo one with good moves, and this is how it stays – I win 436 – 350.

 

Having finished the game early as usual with my blitz tactics, I come downstairs to the pub to let my hair down a bit. A few players who have also already finished their games are chatting here over beer. I desire one too, ya bet! It's too hot outside, and nothing does you as good as a mug of cool golden-shining drink.

I meet Štěpánka Procházková here, a newcomer to the tournament scene, and drink the beer while engaged in a good, relaxed chat with her and her boyfriend. Since the beginning of the tourn, she was talking to me about her impression she had from it and I often had to encourage her saying there's no such thing as an easy beginning.

 

So, what nice surprise do you have for me, I say to myself having come back recovered. Well, a really nice surprise, and this time I do mean it, no irony – Katka Rusá! Come on, dear friend, and let's have a nice game regardless of the result. Quite paradoxically, though a national champ in 2003, she's now rated lower than me after she has bombed out at several tourns lately. But she's gonna be back up there after this one!

I draw a blank right in the first handful of letters. I expect some mud to accompany it, and at first, it looks like that: a C, a V, an R, a P... the whole thing looks like this: CLOPRV?. My fingers itching to swap the awful C and V, and maybe the P and the R, too, I tell myself wait – here comes a bingo! Provlec. Ever heard that? Well, scrabble players have – a very bookish imperative of “to reeve [most typically a thread] through [the eye of a needle]”. Four turns later I come up with a 32-point chuďas, a bit colloquial for a poor fellow, for 32 – not quite a poor fellow, ha. Even six turns later I still enjoy a good lead, when she, totally out of the blue, bingoes too, with nabodni – the imperative of to impale, the blank for the D, and made the game a unsure-winnder fight again for awhile.

But then another unexpected thing happens, this time of a totally different nature. We have a visitor – Markéta Gutmanová, the nice fair-haired lady you sure remember to be a top player until 2010 when she had to put a break to her scrabble career because of pregnancy, retiring from the scrabble scene in high stage of it already. So she just came to see us at the tourn, her baby in her arms.

“You're bringing up a future scrabble player, eh? A way to go!” I sneer.

Before long though, the baby started crying and it took Markéta several seconds to calm it down.

“Dunno – five,” said Katka with a fed-up face, playing a five-point move and pressing the clock. On emptzing the bag, I had already gained a safe 30-point lead again. But it was a hell of a fight – especially from that bingo of hers on. I win 392 – 363.

“I'd play a move worth more,” Katka comments her five-point word, “But I just got out of it by that baby bitching. I can't stand little children.”

 

The last round – I end up at table #5. A good jump from the #19 in the first round, eh? Means a jump up on the chart as well.

I tried a quadrupled bingo on my fourth turn. To my surprise, it got challenged off, although I talked to my mom on the phone and she, not a scrabble player but always bright in Czech, thought it legitimate too. Oh well, it apparently wasn't in the dic(k)tionary. I play a bingo, valid this time, again two turns later, and then even one more, but he plays his for more than 100, and then keeps racing ahead with fat non-bingo moves while I strive with shit. He wins 422 – 358, the sum of our scores – 780 – being sure awesome but I was pissed off of course, as a game which looked promising and turning in my favor in its initial phase went completely wrong in the end. Oh well.

 

As I said in the beginning, this tourn was a part of a big event in which dozens of tourns in other board games were being played at the same time, so we were told to come downstairs for the prize ceremonial where the results were to be read and prizes awarded. Which was fun; first, we saw the list of people who had applied for the tourn: we discovered there was the name of someone from Kazakhstan among us! Haha! Of course he hasn't come; he probably thought the tournament was going to be an English scrabble one, and on finding out the way things were, he didn't dare try, ha. And then, the organizer of the whole big event started reading them results. Which was even more fun as, he himself not being associated with scrabble in any way, our names didn't sound familiar to him so he often mucked them up when reading them. The players made fun of him, mucking the names up themselves then, making Luboš Vencl into Venčl, and so on. The tourn was won by the best scrabble player in the eyes of many of us – Martin Kuča, with 12 wins of 15. I finish eleventh (of fifty-three participants) with a 9 – 6 record.

 

The next tourn is taking place in Třinec – pretty far away, more then 300 km, so I hope the result's gonna be worth it! I could take it as a fun trip, as by this 11^th place from Pardubice my participation at the finals is more or less secured (after my silver from Zlín and fourth place in Kladno)... I'm going to visit a friend of mine from my university years and anyway, looking forward to the trip itself, starting to get kind of itchy feet!

poslal scrabblista, 26.08.2011 8:12:00, Komentáře (0)

The Zlín Scrabble Qualification Tournament 2011

Zlín, CZ, Sat Jun 19^th 2011

 

I've been looking forward to this tourn since the beginning of the year – I take this one mainly as a pretext to see my best friend and spend some good time wih her.

I had to come as late as 8pm though as I had to be at work until three. Which didn't matter that much in the end as Šárka said she wouldn't have been able to come home to Zlín before me anyway.

On the train I had a bad idea to have a game of scrabble against myself, so I got my traveling scrabble set out of the bag, drew two opposing racks and started. Why bad? I guess you'll see. After a few moves, that's to say, something happened in the game which took away my lust to finish it. You wonder what on earth it could be that is able to make me put an end to a game of scrabble in progress? Well, that was so: I had the following rack, ABNOTVZ. After spending some minute on thinking, I saw an awesome bingo in it: zbotnav. What the heck is that, you wonder? Well, an ancient past participle of a rare spelling variant of the verb zbobtnat, to swell – the rare variant being spelt without the other B. Now, what would a passerby say to that?

a) He's just playing some nonsense words, or he's just gone crazy.

b) He's just showing off playing scrabble, and he can't even spell the word zbobtnat – how lame!

The annoying paranoic feeling was so strong that it made me put the game back into the backpack. (The first thing I did the next morning at entering the tournament room was that I checked the word. It was good. Well, I had known that after all. But it just looks so weird you can't resist checking.)

What's more ideal before a scrabble tournament than a good-time evening with friends – and on top of that, playing scrabble with them? Even though none of them had played scrabble before. Oh Šárka did, as a matter of fact, but in Slovenian.

It all started over supper: we all gathered to have it together (something that doesn't really very often happen to me back at home), including Šárka's about 90-year-old grandmother, and when they made me start narrating about scrabble and its tournament scene, after awhile one of them suggested, “Why don't we just stop talking about scrabble and simply have a game of it?”

Needless to say, I had a traveling set of scrabble along, so I brought it to the kitchen. They had wrong idea about the game being 100% dependant on luck of the draw, so I had to show them how wrong they were.

Of course they didn't see any of the big words experienced scrabble players do; let alone the ones only scrabble players know. But the main problem seemed to be the tactics, or rather the absolute absence of it on their side. They'd just throw onboard (overboard, I'd say – they're gone forever this way!) six bingo-prone letters for six points, forming the first word they'd think of. We scrabble players, of course, know this is not a way to go – at least something that would convince them about the wrongness of their idea about scrabble and the “luck of the draw”.

We had a toast of the Giant Mountain mead – a spirit I had brought them when I was there the year before.

When the rest of her family had gone to bed, Šárka didn't fancy doing so yet, and neither did I. We curled up on the living room sofa, shooting the shit, and when tired of doing so, giving each other one of those heartfelt goodnite hugs of ours – one that lasts a couple of hours (heh, that rhymed) after which it still stays JUST a hug. (You just need to have the kind of nerves of steel I do.) After this I'll sure have a good sleep.

I did. The following morning before seven I jumped out of bed (and you know I never do – I crawl out of it), had a cup of tea and coffee and even a breakfast made by Šárka's mother (I had told her I'd have one at the tourn and still she didn't mind making one for me.) and went for the town bus to get me to the downtown church where the tournament was to be held..

20^th table of 24 against Lenka Paličková. Despite her being as low as 77^th on the Chart, she's been regarded as “dangerous”.

But this is something one mustn't be prejudiced about. And I'm not, really. I've beaten her easily last time I played against her, so let's make history repeat itself.

She did fight hard, that's really something to be acknowledged. I acted tactically since the very beginning, though – opening the game with the word ohoď, the imperative an imperative of “to throw [sth/up] at someone and cover them with it completely”, I set myself up for a quadrupled six-point Ň, oň being a good word too (a bookish one for “about him/it” / “against him/it”). In my 12^th move I threw a bingo. Zbyněk Burda would say “no way I could catch up anymore” and she didn't really. I beat her 401 – 339, and as I was, as usual, using my blitz tactic, done far before the end of the round, I went and watched other players play. An interesting situation was developing at table #4 between the scrabble butchers Petr Landa and Břetislav Basta. They were JUST before the end of their game, and one of them was evidently on the brink of going out, while their current score stood at 332 – 332. Quite logically, the one to go out first was going to win.

The one to do so was Petr, winning by 2. You know how enthusiastic he is about scrabble – losing that closely would probably make him hit the roof.

Beating an opponent always equals asking for trouble. And so, moving to table #7, I get this scrabble veteran Milena Filipová to play against, who has been around the scrabble scene along with her daughter since 2002 and since 2007 regularly gets into the Finals, too (Hana manages to get there yearly as well but only since 2008.).

A funny thing happens right at the beginning. I draw eight tiles instead of seven by mistake. A blank among them. “I have eight,” I announce instead of the common I have seven. Milena randomly picks one of them to be returned into the bag – which one do you think she drew?

Of course – the blank.

I had said to myself, though, that I ain't gonna spare nobody today. Seeing my first rack is kind of bingo-prone, I worked up a pure bingo, and since she left a free triple line for me (which I hadn't even hoped for), I play my bingo right there, squeezing as many as 95 points out of it. All to the good she had deprived me of the blank – playing a pure bingo is twice the pleasure of playing a common one.

She “didn't catch up anymore” and what's more, didn't even pile up 300 points in spite of having both blanks. Been there – it just happens. I win 298 – 356 – hey, doesn't it just suck to move up just ONE place higher in the continuous ranking.

Speaking of the continous ranking, as we gather at the noticeboard to check up on how each of us is doing after the 2^nd round, we can't help but wonder what the heck is happening to Dana Fialová (ever heard that name? Not really, she being worse than average with her 1490 rating – but seeing she's been through just 90 tournament games, this looks like she's gonna be a dangerous threat in the future.). She's as high as eighth in the continuous ranking of the tournament, having beaten the young talent Jakub Závada who once even shone as high as fourth on the Association chart.

During the break my team capo Pavel Žibřid, who is currently 1 – 1 to our wonder (he had lost to the charming top gal Hana Lukáčová, the girlfriend of the 2008 Champ Martin Kuča), looks out of the dining room window from where there is a view of volleyball courts. “One more loss and I'm gonna go play volleyball instead,” he cracks. “Back at the hospital [where he works as an anesthesiologist] we play volleyball among the departments. My team has always fought just to avoid being dead last. The orthopedist team is always used to playing in various ortheses...”

Speaking of the today amazingly well-doing Dana Fialová, she gets me to play against in the third round. Just wait – I'll show ya.

I start off with a 24-point XU (X being worth 10 points in Czech scrabble). We both chuckle, knowing what we know. It's a word nobody apart from scrabble players AND the Vietnamese has ever heard of. The Vietnamese should be proud of their minor currency being so popular. At least among scrabble players.

Bingo-prone combinations not turning up in my rack, I have to resort to “classic” playing, squeezing the shit out of bonus squares. In my tenth move I come up with stočné for 28, the money one is supposed to pay for consumed water. The blank feigns to come six moves later and I would even have bingoed with it had it been for a spot for the bingo on the board. So instead, I use the blank for the other A in a 35-point žíhala, a feminine past tense of to anneal. This gets me like 25 points ahead, which may seem like just a bit but now towards the end it becomes crucial. When I go out, after adding her leftover I win 321 – 294. Well, you have expected me to win by far more, eh? So have I. But she seems real dangerous today, I have told her so – she's kept me busy, too!

“I had a homeless bingo,” she says.

“That sucks. Been there such a lot of times.” You bet I have.

I meet my team capo Pavel Žibřid again. I ask him how many wins he has so far – not so much out of curiosity about how he's been doing as rather to check on whether he is likely to become my next opponent.

“You got three? I got two. I've just been outside and spent the break watching volleyball – just in case I'd end up there,” he cracks.

Who do I get for my fourth opponent, after I have afforded to beat this average one by twenty-seven? Downright the best Czech scrabble player! Guess there's something rotten in the scrabble state. It was because this best player, Martin Kuča, has just lost to hardly 1700-rated Eva Baďurová (for a second time already in the history as a matter of fact).

Oh well though. A large percentage of the opponent's prevalance is made of the player's being intimidated in advance by his or her opponent's rating and achievements. So let's not let him have it that easily. Let alone if I have beaten him once already.

To show the absence of fear within me, I punch him in the face with a bingo right in my third move. As it is a bit colloquial, Martin challenges; it comes back good though.

For the next sixteen turns we run neck and neck which brings me quite a lot of satisfaction. Keeping busy the best Czech scrabble player!

Just as this happy thought flashes on my mind, he plays a bingo. A “primitive” one, as Zbyněk would say – i. e., a negative verb. It secured him quite a lead for awhile.

Now, I fixed my eyes at the upper right corner of the board. A free triple-triple line interrupted by an S on N1 field. Downright an S! Such a Sstupid letter. Most triple-triple-unfriendly.

After spending over a minute thinking (which as you know is not my style at all at all) I came to term with the fact that no triple-triple was there. I put down the rack I had to consult it later on: AAEIPRT, there being an S on the board which would have had to be the last-but-one letter of the triple triple.

No use making any bones about it – of course I lost, BUT – only by eighteen, which against the best Czech scrabble player is a result one can be more than satisfied with: 350 – 332.

I show him the triple-triple-prone rack I had written down, adding there was a S which would have had to be the last-but-one letter of it. Let's see if the best scrabble player can come up with one.

“I don't think there is one,” he utters after giving it some thinking.

Okay – 3 – 1 after four rounds ain't that bad, either. The only thing which makes me uneasy is that a lot of top players are of the same or even worse won – lost ratio after this round, so even after losing to the best scrabble player no relief is likely to be had.

Not really. Who awaits me to fight against is the nutrition advisor my age, 1811-rated Luboš Vencl – constantly in top 20 on the Chart. I have already beaten him at a tourn once – so he is beatable, eh – but my personal ratio with him as of now is 1 – 3 in his favor.

As I return from the toilet, I feel something having fallen right into my face. As it's dropping down on the ground I can see it's a plush toy neuron cell. Luboš Vencl's talisman :{)> just wait – if you only knew I'm just gonna play against you. You'll regret throwing your talismans at me.

He starts hard with a pure 80-point bingo as early as in his 2^nd move. I bingo back, though with just a 59-point one – oh well, better than nothing.

Should anyone come and watch our game at around the 10^th turn, they would favorize Luboš. Duh, much higher rated, he's gonna win as a matter of course.

But then, after several reshufflings of my rack, I came up with this breakthrough move: šňábo (with a blank for the Á), the sixpoint Ň being sixtupled when put on the O12 triple (the vocative case of šňába, a kind of brandy). Sixty points altogether, which shrank Luboš's lead to about 30; but if he thought he was still secure, though, he was soon to get to know he had been mistaken. Right on my following turn after my 60-point move, that's to say, I spat a pure tripled bingo at him. Nepoviji, the negative 1^st person future of “to bear [a child]”, brings me – or bears me, eh – as many as eighty points and gets me so much ahead that it practically decides the game in my favor. The bag gets empty – not very likely that he'd catch up on my 50-point lead now, eh?

He didn't. I won 431 – 382, our sum of scores remaining the sixth biggest of the tourn for the next two rounds. Seventh of 48 in the continuous ranking, I move to table #4 for the sixth round, to play against Hana Filipová. As you remember, I had beaten her mother a few rounds before that, so now it was time to execute her daughter, too. About the same top strength, yet another bit stronger.

We are about to start the sixth round, but we can't. Yvetta Hlubinková waves her hand at table #17 to catch attention, saying that her upcoming opponent, Ivo Hradský, is missing. Shortly after that Milena Filipová at table #10 informs that her upcoming opponent, Pavlína Pospěchová, is missing too. The two missing opponents happen to have played against each other in the previous round.

“They're somewhere together, eh?” we gather.

“Where have they gone? The nearest pub is quite far away,” Dana Kučová the IT manager wonders. She takes her bell she uses for denoting the beginnings and ends of tournament rounds, and runs outside where she rings it loudly once again. As soon as the first words about adjudicating their games in their opponents' favor have been uttered, they both turn up, faces all sweaty and breathing hard.

“They've had sex!” Saša Willerthová, infamous at the tourns for her dirty mouth, shouts out.

“Yeah, a quick one,” Radek Mannheim pipes in.

“Sorry... we've been jogging,” Ivo says, putting an end to other players' imagination.

 

Shortly after the beginning of my game against Hana in this sixth round, I form a six-letter bingo-prone combination on my rack, and say to myself in my mind, if she sets me up with an E, I could play a pure one.

Anyone, and me too, would guess, well, this is just nothing but wishful thinking. But hey – she plays a 8-letter, 51-point non-bingo move, and does set me up with the E – just as if she had read my mind! (Well, not a good comparison as had she read my mind she would definitely not have set me up.) I play nezažíti, a sort of ancient infinitive of “not to experience”, also having thought of rearranging the letters and playing zatíženi, a plural masculine passive of “to burden”. Hana evidently fights with shit on her rack – serves you well, I was in your current shoes back then when we played each other at last year's Finals. To top it I get a blank and form a “primitive” (as Zbyněk Burda would say) 74-point bingo – i. e., a negative verb containing a blank, nevplave, the negative future 3^rd person singular of “to swim in”. Okay, even a lame bingo counts though – it fastens my leading position and I round it up by winning by nice exact 150-point difference – 296 – 446.

“Nice game,” I grin, knowing that for her it was probably everything but nice.

“Indeed,” she grinned sourly. “Save the fact that I got absolutely nothing to play with.”

Well, shit happens – just like it did back in my last game with you at last year's Finals.

The “classic” scrabble veteran Jiří Kamín has been doing very good at this tournament, too, being 6 – 0 as of now, and the very first in the continuous ranking of the tourn. That would be nothing amazing – he's been managing to get into the finals every year since 2001 when he began his scrabble career. BUT his Ostravian girlfriend Eva Baďurová, who has never gotten there and shone at tourns just from time to time, has been smashingly successful too, going 5 – 1 so far (and as high as 5^th in the continuous ranking)! Being as low as 42^nd on the chart, she amazed everyone around with her performance. Her boyfriend may have been giving her proper training over the years and this seems to be the result!

“You know, we [Eva and him] made a deal back at home that we'd both end up among the top three!” Jiří cracks a comment on their doing good.

I'm high – not to mean drunk, but as high as third in the continuous ranking, folks! And guess what – I'm moving to table #1 for the seventh round. My opponent to be is guess who. For sure – Jiří Kamín. His girlfriend Eva is playing right there at table #3 – another top table not far from us, against the 1804-rated scrabble butcher Marek Holba who is second in the continuous ranking of the tourn and 34^th on the chart at this moment. Eva and Jiří give each other a conspiratory wink.

What needs to be pointed out before my game against Jiří is the difference between our attitudes to playing scrabble. He has always been what we here traditionally call a “classic scrabble player” while me I am a “bingo thrower”. Now, “classic scrabble players”, who rely on traditional scrabble weapons such as doubling premium square bonuses in both directions, etc., have always despised “bingo throwers” and claimed that the way the latter play is basically “wrong”. Well, it can't be that wrong after all when two such “bingo throwers” have become triple National Champs, but you know – changing one's mind is a hard thing to do.

Well – I'm sorry, Jiří, I just can't help it, I think to myself as I draw my first rack of seven. That's to say, I see a blank among them. Now, what would a “classic scrabble player” do with a bingo-prone combination, let alone containing a blank? Don't tell me they'd break it all up just for the sake of playing a “proper” move.

So on my very second turn I play a 74-point verb zahořet – to catch on fire, with a blank for the uniquely Czech letter Ř.. He let me enjoy this lead of mine for just a while though. He was neck and neck with me soon, “covering me with punches”, as Jirka Kracík would say (if you think I haven't dropped a word about this ole passionate member of my Parnas team, it's because he hasn't attended any tourn this year yet due to his long-time thyroid gland disorder). When towards the end of the game I finally thought I was safely far away from him, he used a blank and played boxe, the blank for the B, a vocative case of box – the Czech for boxing. This made me become absorbed in my rack for the whole two minutes allowed for a move, after which I came up with a final, deciding move which he, as the bag was already empty, “couldn't catch up anymore upon”. I finally win 332:317 – folks, a win at table #1! Something I ain't really been through so far at a qualification tournament.

 

I go have a rest and enjoy my euphory for a bit. I join a bunch of top players talking, two of them being from the Parnas team.

“I played the bingo rinorea,” the 1751-rated businessman Martin Hrubý says – a medical term for a cold, the English/Latin for it being RHINORRHOEA. Whereupon my team capo Pavel Žibřid, a doctor himself, cuts back: “See, and I [tried to extend the word FESTERED by prefixes] zhnisán, ohnisán, and uhnisán, and none of them was good. From now on I don't believe in festering.” [The problem is that the word hnisat proper doesn't take on the passive form].

“Another volume of the Slovak scrabble dictionary has been issued,” Zbyněk Burda contributes with a piece of news – he has been attending Slovak scrabble qualification tourns in Slovakia. “Can you believe that – they're gonna have the word ix [the name for the letter X in the alphabet, which has so far been spelled as iks]!”

Staying, of course, at table #1, I get another scrabble butcher – as if anybody else but scrabble butchers ever ended up at this highest table! – Petr Landa, 8^th on the chart, whom you sure remember for his morose comments he grumbles when tiles don't fall his way. I didn't yet know that I'll have more than enough of them now and that this is gonna be a game I'm gonna remember for a long time, if not the rest of my life.

My opening rack looks like this: ÍKNOPRŠ. The first thing I see in it is the word krníš, a 2^nd person singular present of the verb krnět – become retarded or atrophied. I put it on the board, whereupon, JUST before pressing the clock, I say to myself, hey, is your brain retarded or atrophied, or what? Can't you see that beautiful pure bingo? Koprníš, the 2^nd person present of “to become paralyzed”. The 4-point Š double-doubled, the whole word for 80 points.

“Oh, sure, expected that,” spits Petr at my move. And while he evidently plows through the shit on his rack, I get both blanks and work on forming another bingo. I have it ready by the sixth turn, while he – either in the hope of me not going there or out of despair – sets me up right in front of the triple word score square. Sorry Petr, I just can't help it... I play a tripled neuvité, “not made” (about wreaths), the first blank for the non-accented E and the other for the T, simultaneously making a tripled nýte (the vocative case of the noun “rivet”) and kan (the plural genitive of kana – the Czech for CANNA the plant), the whole thing for 89.

As my lead is now approaching 150, Petr desperately hides his face in his hands and turns around to 1735-rated Marek Holba at the neighboring table (#2). “Look at this,” Petr blows off steam, just as if he was about to literally hit thew roof. “Just take a fucking look. I'm just fucking gonna give this one up.”

That's before I shovel another good move there – this time just for 36; it's, however, enough to make Petr growl again. “Don't forget to write about this in your tournament story,” he blurts. You bet I won't! Especially not now when I know that you read 'em.

I kill Petr 492 – 295. Not only that this becomes my highest tournament score so far, but against such a player! As high as 8^th on the Chart. As I said, a game to be remembered for a long time to come, if not the rest of my life.

“Have the tiles ever so evidently been falling your way?” Petr asks me with a long, worn face.

“I don't think so,” I grin guiltily, trying hard not to make the smile look malicious. That wouldn't be something poor Petr would deserve – let alone if I have, and yes I have, just deprived him of a medal he would have brought from this tourn.

 

Winning at table #1 again ... for a second time in a row!

 

Who else do I get now for my last opponent but the one who has been doing far and away the best at this tourn so far – Marek Holba. 34^th on the Chart, rated 1735. While I'm second in the continuous ranking of the tournament at this point, he's the first – so it's not very surprising we've ended up playing against each other now. And even now, before the last game even started – I had been seeded at table #20 for the first round and now I've ended up as high as table #1!!! Well what a leap on the Chart this is gonna be – another thing to look forward to.

Going outside to let my (short) hair down for a bit, I bump into this top player Ivo Hradský (who studied at the English Department like I did, and now teaches English, too) who is just talking to 1653-rated Yvetta Hlubinková and complaining he has a hard time finding verbs in his racks. “I play nothing but nouns,“ he laughs, while Yvetta says it's vice versa with her. Now when I come by, Ivo cracks: “Now Tom here, he can find anything on his racks – save interjections!”

We laugh our asses off – that was actually a hidden praise from him as interjections are the only word class you can't use in Czech scrabble (not to speak of proper names – of course).

Martin Kuča, the 2008 Champ and the best Czech scrabble player in the eyes of many of us, pokes Marek from the neighboring table #2 where Martin is about to begin his last game, and tells him: “Marek, you're gonna play in such a way so that the game ends up in a tie, eh?”

They both chuckle (they would sure have shared a laugh had there been less tension in the air before the round). What Martin hinted at was the fact that even if the game between Marek and me did end up in a tie, he'd still end up first due to his higher TurČAS criterion (a number which, to put it very simply, sums up the way you did at a tournament – including the difference between the sum of your scores and your opponents' sum of scores, the number of rounds and the so-called Buchholz criterion which sums up how your opponents did at the tournament on the whole).

I remember the time I first played this guy – at last year's Finals. Despite his strength, I outclassed him then by almost a hundred, piling up more than 450 points as you sure remember – so why be afraid? This game to come is only to decide whether I would end up gold or silver at this tourn; nothing that would matter much.

Well – no need to take these unspoken words of mine so literally, Marek! He opens the game with a 86-point pure bingo. All to the good in the end though – it makes me see that my rack, impossible at first sight with a Ř and a C in it, is bingo-prone too. I decide to swap one tile – a letter I feel kind of doesn't fit into this upcoming bingo (one of the TWO swaps I make in the course of the whole tournament). And yeah – I do come up with one right on the next turn, a pure one, too: sochařin, the genitive plural case of sochařina, a kind of colloquial general term for a sculptor's work. Its colloquiality makes Marek challenge; it comes back good though and makes me glad my all-life interest in art has just fruitfully reflected itself in a scrabble game of mine.

The third turn, though, is where I stop enjoying this game of ours. That's to say, Marek plays another bingo – and not just any bingo: a pure quadrupled one for 101 points. I had some fuck it!s on the tip of my tongue when I realized again that this game doesn't matter – I'm going to end up second anyhow. Even Jiří Kamín told me so when he saw the continuous ranking after the 8^th round, and as he's such an experienced tourn veteran, I can take his word for it.

This returned optimism and elan into my veins, making me able to finish this game with the same verve as I would just any other one of scrabble. And it did pay – four turns later I come up with another pure bingo of mine, shrinking Marek's killing lead to about a hundred and sixty, which would not increase for the rest of the game anymore. Anyway – two pure bingos on each side! Ain't that awesome. Marek doesn't stop pushing hard though and towards the end of the game he's over 500. Like I made my tournament record in the previous round, looks like Marek is just going to make his in a game against me...! Well, that's just like her – Lady Luck, that is: flighty like she has always been.

He whacks me 523 – 365: folks, hasn't my defense been pretty good, too! And as I said, I end up second anyway. 2^nd of 48 people! My plush froggy bookmark talisman deserves at least a kiss. The patient frog has been with me all the time watching me, and did her best to keep her webs crossed for me, too! My best qualification tournament ever so far. Guess my qualification for this year's finals is now practically secured.

When the conclusion ceremony of the tournament came, Marek and I learn that the sum of our scores in our game – a nice 888 – was the best of the tournament, and the two of us are given a bottle of hand lotion as a “minor prize”. Marek then, as the winner of the tournament, has the right of the first choice among prize items which have all been laid out on a table in front of us. Then it's my turn as the second best player of the tournament; as all of us Libras do, I hesitate for a bit and then grab a bottle of wine. Third comes this dangerous tournament veteran Martin Vacek.

Folks, guess we've got quite a reason to celebrate! I call Šárka and the my mom to tell them the awesome result (I had been informing them continuously in the course of the tournament anyway) and then go to a nearby supermarket to buy another bottle of wine. One for the celebration and the other for my mom – for her to have at least some memory and taste of my smashing success here.

We have a toast to it with Šárka and her mother back in their place. Do you remember that last time I was here – the year before – Šárka's younger brother Jiří was there with me as a spectator? I tell you what, Jiří – you should have come and watched today!

poslal scrabblista, 09.07.2011 2:32:00, Komentáře (0)

The Hradec Scrabble Qualification Tournament and the Spring Team League 2011

Hradec Králové, CZ, Sat & Sun May 28^th & 29^th 2011

 

 

 

As the tourn in Přerov two months before was a bummer, I hoped for the tables to turn this time again. “Don't worry, I ain't gonna aim too high – I can cope with ending up as low as fourth,” I joked talking to my mom before I left.

If you remember previous Hradec tourns, you probably expect a 2-day, 15-round one. Not this time, though. Zbyněk Burda, its organizer, said he didn't have mind to hold a two-day one this time. So he had made a deal with Pavel Vojáček, the Association pres, that the 2^nd team league would be held the following Sunday.

There's gonna be cutthroat competition, I thought as I was looking at the list of participants. Five National Champs and practically all traditional finalists...

 

Despite having been here for quite a couple of times before, I had a hard time finding the way. Oh well, what could you expect from me whose orientation abilities are practically zero. And I had drawn a map of the route from the station right to the school in the canteen of which the tourn was to take place!

 

Having finally gotten there, I still had a lot of time on my hands. I had me a coffee and went to greet Katka Rusá who was sitting at one of the tables verifying the completeness of one of the sets. As we were putting the tiles in a ten times ten square, we were shitting the shit while some of the players were doing the same, too, at the other tables.

 

All the players who applied have come save the triple National Champ Martin Sobala. He probably preferred to stay home a day longer to take care of his pregnant wife. Four other national champs didn't fail to arrive, though, so the threat remains hanging over us anyway.

 

As if I were meant to have a warm-up, I was seeded against as low as 1250-rated Milan Seidl.

This railroad man is someone I often play against at the Parnas club, and to tell the truth, I hate playing against him. He's the type of weak players who are able to burn a blank for 15 points and when you play a bingo against them after your consipicuous working on it for several turns, they just accuse you you are “lucky”. Oh well, I'm already getting used to this. No use losing temper.

Beating him was no prob of course, let alone after playing a 71-point bingo in my 11^th move. I won 293 – 390 without putting in any particular effort, but hey, what the fuck – guess what happened next!

Yeah. One can't even afford to win over a weak player – one gets seated against #1 on the chart, a triple National Champ who, apart from knowing his native language well enough, is known to be fucking lucky. And so, while I draw such combinations as non-vowel or all-vowel ones, he gets one blank, plays a bingo, then gets the other blank, plays another bingo, and I have a hard time piling up 300 points at all. Which I don't anyway in the end – managing at least to put together toxiny, TOXINS, a 78-point non-bingo, I lose 270 – 462. Like, I've expected such a thing anyway.

Falling from 10^th place to 35^th in the continuous ranking of the tourn, I overhear friends from the Parnas club talking about how well the otherwise low-rated Mrs Seidlová is doing, being 2 – 0 after the first two rounds, having beaten such guys as the Association director Pavel Vojáček or the every-year finals participator Jiří Kamín. And hey – the triple National Champ, Katka Rusá's uncle Milan Kuděj, has just had his ass kicked by 1686-rated Eva Baďurová, and what's more, his score was as poor as 228. What the heck has been happening – what kind of ineffability?

At least I can comfort myself by doing a bit better than Jirka Kamín – after I lose in the third round to Marek Holba whom I scalped at the 2010 Championship, I still end up seven places higher in the continuous ranking as he, to the wonder of everyone around, hasn't won any of his first 3 games.

In the fourth round I get the recent newcomer to the tournament scene, a 50-ish bearded guy named Raul Kačírek, and what do you think – I lose to him, too, even in spite of playing a beautiful bingo legiích, with a blank for the H, a plural locative case of the noun “legion”, and then extending it to elegiích in the very next move for 23, elegie being a kind of panegyric. As I've already said, these two nice moves didn't save me from burning the game by thirty-one, 341 – 372. You know it from the beginning when a tourn is going to be a cursed one, eh? So do I, and this is exactly the case.

Falling to #52 in the continuous ranking of the tournament, I go take a break, and when the results of the fourth round have been pinned up, I find out that quite a few of every-year finals tycoons are 1 – 3 at the moment just like I am, including Jarda Buksa, Jirka Kamín, Pavel Vojáček or Pavel Chaloupka. “We've been taking this tourn as a training for tomorrow's team league,” Jirka Kamín grins.

This tournament being, as it seems, ill-fated, you couldn't look to the usual comfort of a loss – i.e., that you'd get a “more bearable” opponent in the next round: that's to say, the “unbearable” killers have been doing just as bad as me today. So when I lost to Raul, guess who I got to play against?

Jana Vacková. A every-year finalist again, eh?

As I drew my first seven tiles from the bag, a good one including a blank, I thought, at last – are the tables finally gonna turn?

I set up °nanuji on my rack, a first person singular present tense of “to masturbate”, and hope for her to give me a suitable hook for this cool bingo.

What'd you think – she didn't. It was just a matter of time and some thinking, though, for me to rearrange my tiles and use her U on the H8 field to make nahnijou, a 3^rd person plural future tense of “to become partly rotten”.

“Eighty,” I announce and press the clock. She challenges; it comes back good.

“What a shame – I had onanuji here but no place to play it after your opening move,” I sneer – I couldn't not tell her, could I?

“Grow up, you're forever being like an adolescent,” she chuckles back. “You remind me of the teenagers who go to my scrabble classes. They're able to play SEX for two points just for the sole sake of having the word there on the board.” We share a laugh at that.

“How the heck do you play SEX for two points?” I wondered, guffawing, only to flash upon the idea right after pronouncing the question – you play a blank for the X, duh.

“So, you give scrabble classes, eh? I didn't know.”

“Yeah... for children. You know, I have to breed the next scrabble generation as I myself don't enjoy playing it very much anymore.”

Six turns later she plays a 74-point bingo of hers and goes on running neck and neck with me practically for the rest of the game. You probably already know how such a game is likely to end on a fucked-up scrabble day, eh? Yeah – exactly. Drawing shit from the bottom of the bag, I lose because of what I have left to deduct, by eight points – 355 – 347.

Now I'll take it out on the poor next one, I think to myself. Indeed – ideal opponent for this situation turns out to be Jitka Svrčková. You know this pretty charming lady from previous tourns as Jitka Maceková – that was before she met this ugly old scrabble player at a tourn and married him. Hard to say what she saw in him, indeed.

That's why her charm doesn't really work with me and she becomes my first opponent at this tourn to be really killed by me: 391 – 225. And I didn't even have a blank or play a bingo.

After this game, which pushes me up a little to 45^th of 61, I learn really ain't alone in my bad luck today. Katka Rusá has just gotten beaten by not even 1500-rated Viktor Hagenhofer (for the second time actually already) and Luboš Vencl, another every-year Finals qualified, told me with an ironic grin that he had a win more than me.

 

As you might have already gathered, I have caused myself to get a butcher for my next opponent. Pavel Chaloupka, another frequent finals qualified, presents me with a grin as I announce a change of one letter in my first move.

“I'm about two places below the qualification line now and doesn't look like I could push it up today,” I complain – as if not even halfway through the year any qualification position would matter.

“Me I'm about fifteen places below it,” he sneers. “And I can't push it up today either.” Well a good comfort indeed!

The six-letter combination I had (plus the letter I just swapped) looked quite bingo-prone with lots of seventh letters added, so I hoped I could make one.

Indeed. Pominuty – feminine plural passive of to neglect – makes me jump right into 65-point lead and for joy. Not for long though – just for about six turns, then he shoves on his, a pure one this time. Looks like a good even-chance neck and neck game – until about 15^th move of his when he lets me take that with a 39-pointer of his. I start reaching cesspool of shit letters at the bottom of the bag and just watch him get further and further away. What seemed to be a close game in the beginning finished 360 – 424 in his favor.

52^nd of 61 in the continuous ranking. Phew. Ninth from the bottom. Ain't been through such shit in scrabble since I dunno when. I hope to improve my destroyed mood on a co-player from my team, 1460-rated railroad man Pepa Grosskopf who becomes my next opponent. The pic looks rosy at first, as he gets shit for letters (at least according to what he says) and swaps the full rack twice – one such change right after the other. Six turns later though, his bad luck evidently changes sides, grasping me for a change. He plays a 42-pointer and a tripled bingo right after. I don't even marvel anymore after what I'd been through. Fuck! I lose 358 – 281 and at least win over one of the weakest players at the tourn, Gabriela Gugová, 347 – 293. 50^th of 61 with a 3 – 6 record – fucccck. Like back then at the beginning of my scrabble career.

The only light moment was on hearing that Pavel Podbrdský didn't win – he finished as low as second, the victory being taken by who's the best Czech scrabble player in the eyes of many of us – Martin Kuča.

 

Oh well, as Jirka Kamín said – let's take this as a training for tomorrow's team league.

The next day at 8.30 we are about to start, when we find out Ivo Hradský, one of the top players of the Sklípkani or Trap-Door Spiders team, is missing. Boozing or smoking somewhere again, eh? Or both.

A Trap-Door Spider says he'll call him. He does, and when Ivo finally turns up, the whole room applauds.

Pavel Vojáček as the Association pres and team league organizer in one announces the team pairings for the first round. His team, Sirotci or The Orphans, is matched up against us, and who choses me for his opponent is he himself. Jindra Voráčková sits down against Zbyněk Burda, Jirka Kamín does against Pepa Grosskopf and Filip Vojáček, Pavel's son, against our team capo Pavel Žibřid.

“Against bingoers we have matched up classic scrabble players to mason their bingo spots,” Jirka Kamín explains with a grin that their match-ups against us were highly sophisticated.

 

Pavel Vojáček took Jirka's word. Playing a bingo himself as early as in his 3^rd move, he tried to mason the board so I couldn't play mine. That's what got me behind and prolonged the game of the two of us – otherwise fast players.

Pavel Žibřid, being long done with his opp (won, needless to say) sneaked behind my back to see how I'm doing – right on time to see a set-up homeless bingo on my rack. NEURON plus a blank. A bingo close to his doc heart, eh? He gives me a sympathetic grin. A bingo to be extended with an accusative-case U, a plural nominative Y, plural genitive Ů, or even an Í to make the verb neuroní which doesn't even have anything in common with neurons – it's the negative future 3^rd person singular of “to shed”.

 

I did find a spot in the end. I spotted a spot – around the Ž on the board. I made the blank an A and played nežranou, an accusative feminine case of the adjective nežraná, “not eaten”.

I lost anyway, though just by 36 points – 303 – 339. Jirka Kamín was glad his sophisticated plan worked. Now, though, an even tougher work was ahead of us: Ýáčci, the club consisting of mother and daughter Filipová and, among others, the 2008 Champ Martin Kuča, a sixtupled vicechamp, too. And according to some of us, the best Czech scrabble player. No wonder then that when we were matching up our club members to theirs, nobody wanted him. As I returned from the restroom, Pavel was already waiting for me with the 2^nd round match-up sheet in his hand. “Which of these players aren't you able to play against?” he grinned, and after skimming the names I said Martin Kuča, of course, at which Pavel let a laugh. “Nobody can, I guess.” He was then off to show the match-up sheet to other members of the team, and when he came back to me again, he tapped me on the shoulder and told me encouragingly: “You'll manage him.”

 

Haha! Like, a good joke indeed, after what I was through the day before. Yes I have beaten Martin already, but that was apparently on a day with a better star constellation.

You know what's worse than playing against who's considered the best player by many?

Yeah – playing against who's considered the best player by many when he's apparently lucky on the particular day. He gets a blank, plays an 81-point bingo on the triple – just for a start. I run after him, though, pushing so hard that when I play efúzi for 42 points on a triple, hooking it to an E on the board, it' so nutritional that this Martin, one of the best Czech scrabble players, commented it with a “phew”. Ya think ya can't play something nutritional (point-wise, heh) to an E? Sure you can! Three moves, later, though, he used the other blank, played another bingo, and all I could try was not to lose by more than a hundred at least. Which I finally didn't: 421 – 329.

None of our team members won this time – we got our asses kicked 0 – 4. And no, in the next round no relief is about to come – we get another hard opp team, Túzy a múzy or Deuces and Muses. Who chose me was Pavel Chaloupka – he apparently hadn't had enough of beating me the day before. Against Pavel Žibřid Jarda Buksa gets seated, Zbyněk Burda is taken on by Petr Landa and Pepa Grosskopf by Marek Lašťovka.

Pavel Chaloupka didn't know – of course – WHAT a game this is going to be. Nor did me for now. Getting a blank, I come up with a bingo as early as in my 6^th move: fonovati, a somewhat obsolete infinitive of “to phonate” , with a blank for the N.

“Sixty-three.” I knew I wasn't going to enjoy my lead for long. But looking into my new bunch of letters, though blankless this time, I thought, with heed to usable letters on the board, hey, this looks bingo-prone again. As early as two turns later I tried opásneš*, which I thought a good 2^nd person future form of “to fix one's belt around [sth]”; however, to my great surprise, it gets challenged off. As soon as this happens and the clock is pressed, I see it. Heck, what kind of fool am I, I think, another, this time a very nice bingo, fits right over there. So seems like nothing's left but to pray for him not to go there with his move.

 

He didnnnn't. Ooophhh. Now I can break through with nehopsáš, a 2^nd person singular present tense of “not to skip/jump”, hooking my letters to a H on the board and at the same time forming EX, the whole thing altogether for 97 points.

Pavel ain't gonna give this up, though, and so without me even knowing, he starts forming another bingo while I enjoy my lead. Five turns later he comes up with věrnost, “faithfulness” or “fidelity”, with a blank for the N, for 83 points, to make this cutthroat fight even more thrilling and interesting. We both get over 400. Luckily I find a good strong move for over thirty points then. Now this finally makes this merciless game nailed for me, I hope.

Indeed. I went to dictate the results to Pavel Žibřid who, as usual, was making records of how we were doing. “I won. Four hundred and two – four hundred and thirty-four.”

“Ohhhh maaan,” Pavel lets out in a shock and puts this incredible result of mine down among the other ones. (My sum of scores with Pavel Chaloupka – 836 – gets recorded as the fourth highest sum of scores of this team league.) He himself has just won over Jarda Buksa, and when it turns out our “substitute” player (for the long-time sick Jirka Kracík) Pepa Grosskopf has won over the frequent Finals participator Marek Lašťovka, thus securing a win for our team (Zbyněk Burda being the only one to have lost – by 66 against Petr Landa), Pavel glosses it with a grin: “We just do good against strong teams – we don't know how to play against weak ones.”

Our optimism was cooled down in the next round – against the Praguean Paluba team. The triple lucky-ass National Champ Pavel Podbrdský (I suppose now you wonder – a triple lucky ass, or a triple National Champ? BOTH, heh.) probably hadn't had enough of playing against me and smashing me the day before, and so chose me for his opponent.

Most National Champs deserve respect for their art of playing; not him, though, especially not after last year's championship finals which he totally pulled out while the vicechamp was getting crap in the final round all the time.

“Does everyone have an opponent?” Dana the IT manager checks, only to get a negative answer from František Růžička who was to play against Zbyněk Burda.

As soon as the negative answer had been pronounced, Zbyněk Burda emerged at the entrance to the tournament room with a guilty grin on his face, and as he was drawing closer, we saw he was carrying three sandwiches on a plate in his hand.

“You miscounted them,” František cracks. “Two for me and only one for you.”

Pulling my first rack of seven, I thought, heh, now I'll show you how your opponents feel when exposed to your constant good luck. That's to say, I opened our game with a pure bingo.

Such something always fills you with optimism, but – ya remember how Martin Kuča did in the final round of the Finals in 2009? Opened the game with a pure bingo too, and lost anyway.

And so did I against Pavel now, in spite of the bingo AND getting both blanks. At least I had a reason to acknowledge he deserved the win this time.

“That was a nice win, congrats – not like the ineffable luck of yours yesterday,” I sneer. Paluba won over us 3 – 1, the only member of our team to have won being Pavel Žibřid (over the scrabble veteran, businessman and frequent Finals qualified Martin Hrubý).

Oh well – let's take it out on “the poultry”, as Pavel Žibřid once called our upcoming opposing team – Střelené kachny or The Meshugga Ducks.

“I've matched you up already – make sure you do your best,” Pavel tells me. Matched me up, eh? Let's see against whom.

Ohh nope. The beautiful half-Vietnamese Žaneta Leová (almost looks like her epiteton constans, eh?) – but oh well, today no female weapons can distract me. Especially not if you have been PDAing with Michal Sikora here all the time – I'll take it out on you for that.

As soon as I said that in my mind, I saw my first rack of seven was pretty bingo-prone. AAEKNR?. Let's see what she plays – I don't wanna play a “primitive” bingo, as Zbyněk would call it, i.e. one starting with the negative prefix ne-.

She opens, and I guess, well, not one you could easily hook something onto. I spend about a minute thinking, from which any player who already knows me well could judge something bad was about to come. A player at the internet scrabble site said about me that every move that takes me longer than ten seconds automatically means something bad for the opp.

I was after making the most of the bingo, and indeed – I hooked it to her S, used the blank for a P and made a tripled pankreas for 74 – PANCREAS as you might guess, for which, though, we also have a far more beautiful Czech word slinivka, which would literally translate as “salivator”. My second move being for 32, I get over 100 in just my first two moves, and four turns later, I come up with another bingo, just double this time but pure on the other hand – nemořené for 82 points, “not tortured” or also “not stained [about wood]”. She does answer with a pure bingo of hers this time, but as it turns out in the end, this just saves her from being under 250 – although she does get a blank, I shatter her 284 – 447. Serves you well for your PDA, beautie.

“How did we do?” a Meshugga Duck asks Michal Sikora who kept records of the results.

“Lost 0 – 4,” he reported the bad news. Mucking good one from our point of view, though! “Close losses mostly, though – just Žaneta's gotten a dusting.”

Close losses indeed – most magnificent was the fight of two national champs, the 1998 one Zbyněk Burda vs. the 2004 one Michal Sikora. Zbyněk won 449 – 439 – ain't that an amazing win.

I went and dictated my result to Pavel. “You're gonna like my bingo,” I grin – for sure, as he's a doc.

“You played pankreas, eh?” he laughs. “You're a beast.”

The Meshugga Ducks, there being five of them, had been discussing which one of them is going to be put apart for the upcoming round, as the team league is played by four players against four. But if you expect none of them to want to “have the bye”, as we here call the pause of the odd player, you're badly mistaken – seems like most of them would welcome having a rest now.

“We can't all have the bye at once,” Michal tells Žaneta.

“Oh yes you can,” I cut, standing nearby and overhearing them. Haha – why not play against four empty chairs? I guess their upcoming opposing team would be glad to have a 4 – 0 win for free.

In the sixth round we get exposed to last year's team league champs – Poškoláci or The Detainees. As I get chosen by the top-20 frequent finalist Luboš Vencl, the nutrition advisor my age.

I wasn't gonna give it to him easily though. He pushed hard on me, but I, knowing that every time I bomb out at a qualification tournament, I should do good at the following team league, wasn't gonna give it up. Pulling both blanks at one draw, I used them in the 64-point non-bingo neočuď, a negative 2^nd person singular imperative of “to stain [sth] with smoke” – it being worth so much thanks to the sixtupled 8-point Ď.

Getting crap afterwards, though, my lead decreased. I hoped he wasn't going to come up with a big bomb and catch up.

Which is exactly what he did. A tripled hýkán, a masculine passive form of “to bray” yielded him 46 points – exactly the kind of lead he needed to keep me away from him. He won – but losing just by 22 against such a class is something I can be satisfied with. 341 – 319 – and hey, we still got one point as we reached a “small tie” – two wins (Pavel Žibřid by 13 points over the triple National Champ Milan Kuděj and Zbyněk Burda by almost a hundred over Jana Vacková), two losses and the sum of our scores smaller than theirs.

Next we are supposed to play against Sklípkani or the Trap-Door Spiders. In this round a peculiar thing happened – made you realize what a disadvantage it is to have two friends in the opposing team. You take on one and the other is marveling why you don't play against him. I chose Marián Viochna, while Ivo Hradský was still missing as we got seated against each other at the designated tables.

 

“Does everyone have an opponent – can we start?”

“Hradský is missing.”

“He's evaporated in smoke somewhere,” laughs Pavel Žibřid, hinting at Ivo's smokership.

 

When the red-haired beardo finally turns up, the whole room applauds ironically. On finding out his upcoming opponent, he whispers to me: “Why don't we play each other?”

“I don't feel like I could play you today, sorry.” Which is right – I preferred to avoid such strong opponents after what I was through the day before.

Against Marián it's always a good-time game. Especially after I drew a blank right among my first handful of seven. On my second turn I threw a bingo (nesléhej – “don't lie in”) which made sure I'd be in the lead for the rest of the game, and even though he successfully challenged a word of mine off the board six turns later (the word itself was all right but wrongly inflected), in the end I win by more than a hundred, making use of my knowledge of painting (škica, a not very common word for a sketch, made me 36 points) and managing to go out by burning the 5-point G for 19. Final result – 410 – 306. Pavel Žibřid won over the frequent finalist Aleš Horák not only thanks to his beautiful bingo forsáže (AFTERBURNINGS) which he played as early as in his 2^nd move, but overall killing him – 427 – 293. Zbyněk, though, lost to Martin Kapler and Pepa Grosskopf to Ivo Hradský, so iut was a tie – and thanks to our sum of scores which was bigger than theirs, a big tie for us.

The last round, ooph. Mostly when there are eight rounds instead of nine I'm not very glad, but today I'm sort of done in. Our last opposing team, Sklípkani or The Trap-Door Spiders, matches up Josef Nerodil against me – when I see that, I say to myself, hey, we should gather our last bits of strength and don't let this drunkard beat me.

As if he had heard me, he punches me in the face with a 82-point pure bingo in his seventh move. Ooops – wither he's not that drunk today or it really brings him inspiration. Luckily I can use my two blanks to answer with a bingo of mine, výkvěte with blanks substituting the K and the E, the vocative case of the noun “élite”. That's where you don't belong, Josef!

Later on, as I still had him by the tail, I used the common tactics of counting letter numbers – and played the word husí, “of a goose”, in front of a triple word. It can be extended only with a M (an instrumental case of the adjective) – but as you can guess, one M has been played and the remaining two of the Czech scrabble set are right here on my rack. Another thing which spoke in my favor, too, was Josef's apparent tiredness later on in the game. The bingo you had made exhausted you, eh? Or you been drinkin'. Or both, probably.

And yes, I'm mucking tired too. But I don't let it show.

 

I go out with the weird word eem, denoting the last interglacial period (yes we do know the threes cold just like the Anglophone scrabble players do) to win over Josef 346 – 382 and thus contributing to a 4 – 0 win of our team in this last round.

 

To sum it up – three 4 – 0 wins for our team, one “small tie” of 2 – 2 when our sum of scores was lower than that of the opposing team, one “big tie” and two 1 – 3 losses. That puts us on the 8^th place of 12 teams – not so good. What sounds better is the ranking of players after this tournament where I'm 22^nd of 51 players of this team league – this puts me a bit back up on the chart after the fall the day before.

 

And hey – as it's after another tournament as I'm writing this, this time in Zlín, I can tell ya right away you can look forward to a story of SMASHING success!!!

poslal scrabblista, 23.06.2011 2:09:00, Komentáře (0)

The Přerov Qualification Tournament 2011

Přerov, CZ, Sun March 27^th 2011

 

 

I looked forward to this one. Let alone if I could have gone there already some years ago but had to cancel my participation for health reasons.

There's no way one could get to the Přerov tourn from Trutnov without arriving a day before the tournament and leaving a day after, but oh well. I had promised to my Olomouc friends that I'd come to see them but I'd already once had to cancel it, and so we looked forward to see one another the more.

Before that I stopped by in Brno, but there turned out to be nothing much to do. Apart from buying a few candies (not even the typical Moravian ones, which weren't currently on sale – shit!!!) I was totally disappointed, the town not even offering the spell it once had for me.

So in the evening I headed straight for Olomouc. Now I had to take another hour's trip, this time by the public transport to the Olomouc outskirts where the friends of mine lived. Let's call the two by first names – Jana and Jakub, Jakub being Jana's 13-year-old son.

We had a supper together about which Jana said she had told Jakub to prepare. It was excellent, but Jakub blurted out the truth – it was Jana's work of art, duh.

We then had a game of scrabble: the two are both rather low-rated on the scrabble site – guess who won. Nope! I was the last – Jana having won and Jakub being the second, although beating me by about ten points.

Shit just happens. I just hope it's not meant to be an omen of the upcoming tourn.

Jakub looked forward to going to Přerov with me, though just as a spectator. He looked forward to meeting a lot of players from the scrabble site in person. I tried to talk him into taking part in the tournament actively, just for fun – just as many “back tables players” do – but he said he didn't have the guts, let alone if he'd have to pay CZK 300 entrance fee in that case.

However, the devil piped in – later that afternoon, Jakub caught a fever. He's sick quite often, but I thought if he was two weeks before that, we could be sure he wasn't gonna be.

“Heck, and I looked forward to going there so much,” he frowned.

“No worries – this is not a regular annual tourn, but in like two or three years it might be held again,” I tried to comfort him.

“Well, what a solace!” he grinned ironically. “Now I have to wait for two or three years. I'll be like seventeen by then.”

 

I had a plan of the street drawn by Jana, as Jakub couldn't accompany me to the town bus stop as originally planned. It wasn't all that difficult after all.

 

As we reckoned, I got to the station in time. Taking the express fast train, I was there in some ten minutes, having had to watch out in order not to miss it. The route from the station to where the tourn was to take place was described on the site and I just copied it into my scrabble notebook before I hit the road.

 

As I am approaching the Precheza company canteen where the tournament is supposed to be held, I meet some of its participants – an unshakable sign of going the right way. I join them and we get there about half an hour before the beginning, which, as usual, we make use of by verifying the completeness of the scrabble sets. I greet Katka Rusá and help her verify the one she's sitting over.

The crazy gal has brought her bike along, saying she's gonna cycle all the way back to Prague after the tournament. 300 kilometers! Wonder how you gonna survive that, let alone go to work the next day.

“I don't enjoy scrabble anymore,” this 2003 Czech Scrabble Championess reminds me before the tourn via Facebook chat. “I do enjoy cycling though. So I'm going to the tourn and looking forward to cycling the way back.”

Holy moley. The world is full of paradoxes and the scrabble part of it is no exception.

 

Seeded at table #13 of 32, I get 1788-rated Pavel Chaloupka for my first opponent. You may remember it's him who holds the January tourn in Kladno; a top-21 scrabble veteran (on the scrabble tourn scene since 1999) that has managed to get into the finals 11 times – every year from 2000 to 2010.

Sounds like hard work and no fun, eh? Indeed. I have played against him just once so far and lost (not counting our online games at the scrabble site, where I last won over him on 9/1 last year – not too fequent a winning either!).

I've said that a thousand times. A game against a top player is tough, but when on top of that tiles fall his way, the game is just impossible. And they do, even in such a conspicuous way that he himself has to acknowledge it. He gets a blank and plays a nice bingo with it: when it turns out a couple of moves later that he has the other blank, too, I try hard to compose a pure bing of my own, but what I keep getting to the six-letter “bingo-prone” combination is a seventh shit. I watch the free triple-word O15 field which is currently the only and best place I could use.

Now, whadya think he does?

Yeah – shoves a bingo right on this triple using the other blank he had gotten in the meantime. When I get the 5-point Ú and am about to place it on a double triple spot to get me over 300 at least, he jams the spot just before that. Why lose more words about that – one of those completely fucked games in advance. I lose 438 – 278.

Fuck. Is this what the whole tourn's gonna look like? If your first game usually predetermines the character of the tourn for ya, looks like I've come the 250 kms for a kick in the ass.

A fall to table # 21 and Lenka Paličková for my second opponent. I defeat her even in spite of a bingo from her side 323 – 275, which pushes me a little up in the continuous ranking of the tourn, to the 46^th place of 64.

Our team capo Pavel Žibřid goes by to show off his first-round result: he sure has a reason why! He's just kicked the ass of a triple National Champ Pavel Podbrdský who, apart from his skills, has been known for being a lucky one (and yes the “one” represents the former subject “ass”). Now, Lady Luck had apparently forsaken him as against Pavel Žibřid he ain't ever gotten over 260 – he lost 259 – 430. “He ain't even told me to fuck off,” Pavel Žibřid glossed it with a grin.

“What about you – did you win?” he asks me.

“Yeah,” I say bluntly. A 1522-rated opponent – not much of a reason for a trace of joy in my voice.

“Against whom?”

“Lenka Paličková,” I lash my hand.

“Well, don't be mistaken, she's dangerous!” There's a tone of acknowledgement in his answer – and if such a scrabble macho says that, it can't not be true.

Katka Rusá shows her knees – no way to deny her hell of a ride from Prague. The traces of pressure were a little too plain see. “That's brutal,” Pavel comments on that.

“I wonder how she rode along the highway,” Pepa Grosskopf laughs.

 

Not only the tourn was fucked – the toilet wasn't shit here, too. There was just this one pissoir so you had to stand in line even at the Gents, not only at the Ladies which was something you had already been used to.

The toilet wasn't shit – as you might rightly think, yeah, one toilet, again. It wasn't shit in the idiomatic sense – it definitely was in the literal one, though. When one wanted to go take a dump, he had to wait for the former dumptaker to finish. So everytime you had to take one, you entered a gas chamber of bad smell.

“So how was it – a friendly environment, eh?” Martin Vacek grins at me as I walk out.

“Kinda,” I sneer back.

 

As I return, I find out I'm almost late. The third round is about to begin, so I shuffle around to find table #16 where I'm supposed to be playing. Nobody's there, though.

“Over here,” Lída Rusá, Katka's sister, waves her hand in my direction from a table in the very front of the room. I couldn't understand why over there when we are assigned to play at #13.

“We are always here,” Lída explains. Now, I maybe could reveal who she means by “we” and why those “we” are “always here“ at the one particular table in the front.

That's to say, my upcoming opponent is not going to be her, but Petr Burda. A guy my age confined to a wheelchair, in whose case not only the legs but also the hands are disabled so he just tells Lída the position of the words he wants to make and she, being officially called his assistant, lays them on the board for him.

Don't be mistaken – he's pretty dangerous. I play him on the site from time to time where he's got quite a rating; I just wonder how he operates the mouse and keyboard. Maybe it responds to his voice somehow, or PC work may be something he can do even with these feeble hands.

 

The second move of mine in this game was my best in the whole tournament – a pure triple bingo for 95. But then Lady Luck turned her ass on me. He got a blank and made a bingo with it. When I evened up the difference, he got the other blank and made off with another bingo. Even this one I managed to level up with big fat moves; he was there with one of his, though, straightaway. I played vciť – an imperative of vcítit, to put oneself in someone else's shoes. The ť being on double-double, the whole word yielded 36. Now that I hoped to be safely away from his threat – he plays his killer also for 36, while what I draw from the bottom is a real sediment – a worst shit you can imagine. So when Petr goes out and adds this shit, he wins by a bit, mere 15: 391 – 376.

“Well, a hell of a luck on my side,” he admitted when receiving my congratulation. Indeed – not a big deal to win with both blanks and two bingos by 15.

 

At least something to look forward to now – the dinner. I turn on my MP3 player and the song which starts playing grasps the tournament situation in words – no other, of course, than Avril's What the Hell.

“The salad is tasty,” Pavel Žibřid makes a literal sour face.

I have a beer and sit back down opposite him. A beer a day keeps the doc away – but hey, I've been sitting opposite one for about half an hour!

Fourth round, this time me against the scrabble association director, Pavel Vojáček. But if I thought I'd scalp this one at least to level up the bad luck ... no way. I was getting ahead at the beginning of the game, but then he played a tripled bingo for 92 and I just couldn't catch up with the shit I kept getting. My blank, of course, did not come until the end of the game when it was already useless. When he goes out, the leftover I have t deduct even knocks me under 300. I lose 299 – 381, but if I thought that took the biscuit, it didn't. That's to say, I got Pepa Grosskopf in the fifth round as my next opponent, and although I started off with a pure bingo, in the end I lost by seven points – 347 – 340.

Although I force myself to a grin while congratulating, in fact I'm, of course, pissed off as hell. Getting beaten, though by seven points, by a 1400-er! Shittttt. Oh well, as Jirka Kamín once said – anyone is beatable and you can as well lose to anyone.

Pissed off as I could be, I fall as low as table #27. 27 of 32 – what a downfall. But do you think I'll get a wimp now to play against and have a rest? I hadn't gotten one before and – no, there isn't one scheduled on the sixth-round match-ups against me, either: Marek Lašťovka. Another top player currently in the top 50 who has been on the tourn scene for over 11 years and has made it to the Finals six times, twice of that finishing as high as eighth there.

Today, though, in the 5^th round he ends up at table #27 of 32  – and it seemed like at last an interesting game, as it was going to be between two guys whom luck had totally forsaken at this tourn. But when I looked around, I saw I wasn't by far alone in this: many a player qualified for last year's Finals was sitting at the neighboring tables with one win so far I like I have, such as Jindra Zbyněk Burda (table #29) or Jindra Voráčková (table #28) who, as always, “didn't care”. When the tourn vet Jana Vacková mentioned to her that she's been “enjoying it less and less”, meaning the tourns, Jindra Voráčková, a tourn vet just like her, replied, “me I haven't been enjoying them for four years already. I attend them because Jarda [Buksa – her live-in boyfriend, top-25 veteran player and a frequent finalist too] does.”

 

Who is doing do good, though, is a buddy of mine from the scrabble site Marián Viochna, rated 1695 (he's going to end up as high as ninth). By the end of the tourn he makes it as high as table #2. Saša Willerthová, a tourn vet from Ostrava, who you'd say she oozes charm until she opens her foul mouth, says to him:

“I tell ya, man, doan fuck tonite. Cuz everytime you do good at a tourn and then get laid with your gal, you gonna get her with twins.” A few of us couldn't help letting a laugh on hearing that – that's what really happened a few years ago to Marián.

Seventh round – to continue the fucked nature of the tournament, I'm sent against Jindřich Sikora, the beer-bellied drunkard that noplayed me at the site years ago. What is it that decides the game which seems to be neck and neck until even more than its first half? Right – he gets both blanks, makes a primitive bingo with it. Although I do my best to even up the difference, without any tiny bit of luck it's just impossible. I lose 341 – 371. 55^th of 64 in the continuous ranking! Shit.

Zbyněk Burda did not win either – evidently persuaded by a similar bad luck strike as I was. “I'm matched up against Venclová – doesn't that just take the biscuit!”

 

Indeed. Although the mother of a frequent finialist, Luboš Vencl, Drahomíra Venclová is a weak player always ending the last or last-but-one at best, but she says she enjoys the game anyway. She forever occupies the hindmost tables, so when one gets to play against her, it's only when (s)he's totally out of luck.

I'm starting to be glad this there are only eight rounds only at this tourn. I couldn't get a sweeter cream of the crop for the last round for an opponent – the beautiful half-Vietnamese Žaneta Leová. Lady Luck had obviously hang up somewhere – it was only then that she seemed to have finally arrived. I draw a blank right in my first handful of seven and after playing off the unsuitable tiles, I make a bingo as soon as in my second move. I sort of feel the tiles start flowing my way – pretty early, eh, now during the last round of the tourn! At least the bingo is nice, so nice that even she says nice. Mezkova with a blank for the O – the feminine possessive form of the noun mezek, a mule. It yielded 80 points, a difference she doesn't catch up on – I win 294 – 377 without putting in any particular effort (and she had beaten me quite a couple of times before as you surely remember).

Okay – after this one, I will be in the top fifty of the tourn. Of 64, haha!

 

Indeed. 48^th. Crrrrrapppp. I haven't bombed out of a tourn this way for ages. What does a 48^th place mean qualification-wise? 0.1 points. Indeed – a tenth of a qualification point, to write it out in full.

 

I called Kuba to let him know there'd really been nothing at all he would have missed. “Thank God you haven't been here with me observing,” I make a sour long face into the phone. “One of my worst tourns of recent time.” The same I repeated to my cousin Martin, too, saying it's all to the good he hadn't taken me here with his former boss as he had planned.

“How do ya think it's possible?”

“Partly bad luck, partly badly played, I suppose.” And, last but not least, as Stefan Fatsis would notice, negative thinking during the game.

 

 

I returned by train to Olomouc; I was so fucking short of money. I wish I hadn't taken that fucking trip to Brno. Of course I could use the nearest ATM, but I wanted to save as much on the account as possible. I eventually still withdrew some CZK 200 and made do with it – apart from having had to borrow a few bucks for a streetcar ticket to the train station.

I try to beat the bitter taste of failure by music in my headphones and drinking up the rest of the mead I took along. When a pretty young woman enters my coupé, I offer sharing the bottle with her; she refuses, though. Whatever. I sink my broken heart in the mead. The rest will come in handy at work – I'll offer it to my colleagues at the party we're throwing the following Wednesday.

 

poslal scrabblista, 17.04.2011 2:02:00, Komentáře (0)

The Prague Qualification Tournament and 1st Team League 2011

Praha, CZ, Sat Feb 19^th & Sun Feb 20^th 2011

 

 

Some of my friends said that rather than taking the 427 morning train on Saturday, they'd prefer to arrive in Prague as soon as Friday and spend two nights there instead of just one – even if they had to pay for a hotel. Not me. Being a nightowl, I just take it as “having to get up early” – no matter whether at seven or 350.

I had a scrabble meeting in Jaroměř the Thursday before; the only player to beat me was Zbyněk Burda, and the old fart Vladyka was as happy as a child to tie with me at the superb score ratio 414:414. I looked forward to the tourn the more – to the cut-throat competition.

 

I played an online game with Jarda Kodym, the old Grim Reaper, the day before. He said he decided to put an end to his tournament scrabble career, the tourns being “too expensive for a pensioner”. As he is from Prague, I asked him whether I'd better get off the train at Vysočany, the part of Prague where the fast train also stops before reaching the terminus at the main station.

“Definitely,” he confirms. “It's closer to where the tourn's held.”

Alright – as I found out later on, it saved me six crowns (about 33 cents, heh, but why pay them if I don't have to), enabling me to travel on a shorter-term streetcar ticket.

I arrived about thirty minutes before the beginning, so as always I helped check the completeness of all the 41 scrabble sets (there being 83 players at the tourn), having made me a cuppa coffee and grabbing a few poppy seed kolaches. Yum! I adore poppy seed. The only drawback to it being that it requires some picking of your teeth in front of the mirror afterwards. Not good a smile after eating a poppyseed kolache, eh?

 

Greeting Katka Rusá, I sit against her at one of the tables and help her verify the completeness of one of the sets. I wish her good luck, which she glosses with the answer of the day. “I don't enjoy this game anymore anyway.”

Haha – one of the most talented Czech scrabble players ever, who has qualified to each and every National Championship since 1998 and was even the National Championess in 2003 – doesn't enjoy this game anymore. So said Jiří Kamín who has also qualified for each and every Championship since 2000 when he entered the scrabble tournament scene. Where does Czech scrabble go from here? Well, people just come and go but there are fronts which they just shouldn't leave – like the scrabble one. Why throw one's talent over the shoulder?

 

I move to another table to verify another set when Hana Závišková stops by.

“How's the book?” she asks, meaning my translation of Stefan Fatsis's scrabble bestseller Word Freak in process.

Before that, she had recommended me one of her fave authors – Terry Pratchett, the translation of whose books is also famous for mastering his puns and coping with them successfully in Czech; she thought reading them would help with the translation. I did read a book by him ages ago – The Unadulterated Cat – but that being a quite untypical book of him, I gotta read some other ones to enjoy his style as well as its translation.

 

In the first round, I get Filip Vojáček, the son of the current Czech Scrabble Association president. He's been getting better and better in scrabble, sometimes even better than his father rating-wise, but I still have a positive win-lose ratio with him, about 3:2, one of the losses being pretty close on top of that.

Heck, I hate having to fight THAT hard as early as at 9am. Getting no “bingo-making letters”, I had to resort to the “classic” scrabble tactics, squeezing the shit out of bonus squares and using the blank – to which no compatible bingo letters came either – in some 30-ish move; he though, didn't let it frighten him and still kept neck and neck with me. When we turned the bag the wrong side up to show no letters were remaining in it, the winner was still not plain to see. We sat racking our brains over our last racks, each making up his own way to the final deciding move.

There were two ways I saw among my letters. Either go out quickly – but risk he doesn't have enough to deduct – or make these two fat moves but have to hope he doesn't go out after the first of them. Like, he's got six letters right now. Do you often go out with six letters? Not very probable.

 

Of course. Of course he did!!! Fuuuuucccck it. I was a bit in the lead before this, but I don't suppose this will save me.

 

Not really: 310 – 311. Shiiiiiittttt!!!

 

“Hm. Well, congrats, then,” I said not bothering to conceal how pissed off it made me feel.

Two tables higher, at #13, a similar disappointment was in progress. Katka Rusá's uncle, the triple National Champ Milan Kuděj, just lost by eight points against 1760-rated Radek Mannheim. Not that the difference between their ratings was yawning – about a hundred – but still, not a nice surprise.

 

I declared that I'd take it out on my next opponent. The unlucky one was Raul Kačírek, a recent newcomer to the tournament scene who was lured to it from the scrabble site, hearing a lot about tournament scrabble there.

I pushed a lot in accordance with my decision, played a bingo as early as in my 5^th move (potkejte with a blank for the other E – a second personal plural imperative of “to meet”) and a 42-pointer three moves later, but still, if I thought I'd have been far away from him point-wise by that time, I was badly mistaken. I had to put together a 42-pointer – znuď, the 2^nd person imperative of “to make s.o. bored” – yeah, make me bored and don't chase me like this!

The pool is growing thinner. Heck, gotta think something up. I had been waiting forever for a P and an O to make měř (the imperative of to measure) two squares in front of a triple into poměř (“compare”), but having almost overlooked that of course – at the last minute I notice I could use the triple for making téměř (“nearly”) squeezing as many as 44 points from the word.

“Oh, that's beautiful,” he says frankly.

“Thanks,” I grin. “Nearly overlooked it.”

 

Now that you think you got the game nailed – what do you get?

Right – the Q in the English version, the X in the Czech one (thank God we don't have the Q – but the X is sometimes pretty enough! Being of the same point value as the English Q).

I did think up a way of burning it: down there in the lower right corner, there's a chance of making noxe – noxa being a general term for a toxic substance in the air. It's even sometimes used in English (coming from the Latin noxa – damage) but surprisingly not good in English scrabble.

Now, whadya think he did?

Of course – jammed the spot. There being no other one to burn the X, I had to make hard calculations in my head to see if there are chances of winning even if deducing the X as a leftover.

 

There definitely are. I quickly counted the maximum value of Raul's going-out move which would still win me the game and hoped he would make less.

 

He's gonna get as much as twenty fucking points for free. Grrr.

 

Goooooood. He didn't make much in his going-out move, so even after having to deduct the X and give it to him, I eked out a win by four points – 344 – 348.

“You deserved that – téměř is beautiful,” he praised once again that 44-point move of mine.

 

Not that I had a good feeling about that, though. Losing the first game by one point and winning the second against an almost-newbie to the tourn scene by four points – doesn't look like a good sign.

 

If I only knew that what I'm just commencing is gonna be one of my best, if not THE best, scrabble games ever, I wouldn't be so pessimistic now...

I get sent to table #17 of 41. Jiří Matějček, my upcoming opponent, is a guy my age, a buddy of mine from the scrabble site and a professional theater actor. Let's see how he's gonna act in the course of our game.

Ouch! Like, didn't mean it ironically at all. Sorry ... well, too late for excuses, obviously. He throws a 68-point bingo and accompanies it with a theatrical grin. After giving it a disgusted sneer, though, I noticed that his bingo actually helped me to one of mine – and a pure one. Naložíme – the 1^st person plural future of to load; let's load a full steel body of bingo.

And so I answer to a 68-point bingo with a blank with this pure bingo of mine for 70, not knowing I sort of trigger a double bingo vendette from his side by this. Three moves later he shoves on a pure bingo schovav, an ancient past participle of to hide. I respond with a 39-pointer which gets me close again. But other three moves later he tries another ancient past participle – omraziv, of “to freeze all over”, which I challenge (he himself was grinning with doubts over it) but comes back good.

“Such bullshit – next to impossible,” I sneer. He's asked for trouble by this. With a series of 39-38-39 points for succeeding moves, I soon breathe on his neck again. And what's more – we both cross 400. What warms the very cockles of my heart is, though, that I keep pace with him in spite of playing just one bingo as compared to the three of his. And WHAT a pace! Maybe I'd better say gallop.

Oh, there it is! Just what I need. A 20-pointer towards the end of the game is a real lifebuoy. Now I can go out and he “can't catch up anymore” as Burda would say.

 

403 – 428. Now this win is a real delight. Against three bingos and opposing score of 403. Ain't this the best game I've ever played!

Indeed – our 831 sum of scores is going to hold a record of the best sum of scorers of the tourn until the end of the eighth round. And at the end of the tournament, it's still gonna be the third best sum.

I just gotta have some chocolate to wrap my nerves up. I have a bar of extra dark one along – how could I ever do without it!

 

Jindra Voráčková. Ouch, I knew I did need the choc.

 

This old lady is a tourn veteran just like her partner Jarda Buksa is, often ending up in the Finals (she did so every year from 2001 to 2009 with the only exception of 2007), but says she doesn't enjoy the tourns anymore. Yeah, you remember well – she's the one who says “I don't care” when you congratulate her or apologize for your good luck. “It's fine for me to get into the Finals,” she said recently, “But I just don't enjoy it...”

True. I have never seen her smile and been wondering how the heck Jarda Buksa, who's quite a gigglebox, can live with her, let alone be her life partner. Well, probably it's just that opposites attract each other.

 

My personal win – lose ratio with her being 5:4 in my favor, I sure ain't gonna let her tie it. Let alone a scrabble rope around my neck, eh?

This one, a game in which I seemed to be the game (and she the hunter, eh?), was a perfect example of the fact that things aren't what they seem to be. The 15^th line of the board was being watched closely by me, that is to say. And so while anybody might think she can as well keep cool for having already won in the main, I was making up a deadly blow for loads of points there, distracting her attention from the spot at the same time.

Yes... yes, I rejoice in my mind before the 11^th move. Now it comes. I suppose now she's gonna block it, eh? Even unintentionally. There's no exception to Murphy's laws.

 

She didn't. Oooooooooph.

 

Vymetším, a blank for the y, an ancient masculine/neuter past participle of “to sweep out”, sweeps Jindra out of her leading position for awhile. She challenges, of course – with a 92-point word it's just the “duty” – saying, when we arrive at the comp, that she wants to type the word in herself, probably to prevent me from spelling it another way than when I played it.

It comes back good – well, of course! I didn't have any doubts – and as another sweet reward, I get the other blank, too, in my new handful of seven.

(Did you notice that after years and years of playing scrabble, you mostly manage to pull exactly seven letters out of the bag with just one grab? You sort of already have the knack.)

 

I play the shit out of it right in my next move, squeezing 38 points of it. But even this one doesn't get me in the lead much – just slightly. She, being – as I had already noticed before – apparently not under the influence of tourn fever, calculates her moves coldbloodedly and even this other killer move of mine doesn't get her out of it.

 

130 points in two moves – you just get exhausted after those, even if you don't admit it. Let alone if they don't get ahead you much.

 

She went out – the last straw to catch upon and rely on your opp's big leftover. I counted on that one, though, and ensured I'd win even if she did this.

 

320 – 311. With two blanks ... lame win, ain't it? Oh well, what the hell. Every win counts.

 

I have asked for even more trouble by this, eh?

Of course. Pavel Žibřid, our team capo and a quadruple national championship bronze medailist, currently as high as fifth on the Association chart. One of those games that keep you at ease because you know you just can't win. But come on – didn't I nearly beat him back when I first came to the Parnas club? Hadn't it then been for that stupid mistake of mine at the end of our game.

As if to demonstrate who the main bingo king here is, he plays a pure one right in his fourth move. I get a blank but quite incompatible letters to it – as usual, eh? – but hey, guess I could make something up. Sřasíme, a future tense of “to join something together by lashes” looks sooo strange that even this scrabble macho goes and challenges. The weird word turns out to be good, but my joy doesn't last longer than three turns – after which he shoves a bingo of his right on a triple. The spot being, of course, the only one I hadn't managed to jam.

This definitely decides an up to now quite even-chance game in his favor – 325 – 413; after all, not that bad a loss against such a scrabble (and medicine as well, ha) capacity. As a quadruple bronze medailist from the Championship, he deserves the win. Oh well.

 

I down some further bits of choc to calm my nerves down, although, as I had said, there was no need to be nervous in a game against a player of such a level. I make me another cup of coffee and enjoy the break (I always enjoy a longer one – one of the advantage of blitz tactics).

 

I overhear Niki Zgafasová and a few other female players, standing aloof in a group, mentioning my name. I come closer to see the circumstances – they were arguing over my occupation.

“Tom! Are you a railroad man?”

“Nope!” I let a laugh. “An English teacher. How did you make that out?”

“Dunno – mebbe it's just that I thought that just about everyone from Eastern Bohemia works on the railroads.”

It's a peculiar phenomenon in the Czech scrabble world – a real lot of Eastern Bohemian scrabble players really have a job connected to railroads so she thought I did as well.

Sixth round – against Dana Klimešová, rated 1600, who started organizing qualification tourns in Zlín last year and this gave me a chance and a pretext to regularly come and see my best friend Šárka who lives there. She seems to be a nice person “live” – makes me wonder why she noplayed me on the scrable site. On the site and at the tournaments, we all seem to be totally different personalities. Or maybe she doesn't know who I am on the site, having not opened my profile. Who knows.

I play a tripled bingo early in the game – in my fifth turn, for 80 points. Everything seeming to work out fine, I take my chances with a word I'm not 100% sure about. Just 99% - šimy should be good. If you know š is the Czech transcription of the “sh” sound, you can guess what it is – yeah, right, shimmy (the original spelling also being good in Czech scrabble) . But -y also being a frequent plural indication in Czech, it looked like a plural of some šim*, too. And while the tourn players usually have learned all the threes cold, her challenge is fully understandable.

Šimy having given me an injection of thirty points, I ponder over my last rack. But hey – it ain't as good as to be able to empty in just a few moves.

Unlike hers. She plays losicí, a case of the noun losice, a female of the elk, which leaves only two letters in her rack. I am ahead point-wise, but if she goes out, the leftover can cause me pretty much trouble.

And what? Of course she does!

Now, what do you think the reslut – oops, result – is?

Of course. Another loss by one fucking point – 350 – 349. A reslut indeed – what a good typo.

 

“Nobody ain't gonna believe me this,” I say to Dana Kučová the tournament IT manager when handing her the score sheets. She just nods her head and chuckles in sympathy, checking on the scores – she remembered how the first game of mine at this tourn had been.

One loss by one point sucks. But a second one five rounds later... just makes you gather all your strength not to fly off the handle right on the spot.

 

Poor one, the next opponent, I think to myself. S/he'll catch it from me although s/he's not to blame – for all the preceeding bad luck of mine.

Blanka Kovaříková, I read on the 7^th round match-ups. Rating of 1431 – hell, where have I ended up? Somewhere down there in the slumps, evidently. Well not yet – table #21, which of 40 is the uppest in the lower half, ha...

“Are you a relative of Jan Kovařík?” I wondered, remembering that ole scrabble player who recently suprisingly dropped in his rating and dangerousness.

“Yeah ... downright his wife,” she laughs – I can't believe my ears. She looks much older than him.

Although I play just one bingo (nevstrč in my 5^th move for 78, an imperative of “not to stick [into]”), I soon get much more ahead than what would be called a “one-bingo difference”. No mercy – I have had too much bad luck to be good to you. I smash her with a precise 200-point difference – 430 – 230; and no, I didn't need more than one blank and one bingo.

 

Dagmar Rusá. Katka's mother is gonna be the next victim. And yeah, that's what's vital – the way you look at your opponent. She's gonna be another victim of mine.

Like the bag heard me. I get a pure bingo kvasíme (the 1^st person plural of “to ferment”) right on my first rack. She goes first, though, so I hope I will be able to hook the bingo on her word.

She gives me an N in her word. Good. I can rearrange it into nekvasím, the 1^st person singular negative future of the verb. As Burda would say, if you make a bingo representing a negative verb, it's a lame one ... but oh well, better play a lame bingo than none.

If I had only known I was going to make a better one in awhile. Pulling a blank among the next – exact again – handful of seven after the initial bingo, I soon start working on another one.

 

Typical. Everytime you start working on a bingo, what you get is those fucking c's and ě's and company.

But hey ...

... after a minute of thinking apparently the effect of extra dark chocolate has arrived. And, yeah, THANK YOU for the fucking ě and c! Thanks to it, I can now play strmělce, with a blank for the L, the dative case of strmělka, which is a kind of edible mushroom, the common funnel. (I've studied the mushroom atlas a lot when was a little boy and NOW it suits me – surprisingly on a front totally different from mushrooming!)

To my surprise she didn't even challenge. Just said “nice” – she apparently knows the mushroom.

In my new handful of seven I get the other blank and three turns later come up with a third bingo – rozvážu, a 1^st person future of to untie, with a blank for the O.

Even after my first two bingos, she kept pace with me. The third, though, was too much already – it made the one-bingo difference between our final total scores: 359 – 424.

While I was glad I had just gained my fifth win and so if I lose now, I'd still be 5 – 4 so the wins would prevail, Pavel Žibřid comes from the 1^st table like a beaten dog, with a pissed-off expression on his face.

“I've just played the little miss Filip,” he says, meaning Hana Filipová, sometimes calling her the Young Shrew, too, according to her mother's scrabble site nickname (it being the Old Shrew for a change). “I was already about to give the final blow, shovel her into the hearth. I play a move, announce twelve points and then realize, fuck, duh, it's fourteen... too late though. I lost by one point – just mucking ineffability.”

Yeah. The results of the tourn become ineffable too – Hana wins gold thanks to this while Pavel ends up seventh. If I won gold like this, I'd rather give that win to Pavel.

 

My last opponent is the tourn veteran and policeman Martin Vacek.

I start with a one-letter swap, which we both grin at, knowing what it is probably a sign of. On my second turn – guess what I did. Nooope – you didn't guess it – another one letter swap, which gets accompanied with an even bigger grin. Martin tries to play a word generally unhookable, but still, in spite of having two R's which would generally not be considered bingo-friendly, I try to use an O of his word for a bingo of mine – prooraly, a feminine plural past tense of “to plow through”. He challenges, and when it comes back good, he says he wouldn't take the chances of playing the word if he had it in his rack.

“Me I did believe it,” I responded. Since I played this bingo of mine, I kept pace with him until the end of the game. Then, though, he got both blanks – or maybe had had them for some time – and played a triple bingo with them, which decides about the winner in fact. He wins 394 – 325 – as I said, what decided was getting the blanks and composing a bingo with them, which he admits. But oh well, he being a tourn veteran, experience is what counts as well.

The best word of the tourn, surprisingly, wasn't played by a top player – it was Lukáš Karlec, rated 1427, who shoved the triple triple onboard. Polonahý, “half-naked”, for 158 points – a good one, indeed; that's the naked truth, not only half-naked.

5 – 4 then. Oh well, no big deal but not that bad. I end up 30^th of 83 – three qualification points, eh? Not many. But oh well, too early to talk about qualification in February, and besides, I'm still among the qualified ones. So let's keep there! And compensate for today's bad luck tomorrow at the team league.

 

I call my cousin to discuss today's evening and the time I should call him to pick me up, as I want to spend some time with my Praguean friend Dominika now. He tells me it doesn't really matter.

 

I meet Dominika in a down-city pub and we have a special kind of beer together. Dominika notices that every time we meet we sooner or later come up with an intimate conversation topic. It being sex when we last had seen each other, this time the theme developed into masturbation. She just threw an embarrassing look around, and seeing nobody really cared, we went on, since as it turned out, I discovered a serious problem within her. “Everyone does,” I tell her. “And those who say they don't, they're talking shit,” I grin.

This was just the beiginning, though. She confessed she never really did as their parents considered that a taboo and something that shouldn't be done. I ended up explaining to her how women jack off, whereupon she was all embarrassed laughter – where the heck are we at again?

“It's easy – just caress your clitoris,” I crowned my frankness, making her blush like a schoolgirl and burst out laughing, saying “oh God”.

When she was off to wash her hands, she sneered and said, “I'm going to give my clitoris a caress.”

 

She was back again in a minute, and when I wanted to take my turn to wash my hands, she warned me: “There's a guy at the Gents, puking.” What the fuck?

 

She was right. A girl with an embarrassed expression on her face was standing at the entrance door of Gentlemen and begging the guys coming to leave for the Ladies, there being more toilets to take advantage of.

 

About half an hour before midnight we part; Martin comes and collects me and we hit the road for his apartment. Agreeing that we don't have mind for beer, we don't stop by anywhere.

When we arrive, Martin's gal Tereza wakes up. Oh well – at least I can give her the choc rose I brought her. She says she doesn't mind anyway and that she's glad to see me. We spend about two hours talking before I gather I really do have to go to bed if I want my next day's performance at the team league to be worth at least something.

 

Martin accompanies me to the city bus stop in the morning, reminding me which stop to get off at. It's a hell of a ride – he calls it jocularly a “sightseeing city tour”. Rightly, as the bus sometimes goes to and fro because of roundabouts and shit, and before you get there, almost an hour's gone before you even notice.

We counted that I'd get in front of the hotel where the team league takes place at about ten to nine AM – there being a ten-minute time reserve for me then. As I have to gather later on, I need one badly – cuz when the city bus gets to the designated stop, this fucking driver closes the bus door before I even manage to get through the crowd to it. So I, curse words flying from my mouth, travel one stop farther and then walk back to the hotel over fields of high grass.

When I get in front of the hotel at about two to nine, my cell phone starts ringing. Of course – the team capo Pavel Žibřid is wondering where the heck I am. I calm him down telling him I'm just in front of the hotel, about to get in.

“Alright, take it easy – we're not sitting at the tables yet,” he grins into the phone.

 

Before we are finally seated against our first opposing team, I even manage a coffee and a few slices of bread with the traditional delicious team league garlic spread. The secret chemical weapon, eh?

Before I even notice, our team gets the list of the four players of our first opposing team, Paluba (The Shipboard), it being up to us to make the match-ups. When I get to find out, I have not much choice left, and so I take the prettie Jana Vágnerová.

“I suppose you chose me, eh?” she chuckles.

“I didn't, to your surprise,” I smile in response. “I wouldn't choose someone with a strong female weapon.”

“I don't get how you can like someone aged 35,” she wonders, like she didn't know this is not a matter of age.

Most of the games with her are great, but this one got sort of out of my control. After a while of running neck and neck, I got this combination which drives scrabble players crazy – six good bingo letters plus a seventh shit. I set out for a long trip in vain persecuting the bingo. I mean, she's too far away anyway and if I wanted to shrink the difference a bit, I had to hold on some more.

Now, whadya think? Without any pre-bingo preparation, she plays one of hers. Well okay. Now that the game's REALLY in vain, I can as well go on trying the bingo – it just has to work.

In the meantime, of course, she tries to jam all the possible spots for bingos thoroughly, while I desperately go 2-3-2 throwing off the extra non-suitable letters.

“Will you finally play the bingo,” she sneers. I feel the bag: one tile left. My last chance.

And yes... yes! At least fifteen seconds of fame at the utter end of the game – and downright on a triple. Klesáme, a 1^st person plural present tense of to decrease, with a blank for the At least it gets me over 300 and saves me from total humiliation – and brings fruit of the ages-taking pursuit of the bingo.

It's a shame that I lost by so much, as it means only a small tie for our team and thus only one point for Parnas in this round – Pavel Žibřid won over Martin Hrubý by eight points only, and Pepa Grosskopf, who came as a substitute for Jirka Kracík who is sick, beat František Růžička.

 

Oh well – that was only a warm-up.

“Now we're playing the poultry,” Pavel Žibřid grins. He means the Střelené kachny team, which would, taking into consideration the pun in the name, translate as Meshugga Ducks, the knack to it being that střelené is also the passive of “to shoot”, i. e. a pun with “shot ducks”. Yeah – that's the one this sweet half-Vietnamese Žaneta plays in, too. And hey – ain't there been a substantial change in their team! I notice their strongest player, one of the best, of not THE best, Czech players ever, Martin Sobala, is missing (maybe taking care of his wife who is currently in a high stage of pregnancy). He's been substituted by a recent newcomer to the tournament scene, Raul Kačírek. It was their turn to match up their players to the ones of our team, and Raul chose me, enjoying to play against me on the site, too.

“Sob[ala] has invited me to his team – dunno why,” Raul explains to me as we sit down opposite each other. “Maybe it's because I'm Kačírek [his surname means “little drake” in Czech] .”

Indeed – with his name he can be a perfect mascot for the Meshugga Ducks team.

But if he meant it as a rematch for the game the day before, he was mistaken. I smashed him with a 175-point difference 283 – 458, playing two nice bingos, one with each blank (mezitím – “in the meantime” , the blank for the other M, for 83, and šlachám, the dative plural case of the noun “sinew”, the blank for the A, for 78), and this very difference contributed to the fact that the tie we had with the Střelené kachny team was a “big one” (i.e., two wins and two losses on each side but our sum of scores was bigger than theirs). Zbyněk Burda won over Sára Matějková by about 70, but Pavel Žibřid got beaten by the 2004 National Champ Michal Sikora and Pepa Grosskopf lost to Tereza Matějková by more than a hundred.

While this had been a win I took quite at ease, I didn't have an idea about how tough a job the next game was gonna be. We are to play a top Praguean team Poškoláci, The Detainees, which won several team leagues and ended up silver last year. Yeah, the one that consists of the Vaceks, Věra Majtánová, Luboš Vencl and aces like that.

I look at the match up sheet we were given and choose Věra for my opponent, which my co-players from the Parnas team approve. Zbyněk Burda takes on Katka Rusá's uncle and triple National Champ Milan Kuděj, Pavel Žibřid challenges Jana Vacková, and Pepa Grosskopf, who always says he “doesn't care which opponent he's gonna get”, is assigned Luboš Vencl.

I always enjoy playing Věra, so had someone told me in advance that my game against her was going to be stressful as hell, I would have talked back straightaway that they were kidding.

I started the game and began with a one-letter swap, accompanied by an innocent grin typical of this kind of situation. No, I ain't got nuttin' cookin'...

She, for a change, exchanged two.

I had this combination which would yield bingo with practically any short vowel for the seventh letter... and yes, yes, and O's just come. I shove on a pure hostovo, a neuter possessive case of the noun host (“guest”) – just any other short vowel instead of the last O would have yielded some other possessive form of this noun.

She bingos back, as you might guess – with a blank, though. Podivech, with a blank for the P, gives her 68 so she's immediately only two points short of me.

What began as a neck and neck game started to spoil when I felt I was about to have another bingo – but I just couldn't for the FUCK of me make one up.

 

When I came up with one at last – lámanku, an accusative case of a type of crumbs – to my surprise it got challenged off.

“FUCK the dictionary!” I couldn't help letting out loud when leaving the comp with the dic(k) installed. A player seated nearest the computer burst out laughing – she could hear me the clearliest and thought SHE was the only vulgar one there. But why – even Věra herself knew the word, but took her chances with the challenge, hoping it wasn't going to be in the dic(k). So it does exist – why the heck don't the source dicks include it!

I try another bingo two moves later. Whadya think?

Yeah. Challenged off again. Grrrrrrrrrrrr.

She plays a word of hers and with it she creates a new, very limited, but on the othe other hand tripled, hook. The only letter you could hook a word on it with was a Z. Which I didn't have as both Z's of the Czech scrabble set have already been played. So when I play my blank and announce it represents a Z, she sneers and so do I, as it's clear to both of us that what is going to follow is an act of total desperation. I try the word klouzán: it does look good – like a passive of the verb “slide”. Věrka challenges again, though – some verbs just don't take the passive.

Guess what? Not this one, either.

I was beside myself with anger. That's to say, by that time she had long been above me point-wise.

But then a strange thing happened. She played děla, a plural of “cannon”. Such an obvious hook! And she does know I have an O, which makes me able to play oděla – a feminine past participle of the bookish verb “to dress”. That's how I hooked a fourth try for a bingo in a row – volánku with a blank for the V.

“Shall this not be good!” I threaten. Věra challenges “just in case” – she herself says it definitely should be.

 

It was. Oooooooooph. Thanks to this I finally take the deserved win (377 – 349) which almost cost me nerves – after three bingos challenged off, the fourth was valid at last. “What's volánek anyway?” I ask after the game. “I only know it's a part of a dress.”

“Yeah,” Věra confirms. “On a skirt, a tightly gathered piece of fabric.” Yup – you guessed that – the Czech for a frill, volánku being its genitive and locative case.

No, this is not the point of the round yet. I turn around to find Pavel Žibřid waiting to record my results:

“Your win was useless,” Pavel grins. Kiddin' me – such a nerve training was this game for me, and finally I win in vain. That's to say, I was the only one of my team to have won in this round, so we get diddly-squat this time anyway. Pavel Žibřid got beaten by Jana Vacková as well as Zbyněk Burda did by Milan Kuděj, and Pepa Grosskopf lost to Luboš Vencl.

 

Our next opposing team, Sklípkani or The Trap Door Spiders, turns up without Marián, but with Yvetta Hlubinková as a substitute. Marián may have stayed home taking care of his two babies.

Who chose me was – of course – the most dangerous one of the team, Ivo Hradský. (It was expectable – we are friends who enjoy playing each other and on top of that he studied English at the university just like I did. He's the redbeardo who fought his way to the championship last year only to get drunk before its beginning and finally end up among the last ones. Not that it had been his first one – a second one already since the beginning of his tournament career in 2006. At the 2009 championship he finished as high as 11^th .)

Proving how strong a player he is, he plays a non-bingo quadrupled seven-letter word for 56 as early as his 2^nd move. Then no less than two turns later he gets a blank and plays the bingo nemlsat, “not to have a sweet tooth” with a blank for the T, saying that that one was too primitive. I start composing mine, but having no blank, it's a tougher work. I do come up with one, though – as I start laying vydáveno on the board, he later on confesses he expected it to contain a blank. It didn't, though – I made a pure one.

My joy didn't last long, though. Be it partly because of the still lasting joy over the bingo, or because of the respect I hold towards him, I didn't see through the obvious hook he made for himself. Not for a bingo – you already know what he's an expert in: another fat non-bingo move. He quadruples the six-point Ň in šňáb – šňába being a kind of brandy made from wine settlement. I go out with my CKNS playing scink (the skink or shingleback) around an I already on the board, saying that “t[he CKNS] was an exact demonstration of the kind of letters I kept getting all the time.” He wins 443 – 324, glossing it with “... and on top of that you've thwarted quite a couple of other nice plays of mine.” Luckily none of my teammates won in this round either, so I was not alone in the failure. We got our asses kicked – hopefully the footprints on the back of our pants aren't that much plain to see.

Oh well – hopefully the next team, Nerobité from Silesia, will be an easier job. I take on Mirka Zaisová, a rather average player who, though, shone at the tourn in Kladno along with her partner as you may remember.

Her then lucky strike already having been obviously gone though, she had to rely on what she can do. And not that there's little of it! In her 6^th move she plays a nice pure bingo. She, though, three moves later lets me get away with an invalid dialect word for 33 and I keep at lead since then. I beat her (well, okay, defeat – women shouldn't be beaten, duh) 308 – 352, and as Pavel Žibřid won in a hard 800-sum fight over Katka's sis Lída Rusá, we get a “small tie” one point, as the sum of scores ratio was 1436 – 1514.

Záškoláci, The Detainees, our next opposing team, often end up at the bottom of the chart at the end of the year, so it's gonna be an easy job I hope. Who choses me for his opponent is my scrabble site buddy Josef Pustka. At last a game I can say I was lucky in – I deserved it after the hard work of fighting off the bad luck. Well, downright against you – sorry, my friend.

I start off with a pure 63-point bingo, then in my next turn shove another pure one, also for 63. He draws a blank and strives to make one of his, which he manages three turns later. However, the preparation of the bingo took some time so I get away in the meantime. There's still an approximate one-bingo difference between us so he hopes to shrink it with his, get back neck and neck with me and maybe even in front of me.

However, I can smell the danger. Although his preparation wasn't that conspicuous, it was just plain to see that there was a little too much room in one area of the board, and you know what the threat always is when you don't jam all those roomy areas of it before the end of the game. So I just went there with an average move of mine, whereupon he grinned and made a gesture like he said “whoosh”. You did have the bingo ready there, eh? I just guessed so.

He also had the other blank, too, but it turned out to be useless. I win 311 – 377. “Exactly the one bingo difference – I had a pure one ready but you jammed the spot,” Josef said.

“I guessed so. The spot was just too dangerously open for a long time.”

The Detainees get a 4 – 0 dusting from us. The fourth win – of Pepa Grosskopf over Petr Kuča, the father of the 2008 National Champ but quite a weak player himself – was a close one though, an interesting one to watch and a result of Petr's stupid mistake in the endgame.

You'll make that one out yourself straight away. Say, I'll teach you two Czech words: za, the Czech for “behind”, and zbraň, the Czech for a “weapon”. On the board there was the word braň, an imperative of “to defend”. In your rack you got a Z to go out with. Where do you put it?

Of course, you're right – in front of the braň to make zbraň. That way you get 2(z)+3(b)+1®+1(a)+6(ň) = 13 points.

Now, what did Petr do? He put the Z over the A, making za for three! And so Pepa enjoyed a close victory and contributed to our smashing 4 – 0 score against Záškoláci in this round.

Just like after every team league round, Pavel Žibřid has us all report our results to him to record them on a common sheet of paper to have them all together. When I do so, he tells me my performance has been the best of the whole team so far. Indeed – altho I can't believe it, he has had three wins so far, Zbyněk's had two. Me I've had four. So let's not muck it up now!

Our seventh round opposing team become the Brno Dragons – Brněnští draci. I didn't quite care who I'd get so I was “assigned” Jiří Kučka.

He's a dangerous one. A top player currently 42^nd on the Association chart and as high as 2300-rated on the scrabble site. Well, 42^nd – I'm higher than him then, eh? 32^nd. But that doesn't mean much if you stand up against each other. A 10-place difference makes you roughly equal.

It's a hell of a fight again – like, as if there was any other kind of fights at the team league, eh? Jiří punches me in the face with a 65-point bingo of his, tradicí with a blank for the I, a genitive of “tradition”. Just wait! I've gotten a blank and am workin' on one of mine.

I come up with it five turns later, using an Á on the board, the blank for another Á and making splétává, a 3^rd person singular present tense of splétávat, to entangle. Guess the development of the game has just pretty entangled!

The lead this bingo got me into was just slight – about twenty – but the deal is that he didn't catch up on this lead of mine anymore. Duh – lead is too smooth and heavy a metal to catch upon, ha. Heavy metal – but guess I'll give ya quite a different kind of music to listen to, ha! The sound of beat – or more exactly, of being beaten. I win by exactly the twenty – 358 – 338, thanking him for a hell of a good game, an interesting neck and neck fight with one bingo and one blank on either side.

And again – my win helped save the team from a loss.

“How did you do?” Pavel wonders, ready to record. I dictated the results of my game to him.

“A small tie again, eh?” he can't help letting a laugh when comparing the results of the whole team for this round. Actually he's used to calling it a “worse tie”. Duh – getting one point is worse than getting two points.

 

If we thought the last round, against Záškodníci or The Saboteurs, would save us, we were mistaken. A round where all four bags played evidently against us. Me I took on Barbora Hrůzová. What'd you say: an initial pure bingo came to her all by itself from the bag. I worked hard on evening (and even morning!) up the score odds, but when I finally did, she got both blanks at once and played another bingo. This kind of games just always has me pissed off. She wins 411 – 346 without even having to work on the victory. So my words of its evaluation when congratulating her are quite exact and concise:

“A fucking rotten game.”

Which this one really was. “Don't talk foul,” she lets a laugh. As I said, I was not alone in the fatal failure – all the other Parnas boys lost too. In the final ranking chart of the team league, we end up last but one (even this is not a solace as the team who finished dead last has just kicked our asses in this final round!). As the individual player, I end up 12^th of 55 which is not all that bad – oh well, at least something positive to all this shit.

 

Who came to have a look at the team league is yesterday's newcomer to the Czech scrabble tournament scene Irena Lauermannová, a sweet, amiable gal my age with long red curly hair. Radek Mannheim, of course, tried to make moves on her, being similarly unlucky at love like I am (but I, unlike him, don't try to pick up any gal I bump into).

“You're Quentos, aren't you?” she smiles when I come by to greet her. Another one to recognize me according to the photo in my scrabble site profile – although it's more than 10 years old! “All this time I was like, hey, I know this guy,” she goes on when I confirm. “Ain't that Quentos? And I thought, no, that' can't be Quentos – such an easy-goin' guy... he's got such weird quips at the site.”

“Well, I can get choleric from time to time,” I sneer admittingly.

“Not really choleric – just weird...”

I was glad to get to know her She even said she was going to attend the following tourn in three weeks in Přerov, too.

 

I call my cousin Martin, as there was a few hours time till my train was due. He wonders if I had the mind to have a beer, and we agreed we didn't really. I suggest going to the confectionery instead. He doesn't come alone – a stout bearded guy accompanies him. I guess right who he is – his former boss that he often talked about, even since the time he was employed in his company. Martin quit the job later on, saying he's “a great guy but impossible to work with”.

He turned out to be all around a brilliant guy indeed in both senses of the word. Smart and sociable, and we had a fruitful discussion over quite a number of topics – I even infected him with enthusiasm so much so that he pondered over organizing a scrabble tourn himself. When I said it was about time we left for the train station, he started to make up plans how to make me stay longer.

“I'd love to, but there's no way,” I had to admit. “I have to get up for work at six tomorrow.”

“That's no problem either,” he takes my breath away. “You now have one more piece of cake at my expense, and then let's hit the road for Trutnov in my car.”

That was something I had to talk myself out of – as I had suffered from a strong indigestion in his car, although it was just a short way we traveled – from the Prague main station to the Vysočany one. I refused the nice gesture saying that I had a two-way ticket anyway so it's valid for the way back, too. That covninced him. We said goodbye, agreeing we definitely should meet again.

 

I sat down in the coupé of the train car, my stomach totally overfilled, saying to myself I had had enough of candies for at least two following weeks. Actually I didn't hold until later than the very next day, ha!

 

30^th of 83 : three qualification points. No big deal but hey – let's make up for it by kicking ass in Přerov on 3/27!

poslal scrabblista, 21.03.2011 6:18:00, Komentáře (0)

The Kladno Qualification Tournament 2011

I called Zbyněk Burda, wondering whether he was gonna go to Kladno. (Like, he has been attending just about every tourn since 1998, save the Hradec ones which he himself organizes – but just to make sure). That' to say, I needed someone to take me along in a car – there's no way of getting to Kladno from Trutnov by a morning train; I'd have had to set up for a three-day trip that way, and that doesn't sound much attractive.

He answered in his typical way – “dunno”. You could picture him grinning on the other side of the wireless connection.

Of course he did. I called him once again two days before the tourn. After his usual “wharya wakin' me up for” (this being his usual “greeting” regardless of the time of day) we agreed to meet early Saturday morning in front of the Hradec power company.

6.30. I agree it's about time I left the warmth of the train station building and go to the meeting spot.

6.40. No trace of Zbyněk. What's up? He's usually punctual.

6.50. Still no trace of Zbyněk. What the heck? I call him ... nobody answers.

6.55. I call him once again, like, I'm slowly starting to be a bit cold. You're lucky that I'm from the mountains, so I'm kinda used to.

“Wharya wakin' me up for?” Well, apparently he doesn't lose his sense of humor even after 25 minutes' delay. “My car wouldn't start, took me ages to get it on the road at all. I'll be there in five minutes.”

When he finally arrived, he said we should manage to get there in time anyway.

“Alzheimer called me,” he sneered.

“Who's that? Kodym?” Does he call the old-as-hills Grim Reaper that way?

“Haha, nope ... Mannheim.” Oh I see – Alzheimer, eh? “He told me to pick him up on Černý most (The Black Bridge – a part of Prague as well as a bridge in that location).” We didn't know what we were gonna be through because of this extra passenger on our way back.

 

He threw an automap after me. “You're gonna be the navigator.” Haha – I've heard this one before.

Me, the 1996 victim of the biggest cop action when gotten lost after an orienteering school trip.

He luckily knows most of the way. At one point, when unsure, Radek advices from the back seat. And – guess what! He chooses the wrong way.

On finding that out, we head back to the spot of the wrong turn. We should still manage... at ease.

 

We did, arriving at about 8.30. Still a lot of time for a coffee and a breakfast, even a chat with players present. I saw Katka Rusá sitting at one of the hindmost tables, getting the tiles of one of the sets in line (well, in a square, I should say – ten times ten, to find out whether any tile is missing). I went to greet her and help her with the set, while other players were verifying the completeness of other sets.

I enjoy a cuppa morning tea and coffee and some cakes before start. Being seeded at table #11, I get Jan Dvořák to play against, one of the two newbies to the scrabble tournament scene, who at this tourn were experiencing their first scrabble tournament ever.

You know how it goes – playing against a tournament newbie. Every one of us once was a newbie, so you try not to be too hard on him or her. This one, though, asked me to play as I would a normal game. Awright, then. I wanted to forgive him a compulsory pass after three wrong challenges, not give penalty crosses ... but he refused to be given any such reprievement. So, he lost two moves because of not being able to make a move within the two minutes allowed for one, then he lost another because of a compulsory pass for three wrong challenges. I win 258 – 344 without having to make any particular effort.

At table # 3, a strange thing happened – Katka Rusá was beaten by 1472-rated Viktor Hagenhofer, actually for a very second time at a tourn.

I get triggered to table #9 to play against 1791-rated Markéta Gutmanová in the second round. She's a scrabble macho but such a nice lady that you don't even mind losing to her. She got qualified four times for the National Championships in the last four years but didn't attend the last one because of being in a high stage of pregnancy. Now she's evidently left her child at home and went to this tourn – she being right here from Kladno, it would have been a shame to miss such an opportunity.

“Daddy's babysitting,” she says to my question, meaning the baby's daddy.

“I see,” I start a nice, but merciless game at the same time. Neither of us plays a bingo, but squeezing the shit out of bonus squares, I get ahead soon. She gets after me, but I successfully escape, and not letting go of the effort, I win 345 – 304. I thank her for a good game and wish her luck in the upcoming rounds.

On my way to the noticeboard to check on the continuous ranking, I bump into Katka Rusá's uncle, the triple National Champ Milan Kuděj.

“Got two?” I guess his current number of wins after two rounds, to find out whether he was likely to become my next opponent.

“Nope ... don't you know that hares don't get counted until the end of the hunt?” he grins from under his beard.

“Haha ... you're right.”

Enjoying some buns for breakfast, I walk past the computer with the scrabble dictionary installed; bent over it there's Jarda Buksa, typing a word into it. I stop by to watch the weird word he's entering: gavúnkův. A few players passing by pop their eyes at it – what the heck is that? The only thing we can figure out is that it's a possessive first case of an animate masculine noun (such cases of nouns end in -ův) and that the nominative case will be gavúnek – but who the heck is gavúnek?

“I can describe the fish to you,” Jarda says. Awright, a kinda fish, eh? A fishy word, indeed.

What kinda butcher am I gonna get after two wins of two?

Zbyněk Burda, the third round match-ups say. Good. Have beaten him countless times at the club, once at a tourn and once at the National Championship.

As usual, he uses up almost the whole two minutes thinking over his rack... only to say “pass” in the end. “I'll try and pass – and hope you hand me a suitable letter for a hook,” he grins.

Awright. I play smrž – a nice non-vowel word for the morel, a kind of edible mushroom. Hope I ain't given a hook.

“Expected that,” he grins. “I have to break this one up. Had you played just any vowel – I could have played hrochova (possessive of hippo) or hrachový (adjective of pea) or whatever! And you play smrž.”

He did manage to compose another bingo in the 10^th move, but I escaped quickly, and even getting the other blank didn't save him from a loss. I win 307 – 345 and as is already a kinda custom between us, I grin and say “good game”, whereupon he answers with a similar grin “a pretty bad one”. Since then, he kept teasing me with such questions as “when's your train due ... from Kladno?”

 

The fourth round – table #3, against Hana Závišková. This 1595-rated lady is an example of a contrary between their profile evaluation on the scrabble site and the real person. While her profile evaluation is not much to write home about, she herself is a nice woman.

If you think I should manage her without problems, being rated more than 150 points above her, I should add a bit of a detail – she's dangerous. She's even already beaten me at tourns no less than three times.

Even this game against her wasn't a breeze at all. Especially not after her 7^th move when she shot a bingo at me while I thought I was well ahead to enjoy the lead until the eventual victory. From then on, she kept me busy until the very end – and by the very end I mean the utter end. My last move was the one I spent ages over, almost the whole two minutes allowed for it.

And then I know. Křích ... gets me rid of the awful 4-point Ř as well as the C; two birds with one stone. The only knack to it was that it's a poetic word hardly anyone except scrabble players has ever heard about, and scracely anyone would look for the perfectly common word keřích, the locative plural case of bush, behind it.

It's more common for something to hide behind a bush than for a bush to hide behind a string of letters, eh? Let alone several bushes – and poetic ones.

Thanks to my poetic bushes there's no need for me to be afraid anymore of her going out – even if she does, my three-point leftover isn't big enough to help her to a victory I guess.

Not really. Winning 328 – 325 – against her bingo and both blanks makes me rejoice. Now this was no good luck – just a carefully worked out plan which has just brought me a sweet reward.

 

Dinner break. I guess today's one's gonna be a manna – after four wins of four, for the fourth player of 67 in the continuous ranking of the tourn!

 

Katka Rusá's uncle, triple National Champ Milan Kuděj, comes to my table, carrying his dinner. “I'm gonna be dining with ya here,” he says.

“Be welcome. Got four [wins]?” I spy. Just in order to find out whether he's likely to become my next opponent.

“Well – almost! Two,” he laughs fiendishly from under his beard, whereupon he repeats the “paternal advice” he had given me before. Hares don't get counted until the end of the hunt. And oh yeah, he hadn't actually had two after the second round, so now he can't have had four, eh?

 

The dinner being delicious but a bit spicy at the same time, I gathered it needed a beer.

“There's a limited number of beers,” Pavel Chaloupka warned us. First come, first served, eh? I'm finally glad to have downed the dinner so quickly.

After four wins of four, it's as clear as the sky that I now end up at table #1 against a butcher. Indeed – Martin Sobala, one of the very best, if not THE very best, Czech scrabble players, and a triple national champ. Currently, his wife is expecting a child so I express hope it's not gonna put an end to his scrabble career.

“Well, hopefully not – you know, that's why I try to qualify for this year's championship within the very first tourns,” he says. Indeed – he's applied for the very next tourn in Prague in Februrary, too, which I ain't gonna miss either.

I have taken the bottle of beer along to table #1 to help me live this game up – I'm gonna lose anyway, so why stress, why worry? Let's have fun.

He gains his lead without any particular effort with the easiness of a triple national champ. A few leaps, however, from my side, and a bingo (yeah – quite curiously, I was the first to play one in our game, in spite of him being a bigger bingo king!) and I'm neck and neck with him. Peep – I'm here again!

I don't enjoy this for long, though. Not only that he escapes by means of a few pro moves but on top of that four turns later he tries a bingo which he himself isn't sure about but which turns out valid, which gives him further extra 59 points and empties the pool on top of that, which leaves me being tortured with the shits in my rack I hadn't been able to get rid of before. Other two turns later he goes out and I have to deduct all that shit, with gets him over 400 and me under 300, fuck, I'm not even gonna have these fucking 300.

406 – 298 – oh well, I can be glad after all that the kick in the ass from this triple National Champ wasn't even harder. “Just” by 108 points, heh.

Well now, I'm still 4 – 1 currently and 10^th of 67 in the continuous ranking of the tourn, so I can still expect another butcher to be matched up against me now, eh?

 

Mirka Zaisová, says the schedule.

Are you kidding...?! Rated more than 200 lower than me – has she been doing so good so far that she's 4 – 1 now as well?

Indeed. She's the common-law wife of Radim Hyršovský, a top player (qualified for the Finals 7 times 1999-2006) who, to his bad luck, sometimes comes drunk to tourns and that's why he ends up among the last places. But this time – he still keeps the first place in the continuous ranking of the tournament and Mirka evidently has her share of their sort of “common good luck” today.

Jarda Buksa walks by: “I'm the only one to have beaten you today,” he says to Mirka, proudly beating his chest. There was a bit of biting irony in it – I have already said Mirka's rating was no big deal and she was just doing extremely good this time.

Apparently, though, I'm the one against whom any good lucky strike of any player just won't work. I throw a bingo against her as early as in my 4^th move. Then I get the other blank and six turns later I play another bingo with it. She tries hard to keep pace with me but after the second bingo of mine it just wouldn't go anymore. I win 369 – 325. “The first game during which the tiles really fell my way,” I have to admit.

So, a butcher to be expected again in the next round, eh?

 

Indeed. A double National Champ Martin Daněk, someone I've never managed to beat, although the last time we played against each other the result was very close. This is what I remembered on seating myself against him and what encouraged me, even so much that I joked, saying to Luboš Vencl at the neighboring table #1: “Gonna make a roasted fallow deer.” (Fallow deer – that's what daněk is in Czech).

“Do make one – I'm gonna make a roasted reindeer,” he grinned in answer, making me roar with laughter. The triple Nation Champ Martin Sobala is often nicknamed Sobi – the plural of reindeer.

 

This was a tactical game many players would recall the old times over: no bingo, just effective usage of premium squares. That's why we ran neck and neck until the very end, silently racking our brains over each and every move, and all you could hear from our table being the regular beeps of the clock and point reports.

Towards the end the tension grew thinner, at least in me. I ain't already gonna make it anyway, I say to myself, seeing the final shits in my rack impossible to get rid of. Even so, losing JUST 337 – 323 to this double National Champ is something I'm glad for.

 

On my way to get some more of the yummy homemade cakes the Kladno tourn is especially famous for among the players, I saw Věrka Majtánová putting on her jacket. What's the matter? She being a non-smoker, it's very improbable she'd be on her way outside for a cig.

“I'm leaving – I can as well sneeze at this tourn. Bye,” she says briefly. As I learn later on, she was 2 – 5 at the time so it's no wonder. She's from Prague which is just around the corner from Kladno and she had another event to participate in anyway.

Getting one of the last few yummy cakes, I meet Katka Rusá during the break between the rounds as is already our kind of custom. She tells me how she played against her mother the last round and how she drew flies on her score sheet instead of penalty crosses. A good amusement before the last but one round: the match-ups say Roman Čejka against me, table # 7. For whom is this number gonna be a lucky one?

This guy is like a tourn ghost: doesn't attend many, but when he does, he just comes, beats 'em all and leaves again. He being rated just around 1650, I can't force myself to any pre-respect, though. First, I have to experience your butcher art myself, guy.

 

I work out a pure 81-point bingo as early as in my 5^th move, but he answers with one of his – not pure, though – right away. Well, I knew this one wasn't gonna be a breeze.

A neck and neck game was slowly leaning towards me, the difference finally being almost a hundred points. I win 419 – 317, thank him a for a good game and go watch some other players. I stop by Jan Dvořák, the newbie I played against in the first round. He was finishing his game at one of the hindmost tables against 1200-rated Gabriela Gugová and I came at a most interesting point just before the end: both players had 299 points and loads to deduct. Gabriela has a leftover of 15, Jan counts his to be just 14. He breathes a deep sigh of relief, until I walk by and make a remark.

“The bingo you made is invalid,” I grin. I can tell by the mere look.

“Are you kidding?!”

“I wish I was.” Now that the game is over, I can calmly tell you. The word was *nepadlí, which looked like an antonym of fallen (I can't say unfallen as unfallen is a good word in English scrabble – let's translate it with a wrong prefix for our purposes, e.g. *infallen).

“It should be good, though,” argued the newbie.

“Like, why? Has anyone ever used it?” wondered I with a sneer. “If a soldier survives a war, he's simply alive, not *infallen.”

“Yeah, but any word which could be created in theory should be valid, not just those used in practice.” Haha! A weird idea about scrabble, indeed. Like, according to your theory, if UNWHITE is good, *unblack should be as well, eh? You'd make scrabble one perfect mess.

 

The last round. Who's gonna be the coronation? Apparently another 6 – 2 player.

 

Alexandra Willerthová. Ohhh nope.

If there's someone I really hate to play against, then it's her. Oozing charm, I said when I first saw her, eh? Oh yeah – that's before she opens her dirty mouth.

I seem to be one of the people she hates to play against, too. But in my case, I suppose it's mainly because she loses a lot to me, our personal ratio being 5 – 1 in my favor.

As soon as at the beginning of the game, I feel my rack, though blankless, sort of bingo-prone. I couldn't think of any, though, so after about ninety seconds of reasoning I was ready to put some ordinary move on the board... when I finally saw it. Vodítkem, man, you fucking blind? Such a nice pure bingo and I'd almost miss it. The instrumental case of lead (for walking a dog)...

I'm not allowed to rejoice for long, though, as she counterbingos right away with pyšných (a gentive plural of the adjective proud) with a blank for the C, for just one point less than the one of mine. For the next five rounds, the game is a strenuous fight with neither of us going to give in easily.

 

The pool is growing thin, I say to myself, feeling the bag. Time to make something up.

 

And yeah – squeezing the shit of the O4 double letter square, I play elux, a physical unit, for 48 points, well NOW I think I got it nailed.

Now, guess what comes in my last-but-one draw. Yeah, exactly – the blank. Only now! I burn it in my going-out move for 15. Oh well, anyway – at least I can say I actually managed the whole game without it, whereas she needed one to keep pace with me. 390 – 335 – ain't that a hell of a good score if your blank didn't come until the very end!

7 – 2, man! Now that's damn good. I talked to the scrabble wizards present and they confirmed I should end up the fifth at worst. Of sixty-seven – ain't that a hell of a rocket start of qualification for the 2011 championship!

 

As always, we prevail Pavel to read the results from the bottom to make it as thrilling as possible. As another tradition of the Kladno tourn goes, the dead last player gets a pack of an instant soup. But as she (Zdenka Rosypalová – traditionally again) had already been gone, she missed this prize. Of the 67 players participating, one newbie ended up 46^th and the other (the one I played against) 52^nd. The former could have gotten the traditional best-newbie-of-the-tourn prize, but by the time his name was read he had already been up and gone as well so he was out of luck.

The every-year Finals qualified Jiří Kamín was 38^th to our astonishment, commenting it with the words that he doesn't wanna qualify this year anyway, giving it “to the bingo throwers”. Later on, I checked on how he did on the web – a bad lucky strike hard to believe: one loss by one point, another by two points, a third by eight points.... a 4 – 5 record altogether.

“This place is one I'd rather not read,” Pavel says when he gets to the 35^th one. That's where he himself ended up.

Katka Rusá ended up 13^th – not giving a hoot about the training, it's again rather a result of her natural scrabble talent. And hey – Pavel was only reading the 6 – 3 ones.

“The players from the 7^th place up... have seven wins.”

“Seventh place ... Radim Hyršovský.” Remember how butchersome he was (is that a valid word? Haha) in the beginning, and even his common-law wife was (who finally ended up 31^th with a 5 – 4 record)? Hey, so I'm even better than him today.

“Sixth place... Břeťa Basta.” Hey, better than Basta today? That's even better, literally – better to listen to.

“Fifth ... Dáša Rusá.” Wow, Katka's mom did even better than her today – and I still ain't heard my name. If it were a medal today! I was already once fourth at a tourn... last year in Brno. Nice try but no cigar – can a non-smoker say that?

 

The higher the place, the bigger the hand from other players. I was sitting together with Katka and her mother who's just picked herself up from the chair ... to receive the congratulation. When the prizes are given out, the ranking will be read from the upper end so the more successful players have bigger choice.

 

“Fourth place ... Tomáš Rodr.”

 

Okay... not bad. Bronze would have been better – I even have the same number of wins as the bronze player did. He scored better, though.

Even so – good start of this year's qualification, fourth place being for 42 points. Goin' home...

 

Radek Mannheim joined us again in Zbyněk's car without any of us knowing what it would cause. He said he would spend the night at a friend's in Prague, and as we were driving through it, he “ordered” Zbyněk to take him to the Prague suburb where the friend lived. When we arrived there, Radek said:

 

“You're fifty meters aside from the highway. Just drive back and you get there in no time.”

 

Instructions which kept us busy for like another hour, driving to and fro on lost, god-forsaken Prague roads. Now it's clear I ain't gonna make it ... but oh well, a night at my grandma's is a necessary tax for today's success! Cheers!

 

poslal scrabblista, 14.02.2011 0:18:00, Komentáře (0)

The 2010 Czech Scrabble National Championship

Sázava, Czech Republic, Sat Nov 13^th & Sun Nov 14^th 2010

 

 

Yeah – THE championship; for the top 32 qualified players of this year, or 31 plus last year's champ. He isn't on this year's qualification chart, but that's just because he hasn't attended many tourns this year because of spending a substantial part of it on the road in China. That's what people are gonna make fun of at the championship as well. As last year's champion, though, he's automatically qualified, just like any champ of the one preceding year.

Apart from me, another player was having his “premiere” at the National Championship – Jakub Závada, the 17-year-old scrabble tycoon from Nový Jičín who kicked so many asses at several this year's tourns that it kicked him up as high as 4^th place on the Chart. I play against him from time to time at the scrabble site with success taking turns.

There was another reason why to look forward to the championsip. Vít Sázavský, its co-organizer, arranged that it'd take place in the beautiful Central-Bohemian town of Sázava. Do you notice the similarity between its name and Vít's surname? Yeah, sázavský is an adjective derived from Sázava. His ancestors might then come from there, and he likes travelling there and give concerts with his music group. Vít, being a top player himself, strove to qualify for the championship himself but didn't manage this time in the end. So he came to see us as a spectator.

The organizers had a great idea to postpone the beginning of the championship as late as 1pm – for the faraway qualified players to have enough time for the arrival, and on the contrary, they planned that we start the following morning as soon as possible to be able to finish just in time so all the players are able to get home wherever they live.

I can't not start with a bit of an untypical thing – one as prosaic as accommodation. When it was already clear that I would qualify for the championship, my first thought was to ensure I'd book a bed with a local accommodation service provider.

Seeing how many institutions therein provide such service, I thought it would be no prob.

“Would you like a 300, 500, or 700 CZK room?” asked the receptionist of the hotel the championship was to take place in. I asked for the cheapest possible, but they answered everything was booked for the period I asked for but the most expensive rooms. I thanked them for nothing “for then”, saying I might come round once again if in emergency.

Contacting consecutively all accommodation service providers in the town, all I learned was they ALL were booked for the particular period I talked about.

What the hell are so many people gonna be doing in Sázava midway through November? If it were summer, I wouldn't marvel – they would have been holiday tourists. But now...?

You've probably already guessed. Yeah – all the local accommodation service providers had their beds booked because of us all. And on top of that – we, as the championship élite, don't have to pay for them: the Association has done so for us. Every year it does so for the players qualified.

 

I take the fast train to Prague, then the passenger one to Čerčany. When changing the latter train for the last one, I get the best proof of travelling the right way – I meet two other players qualified for the championship: the 2008 National Champ and a fivetupled vicechamp Martin Kuča and his gal Hana Lukáčová, a top player herself.

They both travelled from Prague – which is not that far from Sázava, eh – and still complained about having had to get up early. They gathered, though, that if I had jut met them on the train, I had had to get up far earlier.

“Yeah – at about ten to six,” I make them shudder at the mere imagination.

 

I'm glad not to have to find the way all by myself. In a group it turns out not to be a hard thing to do. We rush in at 12.45 sharp which had been said to be the deadline for signing the participation sheet. The main judge was to be the Czech folk singer and former Czech Scrabble Association director Jarek Nohavica: he had a short introductory word, emphasizing that the main reason for his coming here – seeing that he hasn't attended a tourn since the 2008 Prague one – was that he wanted to have a good time. Greeting him, I informed him about the phase I was in as far as translating of the scrabble bestseller is concerned. With a festive tone he finished his speech saying that he's hereby commencing the 2010 Czech scrabble championship.

I was seeded at the last table of all – 16^th of 16 – against Zbyněk Burda. This is gonna be a good game, I said to myself, looking forward to it. It always is, against him – crowned by his quips during them that always make you laugh.

We both get a blank in the early phase of our game. Zbyněk plays a bingo with it – docoural – and accompanies it with a grin, supposing I would challenge. Docourat is a completive form of courat – to trail, to walk extremely slowly – , but the scrabble dictionary isn't very friendly to many of these do- completive forms.

I must say I did think about challenging for a split second. But looking at my bingo-prone rack, I thought, if I challenge, my bingo could be homeless. Let's not challenge and use Zbyněk's bingo as a hook. I play odříkaje, a nice ancient participle of the verb “to refuse”, starting with the first O of Zbyněk's bingo and using my blank for the K. He challenges but my bingo turns out to be good.

As we empty the bag and seek to empty our last racks, too, I rely on my killer endgame. We are still neck and neck with me a bit behind, but still I guess that if I go out now, I could win thanks to his leftover letters.

Jarek went by our table, and seeing we were just finisging, he stopped to watch the endgame. Zbyněk just sneered at him, lashing his hand towards the leftover letters – CHĎS.

“Oh, that's beautiful ...” Jarek melted. “I must put that one down.”

As he was doing so, he explained: “That's chuďas, you know?” The Czech for “a poor fellow”. Which Zbyněk seems to be to him, losing just thanks to these tiles he had to deduct. But hey, Jarek, do you know I acknowledged an invalid bingo of his? No place for sympathy then.

“You just kept blocking and masoning my spots,” Zbyněk grins. The verb zdít, “to mason”, is often used in Czech scrabble to describe a situation when a player plays a low-point move for the only obvious reason – to block a possible fat move of his or her opponent.

“Well what was left for me to do – I was forever getting few or no vowels,” I defended.

 

Being 13^th of 32 at the National Championship in the continuous ranking after the first round looks damn good. Not much time to enjoy it – Jarek brings the pair match-ups for the next round.

 

JUST before finding out the verdict of who my next opponent is gonna be, Jarek shouts out, reading the 2^nd round pairing of the 1^st table: “The Chinamen against each other! Michal Sikora versus Pavel Podbrdský – the Chinese derby!”

Indeed – Michal Sikora being an university student of sinology was going to play against last year's champ Pavel Podbrdský who spent a substantial part of this year in China.

Now here comes the main laugh of the tournament which kept us amused all the time long: Jarek, apart from being the main judge of the tourn, sits to the computer and starts writing “tabloid” – his authentic comments after each of the rounds. I kept copying them by hand in my scrabble notebook to have the authentic atmosphere caught and to be able to reproduce them exactly. I just have to explain that in the first hint he makes fun of both Katka Rusá and Jiří Kamín working in a newspaper section – Katka in a tabloid one and Jirka in the sports one.

 

“Kateřina R[usá] from [the] AHA [tabloid newspaper] pushed in the bingo zasunete [“you all will push /sth/ in”] and Jirka K[amín] from the Sports pages swallowed hard.”

 

“I already know why Ivo H[radský]'s got so much hair. He's forever slapping his forehead. Especially when having to play against the two blanks of Michal S[ikora].”

 

“Pavel P[odbrdský] the Chinaman has as many as 2 bingos 204 points after just 4 starting turns. Now that's a hell of a return from the Great Wall of China.”

“Zbyněk [Burda] has CHĎS in his rack, he deducts them from his score and loses. He, though, proclaims himself rightly the moral winner of the game.”

 

“Rightly”?! I'll show ya – you'd better think again!

 

“Martin V[acek] challenged Jarda B[uksa]'s bingo off the board, beacuse Jarda B hadn't approved of Martin's previous move before putting down the temporary sum of scores. Don't cry, y'all! Jarda's imitáte wouldn't have been valid anyway.”

 

I was reading these as late as after the 2^nd round so 2^nd round comments had then been ready as well:

 

“The Chinse Derby – Pavel P[odbrdský] vs. Michal S[ikora]: they say that in Chinese scrabble every tile is a ready bingo because it represents a sign of a whole word.”

 

“Milena F[ilipová] is laughing through her tears of hopelessness: Marek H played a triple triple nedvojím [1^st person present negative of “to double”] for 149 points against her and done.”

 

“For the time being, the dunce table #16 is called The Trays. There was this suggestion Kamínka, The Kamín Place – let's see whether Jirka K[amín] stays there.”

 

“I'll tell y'all after a year during which I haven't been among you: he who doesn't have a blank, has a hard time to pull it through.”

“If I used the word nepizdíš [2^nd person singular of “to screw up”] in a song of mine, the criticians would tear me to pieces. Milan K[uděj] was awarded 66 points for it.

“At The Trays / 'tween Jirka and Věra / A fight is goin' on / A hell of a drama”

 

“Pavel C[haloupka] loses to Martin H[rubý] by one point. He goes out to take in some fresh air a stretches a bit. He's looking like an angel. Or like crucified.”

 

Fourth round. Seated opposite Marek Holba who had already four times made it to the Finals and finished eighth in them three years ago. We shake hands and Marek grabs the bag: it's always me who manages to grab it first to notify the opponent that I'm not that good with hands as to manage to get the tiles into the bag without many of them falling down on the floor. Not now, though – Marek says that nonverbally too now. So the putting of the tiles into the bag is left with me. The players always shift all the tiles towards the centerfold, then fold the board and let the tiles flow into the bag which the other player holds ready open in his hands. Just about every time I happen to be the unlucky one to grab the board and pour the tiles into the bag, a few of them swing out of their route and fall on the floor. According to the contest rules, you should verify the full number of tiles by putting them into a 10x10 square again ...

Not now, though: not a single tile falls down onto the floor. A sign that this is gonna be a sort of an exceptional game...?

Indeed. I start off with a bookish 68-point bingo; he tries to hook his on it, but as the hook is invalid, I challenge and he's out of luck. Sorry dude, this verb doesn't take on the passive.

Getting in the “iron lead” of 100 points, I race forward and he resorts to this desperate tactics of playing low-point moves in favor of composing a bingo in an uncertain future.

The uncertain future comes true in the end in the best way he could hope for – he makes a triple pure bingo for 95 points. To crown his misdoing, he miscounts the points for it and says 80, which is 15 points less than he should have gotten. Even so he gets neck and neck with me, but I seek to escape. Soon I feel another bingo in the air: my rack could sure yield one if I ponder over it for a bit.

It did not do any as such, BUT – if I hook it to the K on the board, I could make a pure vzdoušek, a diminutive for the “air”. Pure air, ha – what's better? Let alone if it gives me 92 points. It gets me far over 400 so his then miscounting of his bingo points ain't really gonna matter.

Not really. He ends up with a pretty good score of 360 but that's too little to beat my 453. Still, hey folks, 813 points sum – the seventh highest sum of scores up till then after the third round, and the one of mine being the highest score of the round at the same time!

 

I go and beef up my good mood by reading some more “tabloid stuff” comments from Jarek Nohavica. As far as his first cut is concerned, let's recall the Pygmy Hippo Issue. That's what aroused years ago over the invalidity of the word hrošík in Czech scrabble. It seems to be a common word – but that's not a reason for being in the scrabble dictionary, eh, 'cause it isn't in its source dictionaries. Apart from being a perfectly common diminutive of the word hroch, “a hippo”, hrošík is the name for a specific kind of animal – the pygmy hippo. That doesn't prevent the word from being invalid though – in spite of a lot of protests from players. It isn't in the source dictionaries – therefore it is invalid. Period.

Now this is why Zbyněk has obtained a small plastic model of a hippo and carries it along as a lucky – a scrabble mascot of his. And it's what Jarek Nohavica's next cut in his “championship tabloid” ridicules:

 

“The hippo's still alive. Or, after Zbyněk's loss to Martin S[obala],‘we can still hear it gasp for breath.’”

 

And Jarek's tabloid goes on after 3^rd round too:

 

“ 'Jarek, our clock's not working', Jirka K[amín] tells me. 'Change it ...' I won't: it's enough to turn it on and set it for two-minute moves.”

 

“As soon as I chased the fair-haired nymph – his lifebuoy – away from his table, Luboš V[encl] gets a 34-point AGA from Hanka F[ilipová]. Well, I'm afraid there's something between heaven and earth...”

 

Luboš Vencl – to throw some light on this comment – , a frequent finals-qualified top player about my age, found himself a gal recently and she's been accompanying him on the past few tourns, not taking part in it herself but just watching. That's who the “fair-haired nymph” is, and Jarek was probably kidding about her bringing Luboš luck.

 

“Věra M. tells me after a game she won: ‘It started out by a bandit’. I think about her life for a bit and only then get that she talked about the bingo bandito in the first move.”

“Those close losses by just a few points are setting up a basis for a proper rum cure in the evening.”

“Martin H plays prcá [the 3^rd person of prcat – “to fart”, the meaning of which in the modern times has shifted towards “to fuck”] against Lída R[usá] and makes me think about whether oprcá [the 3^rd person singular of the transitive completive oprcat – to fuck someone] is valid as well. [It is not.] Sometimes it gets hard to be an Ostrava-born man.”

“[to Jarda Buksa:] ‘How many [wins] do you have, Jarda?’ ‘One, for now. I'm patient.’ The vulture is a patient bird.”

 

This was probably the last time Jarda cracked a joke at the championship. From that moment on, he wore a worn face, complaining about back ache. He even considered withdrawing from the championship and let someone else “represent him for health reasons” , which, though, Jarek said isn't possible. If I had known this whining guy was going to beat me later on in the championship! There'd have been no place for sympathy.

 

Two wins, two losses; 17^th of 32 in the continuous ranking of the championship. Which executioner am I gonna get now?

What? Ya makin' fuckin' fun... ?!

 

Martin Kuča. That this sixtupled Czech vicechamp and 2008 National Champ is the best scrabble player in our eyes is something I guess I've reminded you of so many times that I needn't do so again. Now, is he 2 – 2 like I am...?

 

“Yeah,” he confirms.

God forbid.

 

Right in the fourth move, I make him a hook for a 49-point move in which he sixtuples the 7-point accented Ó. Four turns later he cooks up the bingo přičesal (a masculine past tense of “to cook [artificial hair] up”) for 80 points, with a blank for the E, and collects the other blank too, on top of it. I, on the other hand, was getting low-point letters, so I was clear about the fact that if I wanted to score at least 300 altogether, I'd have to work out a pure bingo.

I finally did in my 15^th move: protínal, a masculine past tense of “to cut through sth” – but as Martin went out and made me deduct my leftover, I did not make it over 300 and lost 453 – 290: his winning score is quite ironically the same as my winning score in the previous round.

Regarding him the best Czech scrabble player, as many other players do, too, I don't let the loss discourage me. Turning on my MP3 player, I start listening to the song that follows at the spot where I stopped it last time, not anticipating how symbolical the next track is. Tu t'en vas by Lara Fabian – yeah, you're right, Lara, I'm leaving: the table with my ass kicked.

And what does Jarek's “tabloid” say to this past 4^th round?

 

“I say, folks, in the fourth round nothing happened. Not even husband and wife Martin and Jana the Vaceks vaceked each other* so in peace I went into my car and got my favorite drink. And then, coming back, through the atrium window I saw thirty-two heads, bowed and absorbed in thoughts, composing beautiful and sometimes funny words from the tiles. And I heard Old Slavonic education coming among us on the wings of peace and quietude.

 

*a pun with the words Vacek, the surname of the top Czech scrabble player husband and wife, and facek, the plural genitive of the word facka, a slap (in the face) – so they didn't “slap each other while playing”. Jarek was hinting at the fact that the Vaceks played against each other in that round. Martin won over Jana by 21 points.

 

Speaking of the Vaceks – Jana is my next opponent.

I try out a pure bingo right in my second move. Searching through what was left in my memory from the grammar school biology lessons, I thought, I know there's parenchym (or PARENCHYMA in English), a kind of organic microfibre: is there parochyma, too?

I do think there is. I play it; it gets challenged off, though. Never mind – I get together another one seven turns later. I resist successfully automatical conjoining of C and H into CH and after a while of thinking I come up with an ancient participle of “to dung” – hnojíce, with a blank for the N. She, though, was after me with killing non-bingo moves, and so when four turns later I shove a pure bingo nevletíš, the present 2^nd person negative negative of “to fly in”, it doesn't prevent me from losing by 19 points – 360 – 379.

 

“I discovered a new rule,” Jarek Nohavica writes in his “championship tabloid”. “The ones who are losing are sitting with their legs crossed. The only exception is Pavel Ž[ibřid] whose position I would call “the lotus one”, and Katka R[usá]. She's sitting with both ankles broken inward. And she wins by a point over Pavel P[odbrdský].

“Another family (hog-)killing: Daughter and mother F[ilipová] are playing in accordance with the 'we don't cover each other, and the one to give the first blow is the winner' rule.”

“Now this is what I call a rocket start: after six moves, without a single pass, Jana V[acková] has 57 points.” Biting irony, eh..

“I walk by Martin D[aněk]'s table and see a beautiful nepřihnul lying on the board. Man, that's for sure worth at least 200 pts. Figs, man. 34.

“Mourning Becomes Lída [Rusá] .” (Hehe, this taunt of the play by O'Neill is amiable.)

“Radek M. lays his bingo on the board like an executioner when tightening the noose of the one being hanged: very, veeeery slooowly ... until the bitter end. He reminds me of good ole Karel Sikora.”

“Little Jakub in his mom's arms is Petr [Landa's] most beautiful bingo.”

“Martin D[aněk] is walking to and fro in the playing room like [the Czech folk singer Karel] Plíhal after his concert in [the] Lucerna [concert hall]. He has won 456 – 452 over Marek H[olba].”

 

This turned my good mood on along with the optimism, and so when sitting down against my next opponent, Hana Filipová, I say, I'm gonna get ya, gal. At last year's championship she ended up the dead last – but hey, she already qualified for it twice in the past, so let's be careful.

Getting “bingo-prone” letters, I was becoming even more optimistic. The only knack to it was that I couldn't for the life of me put a bingo together. I tried one in my 5^th move: not only it gets challenged off, but she kills me with (a valid) one of hers three moves later. I try another one in my 9^th move: it gets challenged off again. I smack the clock for her so energetically with a dose of anger that I make Jarek Nohavica come to me and give me a rebuke. I do manage a good bingo three moves later, but she's already too far away to consider it a threat. I lose 322 – 439.

 

After this 7^th round, statistics are made for each player's performance in the championship up till now. Mine aren't that bad: biggest winning difference of points – 93, closest loss – by 19, best move – 92.

And Jarek's “tabloid” goes on commenting.

 

“When your opponent who has beaten you tells you 'good game', you want to kill him.”

“After a challenge, your pace towards the comp with the scrabble dictionary installed are interesting to watch: Martin S[obala]'s hands were sweating so much so that he had to wipe them against his pants before he managed to type víšku which was good. Hana F[ilipová] doesn't even stand up [to see the result of the challenge] and tells her mother “why do you bother [challenging]?”'

“Half of the people here aren't even interested in the results anymore... shitshooters.”

“The Great Wall of China is chalking. Is Pavel P[odbrdský] going to find cement?”

“Do you know which two words you can find on the dictionary laptop most frequently? J which is invalid.”

 

(I suppose this one needs some elaboration. After every challenge, the challenging player usually hits any key so the next player coming to the laptop can't see the word challenged, let alone the verdict of its validity. Most frequently this “any key” the players stroke was the J and then the Enter, and as one-letter words are not allowed, the dictionary inidcated the J as invalid.)

 

“A short goodnight poem.

 

Have a sweet sleep my little blank

in the bag as green as the river bank.

 

Me I'll go to bed early too

Gonna dream 'bout you the whole night through.

 

During bedtime let's all have a rest

Meet tomorrow at 8.30 and hope for the best

 

I wish you sweet scrabbleful dreams

See you 'morrow with letters bursting at your seams.”

 

He says 8.30 but we gotta be there at least an hour before that because of breakfast. Now, though it's time to go to the pub at flush down today's part of the championship. We sit down around a table – Jirka Kamín, Pavel Chaloupka, Zbyněk Burda, and me – and Pavel Chaloupka, as if he hadn't still been fed up with it, quizzes us with anagrams. He has chosen pretty hard ones so we are all at a loss. We learn the word takarú – the Czech for the aardvark – which, in the plural genitive, turns into takarúů, each of the U's taking a different accent which looks most weird and which is going to be made fun of all the time. He who manages to get together takarúů is a king, ha...

 

Having been about halfway through my beer, I walk out of the pub to make a phone call. It takes about ten minutes – a lot of time during which many things can happen as I'll convince myself in awhile.

I come back among the scrabble players and immediately noticed something wasn't quite the way it was when I had left. On the table there was my glass of beer – but neither half full nor half empty: it was full.

 

“Don't worry about how or why – in short, here's a new beer for you,” Jirka grins. I smelled some devilment behind that. I wouldn't let go until they gave in and explained with one single gesture – the waitress had tipped my beer ... with her breasts.

I promised to have a chat with Katka Rusá that evening as well, so I went back to the hotel and found her. (Sounds simple, eh, but it wasn't at all – I had a gard time finding the way back ... thank God I met our IT manager Dana Kučová with her husband Petr and joined them.) I had great fun with her and Milan Kuděj, her uncle and a triple National Champ.

 

Jirka Kracík had warned me before that Zbyněk was a heavy snorer. So when I saw in the championship accommodation schedule that I had been put in one double bed with him, I was like “oh God, doesn't look like I'll have a peaceful sleep”.

 

It wasn't indeed. But I managed to get a few hours of it and feel quite fresh after. Oh well, in the continuous ranking of the championship I was 28^th of 32, fifth from the bottom, so I guess the Final Round is kind of passé for me.

“Two wins? Well, I guess you still end up in the finals.” But I'd probably have to win 'em all today.

 

Nine AM games never leave much for me to hope for – like for any nightowl. But still, against the charming Hana Lukáčová, I manage a win of 319 – 373.

 

“You played cheekily and I just didn't have the right letters to defend myself with,” she grinned. She was right – one of the few game in this year's championship in which the letters can be said to be falling my way. Her first move was eloquent enough: she swapped all of her seven letters in the rack, while I changed one, having gotten an almost-bingo which I turned into a 68-point bingo right in my next move. One of those moves she called “cheeky” was playing a word JUST in front of a triple word square – and then, as she didn't use or block the triple, using it myself for 44 points.

 

In the ninth round, after an exhausting fight, I beat Věra Majtánová. She plays a bingo early in the game and gets both blanks but to no avail: I shoved a 40-pointer and a 32-pointer towards the end and with contribution of her leftover letters I win 386 – 365. At last a game I can praise myself for: I managed to win this one because I suppressed my lust to compose a pure bingo in time and started to play effectively. 102 points in 3 moves ensured this nice win of mine – without me knowing it was to be my last one of the championship.

 

In his 9^th round “tabloid comments” Jarek hints at the night I spent with Zbyněk in a common double bed. Zbyněk claimed it was him who was woken up by my snoring. Haha! Like, when do you imagine I'd have had time to snore if I was wide awake myself because of your snoring?

Jarek glosses it with his authentic style:

“Before we start, a bunch of people remembering last night argues whether ... [Zbyněk's] pygmy hippo suffers by snoring as well – and whether he who snores himself was woken up by a snoring neighbor.”

“Iveta V[ondrátová] has six beautiful letters including a blank [in her rack] and draws the seventh tile. ‘The rat,’ she lets out, drawing an Ý.”

“What a shame that [the scrabble dictionary installed in the laptop] doesn't save all those beautiful words you enter into it. Especially the invalid ones would have been a pretty good read.”

“Neither your position in the scope of the association nor your age is going to help you here. Its president Pavel V[ojáček] is playing against the youngster Jakub Z[ávada] and is getting his ass kicked. I meant to write that he's being killed, but standing behind me, Pavel is telling me to write the truth. So – he's getting his ass kicked.”

“The DUMB DOG OF THE TOURNAMENT title goes to Pavel C[haloupka]: there are only two words altogether I heard him say during all the breaks: TEA yesterday and SUGAR today.”

“The GOOD BOYS OF THE TOURNAMENT title goes to Jirka K[amín] and Martin V[acek]. Their game proceeded without any problems.”

 

 

Jarek himself turned up at the noticeboard, pinning up the continuous ranking on it and shouting to the 32-people crowd: “The results are coming – everything got pretty entangled! Rodr's comeback!”

 

Haha – good. Indeed – after beating Věra Majtánová it really is my comeback! 24^th of 32 in the continuous ranking of the championship, I could still influence the results – even complicate them.

 

I am to play against Jarda Buksa at table #11 now in the last-but-one round. Hopefully his backache is gonna help me against him – and I'm not being malicious at all.

He starts off with a pure 80-point bingo. I think I hit the roof, but I soon even up the difference. We then run neck and neck the whole game: I saved some bits of the extra dark choc which serves me as a good source of energy throughout the championship and now I eat them all up.

During the second half of the game, his style of playing hints that he's drawn both blanks. So I just resort to “masoning” and watch carefully the board so I don't leave any spot open.

Then I saw this hell of a spot. It could yield a good bunch of points, more than 30, so I risk playing it in spite of opening the board, which I've been trying hard not to so far.

 

Now, what do you think? Of course he did! Of course he did play a bingo in the spot, using both them blanks.

I was about to hit the roof again. Oh well – keep cool, man. Let's prove that we could do without bingos or blanks, as we did in the game against Věrka. I went after Jarda with fat non-bingo blows and my closeness was breathing on his neck dangerously.

 

Relying on the endgame, though (usually it is me, eh, who does so) he managed to escape. By just a bit, but he did, winning 349 – 340.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

As Zbyněk would say – the moral winner of the game is me.

 

The last, 11^th , round. Being 4 – 6 now and 26^th of 32 in the continuous ranking, I relied on this last chance to help me improve.

Jakub Závada, it says. Good. Someone I do have a chance of winning against – I play against him at the scrabble site with success taking turns.

Nope. Shit, shit, and shit again. One of those games I totally hate – everything just plays against you. You think swapping tiles saves you? Nope. For your shit you get another shit. You're simply meant to lose.

And so while I strive to get over 250 at all, Jakub plays a bingo which gets him far over 400.

“Hm.” I'm so pissed off that praising the bingo is the last thing I think of. Praise the bag, man. It keeps on your side. Keep cool whatever happens, said mom when I was leaving. You've gotten there – to the championship, among the élite – and that's the main thing.

But now that you're in it, you simply forget it. All those shit!s flying out of your mouth express what you think – that this last game has put a damper on the whole championship.

He wins 276 – 449 over me, but still, in the overall results he ends up just one place higher than me, with the same number of wins.

Alright, then. As I said – here among the 32 best players of this year, the main thing is not to end up the last.

Which I didn't – with a 4 – 7 record, I ended up 28^th of 32.

The wild things being over, what awaited us now was the dinner and after it we could watch the Final Rounds of the Finals – between the two best players in the continuous ranking of the championship, i.e. last year's National Champ Pavel Podbrdský and the triple National Champ Martin Sobala, who won the Slovak Championship last year in Slovakia as well. He who wins twice over the oppoent will become the National Champ of the Czech Republic 2010 and his opponent the vicechamp.

The dinner was delicious – duck, dumplings and sauerkraut, flushed down with good beer – and we had a lot of fun during it as well. When having dinner I was sitting opposite my dear friend, the 2003 National Champ Katka Rusá, and her uncle, a triple National Champ himself, Milan Kuděj.

For you to be able to share the fun, I could explain the German term Zeitungsente, the “newspapaer duck”. It comes from the Latin N.T. – non testatur, “not verified”, a term for unverified tabloid news. And as N.T. in German alphabet [en te] – reminded the Germans of the word Ente, a duck, they began to call unverified tabloid news the Zeitungsente, “newspaper duck”. We use its calc in Czech as well – in English such news is just called a fake.

So when my dear friend , the 2003 National Champ Katka Rusá, who works in a tabloid newspaper, asked “Is it a duck or a goose?” , I replied: “A duck ... a newspaper one!”

“I wouldn't nag if I were you ...” Milan Kuděj grins, implying that he sits in such a position that if he leaned a bit backward, Katka would have room enough to slap me ... ha... Milan was making fun of the word ARYL, a chemical term for a hydrocarbon remnant. I was the only one at the table who knew what the word meant, but they were not interested anyway: they divided it into two parts – A RYL, which could literally be translated as “and he nagged” or “... and he kept nagging”.

So when I menationed the “newspaper duck” , making him laugh, he was like “ARYL – ARYL, eh?”

A real lot of fun during the time were having dinner together, which made it easy for you to forget the pains of being defeated.

 

You think my elaboration on the final round of the Finals is going to be about as long as the story itself? Nope! With Dana Kučová the IT manager I share the opinion she expressed – “the worst final rounds in the last ten years”. Pavel Podbrdský, whom some rightly call “the lucky ass”, pulled the games out, while Martin Sobala kept getting shit. He thus won the best prize available – a camera.

 

Well okay – see you at next year's championship, as I said to Jakub Závada after our game optimistically. Hope I'll manage and qualify again – but now, I gotta fly and catch the train. Luckily Hanka Lukáčová and Martin Kuča went by the same train – Prague bound – and so I joined them. The only thing which pissed me off that there was no train available from Prague to Trutnov so my two-way ticket will probably be of no use and moreover, ugh, I'll have to go by bus.

As soon as we got off the train at the Main Prague Station, they, being a Prague resident (Martin) and an “almost Prague resident” (Hanka) knew their way through the station far better than I did and so they noticed what I never would have – an inscription saying there IS a train to Hradec – JUST about to leave. “Hurry and you'll catch it!” Hana encourages me.

 

... and I did. Whewww ... I gladly fall asleep, tired after the fruitful event. Cheers... I'll be right back qualified next year, no matter where the Championship will take place!

poslal scrabblista, 09.12.2010 23:16:00, Komentáře (0)

The Fall Prague Scrabble Championship Qualification Tourn 2010

 

The last straw the down-below-the-dividing-line aspirers for the Scrabble Championship can catch upon this year. I was already practically qualified – eleventh from the top after the Brno event – even before the Prague tournament, but I just wanted to make sure nobody kicks me out and anyway just enjoy a few last tournament games before the championaship and see some old Praguean friends. My cousin Martin at whose place I stayed at during the Mind Sports Olympiad, warned me though he was going to be away on Saturday 30^th. I contacted all the other people I knew resided or studied in Prague, but to no avail.

“At worst turn to me – I have a friend called Helena there,” my dear friend Šárka tells me via Facebook chat. Šárka was going to be in Prague that weekend too, undergoing a course there, so we looked forward to seeing each other there. Anyone believe Facebook is time-wasting and useless? Not me. You just mustn't let it take control over your time.

I finally gathered there was nothing left for me but to take advantage of her offer. She kindly arranged the overnight stay but warned me it was a small apartment and that it was going to be full of people that weekend. So I took a sleeping bag along.

As I had remarked, holding a tourn on the 30^th of a month was extremely impractical as it was a date JUST before the pay-day with most people, me being no exception. So I just had to save money as best as I could. All I had was the money for the train fare and I was able to pay the tourn entrance fee, too, but that was about it. And Prague – no “town” you could go everywhere on foot in the scope of. You just had to use the subway and sometimes the streetcar, too. Which means what? Yeah, another arm and leg for the fares. I figured out I'd have to travel WT for a few times – Katka Rusá, being a Prague resident, suggested when it is “most suitable” to travel that way and I stuck to that.

When I was looking up a suitable connexion in an online train timetable, I thought I'd hit the roof. The timetable gets changed at the end of every year – but only a fool could believe it gets better and better with every such change as the Czech Railroads claim. Not that there wasn't a train to get you to Prague on Saturday morning. There was one, but it would be necessary to change trains in Chlumec nad Cidlinou for which action you would have no more than three minutes. Should I miss this train, I could say goodbye to several first rounds of the tourn. Not good, eh? So I emailed Pavel Žibřid about whom I knew he goes to Prague by car, hitching Jiří Kracík on the way, and asked him whether he would hitch me too.

“No prob,” he wrote back. We arranged he'd pick me up in Česká Skalice just like he did three years ago when he drove me to my very first tourn in Volyně.

The Friday before the tourn, Jirka Kracík called me for a change. There was this “Pair Championship” taking place the Sunday after the tourn and so he asked me whether I'd participate at it with him. I said to myself, why not. The “pair” does not have to be a “couple” after all. For instance the Association pres Pavel Vojáček takes part in this championship with his son Filip. And besides – the tourn was going to be just fun, as it was not going to be counted into your chart rating change. (How could it after all – what counts there is the combined rating of the pairs and the players within a pair take turns in playing so you would have been penalized for some bad moves of your pair colleague...)

 

A few kilometers before Prague we saw a familiar car getting ahead of us.

“Burda,” Jirka says. I had to gather he was right – a split second later I saw the logo of Zbyněk's train-making company on the disappearing car.

“The rat,” Jirka chuckled.

“Hurrying to get his ass kicked.”

Pavel put on some jazz and our talking turned to mushrooms. Or to put it exactly, I opened the topic unintentionally myself by mentioning Jarda Kodym (the old “Grim Reaper”) who has been fucking the tourns lately just in favor of mushrooming. Discovering we all are keen mushroom pickers picking many kinds of edible mushrooms, we start a fruitful (or “mushroomful”) discussion. Is it a good idea to go mushrooming even after the first ground frost appears, as the Grim Reaper does?

“You bet it is,” Jirka cracks. “When the ground frosts start, mushrooms grow fur-caps instead of their common caps and are then more sating.”

This gets me – had there been more room in the car, I'd have been rolling on the floor laughing shortly after.

“I once tried to clean the cauliflower mushroom,” Pavel contributes to the laugh. “That's a fine mushroom, isn't it, but it's just full of these sinuses and they were full of some insect shits.”

Hope the laughter ain't gonna freeze when the tourn starts.

I down a snack I had brought from home before we arrive so that I don't have to bother such “earth- -bound” things as food is. Just in time so that I don't have to spit it out while bursting out laughing at Dana the IT manager's comment.

“Welcome a newbie among us,” she says. Yeah, we've already discovered him. Raul Kačírek – that bearded guy over there. I play often against him at the scrabble site (he told me his nick). Let's see how he does...

“The computer pairing, which is done by means of coincidence in the first round, did a funny thing seeding him at table #1 against Martin Kuča.”

We couldn't help letting a laugh. Table 31 being where the top players meet, duh, seeding a newbie there is the last thing you'd expect. And on top of that against the 2008 National Champ and a fivetupled Championship silver medailist Martin Kuča, who in the eyes of many of us is the best Czech scrabble player of all... God forbid. Poor Raul.

 

My first opponent is the 1815-rated Hana Filipová, the daughter of Milena “The Old Shrew”. A nice opponent to play against and, luckily for me, not my type of woman so the “female weapons” won't work this time. She has already been qualified twice for the Finals in the past (2008 and 2009, finishing dead last in the latter year) and is qualified this year again, currently 11^th on the Chart – but only after eight years of tournament scrabble. We had confronted each other at a tourn four times (once at a qualification tournament, three times at team league) and she never once won over me, so I hope for history to repeat itself as usual.

Right in my first handful of seven against her I can see blank. Good, I say to myself. We can work it out, as it goes in that The Beatles song – a bingo, that is. I did – right five turns later. Množíce (a blank for the ž), an ancient plural present participle of to reproduce, gets me ahead by 77 but I can enjoy this lead of mine for as short a time as one turn, as right in the seventh she shoots a bingo of hers at me. A tripled one on top of that – but being made of one-point letters and a blank, it's finally worth even three points less than mine was.

Awright, Hana. Want a war – I'll let ya have it.

We both cross 350 and still the game doesn't lean towards one or the other. What d'ya think I'm gonna rely on?

Yeah. The (in)famous “killer endgame of mine”. I figured out I could make one, while she still had her last full rack.

I did, and finally won by 17 points, ending the game of a very nice score sum: 387 – 370. Hana's mom Milena was finishing a game of her own right at the neighboring table so Hana went and unburned to her about the loss straightaway.

Looking at the current ranking of the tourn after the first round makes me pissed off – as low as 31^th of 70, so the fifth worst of the winning players. But I'll show y'all.

 

Moving one table higher, I get Niki Zgafasová for my second opponent. From what I remember, she hasn't ever shone at a tourn so I hope there's nothing to fear of – let alone with that exotic name of hers.

“Hi,” she shakes my hand like she knew me for a long time. And she does: “We've been playing against each other at the scrabble site.” She tells me her nick and I gather she's right. Her site rating being quite high though, I gather she's not probably gonna be that much of a breeze.

Now, the bag puts me through a hell during which I get to fully understand why to most scrabble players getting two blanks at once is a road to hell. I felt I just had to make up a bingo with them but kept getting such shit to accompany them that it just wouldn't do. So I did something I hadn't ever done at a tourn before and I pretty much guess I won't do it again: I used both blanks in a 30-pointer just to catch up with her. And then I thought I would die – only then did I get a bingo-prone combination, so bingo-prone I just couldn't resist. I thought, getting a pure bingo together is just a matter of time, and I only hope she ain't gonna jam all the free spots in the meantime. Which she started working on, of course, as my preparation for a bingo started to be a bit conspicuous.

But I managed. Throwing a pure nezalívá, a 3^rd person singular present tense of “not to water”, I empty the bag and seek to be the first to go out.

Which I finally am, as what the bag offers to me on its bottom isn't the usual “shit” you get in most cases of emptying it. Adding Niki's leftover, I win by two points – 345 – 343.

“Congrats,” she shakes my hand with a smile, but this time it's not something to rejoice upon. Duh – with both blanks by two points! Such a lame win.

“Well thanks, but it's nothing to congratulate for I guess,” I chuckle. But oh well – I need to fasten my position at the qualification chart, so morale goes sort of apart here. In the continuous ranking of the tourn I jump from 31^th place to 14^th – but to my amazement not of 69 players but of 70 suddenly.

“How come?” I wonder.

“It's because of Radek Mannheim – he came late.”

“Oh, I see.” Radek missed the first round but thanks to the TurČAS criterium this doesn't prevent him from having an opportunity to still finish among the best players.

Being 2 – 0 after first two rounds, you usually already ask for a pretty trouble – well, you actually do after just about every win. So I breathe a sigh of relief at finding out this – for my third opponent I get Milena Filipová, “The Old Shrew” and the mother of Hana whom I beat in the first round. No doubt she's a dangerous opponent, having qualified for the the Finals twice in the past, but I've already beaten her quite a few times.

“Come on – your dear daughter got her dusting already, so it's time you got your own share,” I grin at her from the designated table #5.

As if to demonstrate I mean it, I draw both blanks right in my first rack of seven and start of with a bingo – nedodám for 66, the blanks for the O and the Á, the 1^st person singular future negative of “to supply”. In the 12^th move I shoot a 37-pointer exploiting the already used X.

Ya think she must be K.O. already? Nope. Years and years at the tournament scene, she's now pretty much able to keep up with me in spite of all these point blows of mine. Old Shrew, eh? Tough to chew.

But hey – I know what. Putting sty on the board (sto being the number 100 and this its plural instrumental case), I'd wait for this 5-point ú which I'd sixtuple by means of the field just above it, making ústy (the instrumental case of the word “mouth”) and another word containing this accented vowel. The vowel itself will yield 30 points and the remaning letters will add a bit... hey! This could work. Well ... unless she's the first to draw the ú and make the same plan.

Yeah – here it is. Just among these freshly drawn tiles. Yeah the chances were high so I could rely on them, taking into consideration the little number of tiles left in the pool. So I made the move described in the pan above, which yielded 40 points for me and practically decided the game in my favor. 370 – 395 – another hell of a good sum of scores.

3 – 0! But hey, I'm sure gonna get a cutthroat opponent now.

What a surprise – to get a mild and beautiful woman when expecting a butcher. 1642-rated Jana Vágnerová, who fought her way to the Finals successfully last year. This sweet-lipped, long-nosed freckled girl, her brown hair reaching her waist in length, enchants the letter bag with her charm so much that it gives her both blanks right at her first draw. She throws a two-blanked bingo for 61 in her 2^nd move, but I answer with a 29-point word and even the difference wihtin a few turns.

I dope myself with a few bites of extra-dark chocolate, offering it to her too. No, I ain't gonna let her charm get me. I run away point-wise as effectively as I can, glad to have overcome a big disadvantage – her getting both blanks. Winning against blanks always delights a lot – hope I'll manage.

I did. 320 – 361. Wow, 4 – 0. But aww, I expect to get a real ass-kicker to play against now.

I see Martin Kuča coming in my direction. “How are you doing?” I ask him, expecting the obvious “4 – 0” answer and thus a confirmation of what I expect – that I'll get him for my fifth opponent.

“2 – 2, and you?” he took my breath away.

“Kidding me...!” The best Czech scrabble player is 2 – 2 after four rounds...! Incredible. Oh well, shit just happens.

Good – so I'm not gonna get Kuča now. Oooph.

“Results! Schedule!!” we can hear Dana Kučová calling out, holding the fresh two printouts in her hand and pinning them up. The results of the previous round are always pinned up for the players to check. They were all right, but what I was after was mainly see my verdict ... the killer opponent I have just gotten for the fifth round.

Table #2, Břetislav Basta. Ouch. But hey, I've beaten him already a few times (twice, plus once at the team league).

But ugh. After four wins in a row, this was apparently meant to be a hopeless game from the very beginning. I start the game, only to give him a hook for an 8-point pure bingo, obscénní, “obscene”. Ain't this obscene! But what's even more obscene is that at his following turn he plays another pure bingo. Now this is lame even to him.

“So sorry... just luck,” he feels obliged to say. My blood is boiling, but I just grit my teeth and bear it. To even want to win a fifth game in a row would be too much to ask, eh? But hey – you don't have to demonstrate so conspicuously that this game is in vain in advance...! For a change, that is to say, in the 4^th turn I get a pure bingo myself. Now, what do you think...? Exactly – a homeless one.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

But I don't get lured by keeping it for the remote chance of once putting it. My heart breaking, I break the bingo up, saying to myself, it doesn't matter after all, cuz this one is in vain in advance.

But to express that I don't give up easily even in such one-sided games, I do play my best – after all, what counts too is the difference you lose by. And I ain't gonna give him this game for free, let alone just because of his luck.In the 15^th turn, I eXploit the X, making 42 points on it. I chase him as best as I can, but two bingos at the beginning is too big an advantage, eh? Still, my furious defense does yield a good result – I lost just by 34 points, contibuting to awesome sum of scores of 782. 374 – 408 – what you feel like congratulating to after such a game is the bag, eh, not your opponent. At least he admits it. Let alone if he got both blanks towards the end to cap it all.

“Going down” to 9^th place of 70 players in the continuous ranking and to 4^th table for the sixth round is a kind´of going down you don't mind much. I get Vít Sázavský to play against, the charismatic top player who co-ordinates this year's championship and strives to qualify for it himself. So if I lose, I'll do a good deed after all. It'd be a shame if he didn't qualify.

My third opponent in a row to get both blanks – but as I say, I don't mind in his case.He composes a bingo with them in his 12^th turn on which we just have to agree it's “lame”. Out of despair, I try a pure triple-triple later on but of course it's challenged off.

I lose 371 – 265, mz lowest score of the tourn. But having fallen lower a bit, let us get to the top again!

My seventh opponent being Saša Willerthová, I say to myself, oh God. Someone I just can't stand and who can't stand me – her reason probably being that she hadn't long been able to beat me at a tourn, our personal win-lose ratio so far being 3 – 1 in my favor. She's close below the qualification line for this year's championship – so let's not let her there.

If in the sixth round I was the apparent “victim of the game”, as Trisha Yearwood would put it in her song, this time it was Saša. It was me who got two blanks this time – although the other one at the very end – and her who had a hard time getting over 250 at all (but didn't in the end, unlike me in the previous round). I compose a bingo in my 13^th move – 16 of them being enough to win this time – and using the other blank to go out as I've already said above, I win 378 – 244, definitely destroying Saša's hopes for the Championship.

From the sixth round on, another result sheet appeared – the “continuous qualification” which kept track of the players qualified for the championship and got updated after every round of this tourn as this is the last one before the championship and everyone wants to know whether they've gotten there or not. After the sixth round, I was sixteenth, and after the 7^th one I jumped to 12^th place in the qualification. In the continuous ranking of the tourn, I was seventh of 70.

Expecting a real butcher now for my upcoming opponent, I breathed a sigh of relief when reading the name of František Růžička. I had played against him three times at a tourn and he never once won. But today – after five seven rounds, he's 5 – 2 like I am, huh? What's happened? Ya turned into a 1612-rated tornado, eh? Come for a dusting, old fart.

A muse, though, had probably kissed him right on the ass. He threw a bingo, and just when I started breathing on his back score-wise, I got such a shit into my rack that I had to get rid of it at the cost of giving him a hook. Now what do you think he played? Yeah – another bingo, pure on top of that, just on the hook I made.

I just lash my hand in hopelessness. This is evidently fate – no use commenting on that or trying to change. I just seek to get rid of the kast rack so that I don't lose – at least – by more than fifty. I don't – it's just 47. 363 – 316. Both blanks and two bingos on his side, needless to say. Nothing on mine ... feast or famine.

If I thought I'd at least get an easy opponent for the last round, I was mistaken. The old veteran Jindra Voráčková – a tourn veteran (since 2000) frequent Finals fighter about whom if I had to talk about each time she got into the Finals, it would be a long story so I just menation the years in which she HASN'T qualified – 2000 and 2007. Now this round was to decide whether this year would become a third member of this list.

To discourage her a bit, I start off with a nice bingo zadrčev, an ancient past participle of “to ring”, and race ahead. May be another of those games because of which she says she “doesn't enjoy the tourns anymore”. She answers with one of hers seven turns later, but I was already too far gone and, what's more, cooking another bingo, a pure one this time. Which I had ready two turns later and played it. With the usual fed-up expression on her face she challenged; the word turned out to be good, upon which I explained to her why and what she might have mistaken it for.

“Why are you saying that to me – I don't care,” she shoots back with the same ole fed-up face. The second bingo of mine causes me to finish playing this last game of the tourn in absolute peace. I smash her 410 – 260 and not only stay among the qualified ones, but on top of that, Martin Sobala, one of the best Czech scrabble players who is going to organize a scrabble tourn in Ostrava after the Championship for the top 16 players of this year on the basis of the Ryder Cup, says it's already sure I am qualified for this peculiar event as well.

Okay, good news, but I now want to know how HIGH I've finished at this tourn! With six wins of nine, the position can't be bad. The tournament was won by Břeťa Basta and he left he 2008 National Champ Martin Kuča as “low” as second. Břeťa confirmed his qualification for the championship by this win of his, but later cancelled his participation for family reasons.

I call Dominika, the dear Praguean friend of mine from the university years, and arrange a coffee meeting with her after the tourn – another something to look forward to.

The best score of the tourn was piled up by Milena Filipová – dreadful 578 of them, and she also played the best word – a 185-pointer. The newbie ended up 47^th with 4 – 5 record – great for a newbie, isn't that.

 

“Thank you all for participation,” Pavel Vojáček, the Association pres and the organizer of this tourn, says. “Let me read the results now, starting by the winners of the tourn.”

A noise of disagreement from the crowd of players.

“Okay, from the bottom then ... the last, seventieth, place – Zdenka Rosypalová...“ This lady always finishes dead last with no win at all. She's a savior of the losers – cuz nobody of them can finish last when she attends a tourn.

As he continued to the higher places, still not mentioning your name, you could rejoice over all the ones who finished lower than you. When I heard of the 2001 Champ and still a feared-of scrabble butcher Martin Daněk ending up 13^th, I couldn't believe my ears – I'll be better than him this time...!

Indeed. 10^th ! Or as sportsmen say, I finshed “among the first ten”. Not only am I now fully qualified for this year's championship – 13^th in the qualification chart – but, as I already said, I'm also fully qualified for the 16-player “East vs. West” tourn in December for the eight best 2010 players from either side, inspired by the Ryder Cup.

I call Dominika again and meet her for the coffee as I promised. We had a real thing to cheer to!

I was so glad to meet her after all those months. But I still kind of couldn't reach the gal who promised to put me up for the night.

Some time after, Šárka called me, all apologies. She had given me the wrong number. I finished my mojito (hadn't had this drink for ages – enjoyed it greatly) and hit the road for the streetcar which'd get me there.

If I thought this was the end of fights today and what awaited me right away was a friendly chat, a shower and a bed, I was mistaken, at least as far as the words “right away” are concerned. When I got off the streetcar, I felt absolutely lost, although what the designated house was to be situated in was one of the broadest streets around.

What followed was nearly an hour of confused phone calls. Me to her apologizing that I can't find the way, her to me trying hard to explain the way to me or wondering where the hell I am. After half an hour I found a scrap of a Prague map – luckily just the scrap her street was a part of. It helped a bit, but it being close to midnight and the street labels not quite clearly visible, not as much as one would expect.

A few minutes past midnight I finally found it. Helena (which was her name) wasn't luckily much cross as she didn't have much of a sense of direction herself. Although she was feeling a bit sick and tired as she said, finally we were sitting and chatting over a cup of tea as late as 1AM. Of course – then that I had planned to hit the sack as early 10 pm...!

Even so, I set my cell phone alarm clock for 5 AM. It may sound unbelievable but even after the hard day's night I was able to pull myself out of the bed and as early as 5.20 I was already sitting in the streetcar to Jinonice. That's a Prague suburb where Šárka was staying during her course, and I looked forward to seeing her very much. The early getup was just for this single purpose of being able to see her before the Sunday pair championship starts.

Everything happening according to the plan – a wonder after the day before's thing, eh – , I tell her I'd be there at 6.45 and 6.45 is finally really the time I jump out of the tube to give her a warm embrace. Almost hard to believe.

I brought along and lent her the second volume of Neale D. Walsch's Conversations with God: an uncommon dialogue which we had agreed on I'd do. I had lent her the first volume before that, and she agreed it was awesome.

We had nearly an hour left to enjoy each other's presence. She suggested she take me around Jinonice, which turned out to be a real gorgeous peaceful countryside part of Prague. We enjoyed the walk in spite of the morning cold weather; after all, what warmed us was our heartfelt friendship.

I left Jinonice and headed back to the Pramen hotel where the pair championship was to take place. I arrived right on time at nine. Jirka Kracík had slowly been becoming nervous after where the heck I was but he didn't know that there was another pair of players one of which was going to cause a real stir among us by not coming.

The pair in question was the tall bearded freak Viktor Hagenhofer and his friend Lucie Jechová. Lucie was already there but when she called Viktor at nine, wondering where the heck he was, he replied she'd just woken him up.

So during the first round she just sat there pissed off, watching the other people play.

The first round was not even worth mentioning. Jirka and I were “sentenced” to play the triple national champ Milan Kuděj who joined forces with my scrabble site buddy Věra Majtánová who is also an every-year participator of the finals. Not only two “butcher” opponents but the tiles were just all the time falling their way. While Jirka and I fought with shit for letters, Věra played a quadrupled non-bingo ořechům, the plural native case of ořech, a nut – something that really drove Jirka and me nuts, as it gave her no less than 64 points. As we so-so stumbled over 250 points, Milan went out with a bingo erudici for 81 and thanmks to the deduction of our leftover, they made Jirka and me lose as bad as 432 – 236. Where was the other blank, you wonder? Of course – coming too late, it stayed among the leftover letters Jirka had to deduct.

In the continuous ranking we were last but one after the first round, so we told each other this was just a “warm-up” round and now we start merciless play.

We got Lucie Jechová and the latecomer Viktor Hagenhofer for our second opponent pair. We'll take it out on them!

As if they knew, they fought us as best as they could. They kept neck and neck with us, although their “average rating” (according to which the pairs off opponent pairs were computed) was by about three hundred lower than ours (Jirka and me being in the 1700s). They managed to do so until the sevebth turna – in it, I threw a bingo dvířkách (the locative case of dvířka – “litle door”) for 78 with a blank for the D, which Jirka responded to by joyful hand clap. I was mainly glad to have been able to make a bingo with such dreadful accented letters as ř, í and á coming around together. We smashed Viktor and Lucie 368 – 285, asking, of course, for trouble in the form of a stronger pair of opponents.

Indeed – we got two regular finals participators Aleš Horák (rated 1806) and Martin Kapler (1823).

But we stood tall to them. Chasing them as best as we could, I made a hook to the triple with šiď (an imperative of “to cheat”) which could be broadened into ošiď (a completive form of the imperative) and a word containing the O hooked upon it.

Of course I counted the O's which have already been used before making the hook, and there had already been 5 of 6 on the board. I hoped the opposing pair wouldn't receive the last one.

Luckily they didn't. Who got it was Jirka and made such a nice move with it as úhon (the plural gentive of úhona, “damage”), sixtupling the five-point ú, and altogether making 56 points. Aleš and Martin moaned about the letters they got, and Jirka and I kept running away. When Pavel Vojáček, the Association pres, was saying the introductory word, he pointed out that in pair championships it was extremely inconvenient to swap letters. So they tried their best while we ran away point-wise – just the situation we were in in the first round, but vice versa. We beat these top killers 258 – 356, congratulating each other for a good job and having such nice scalps. In the continuous ranking we are eighth of eighteen pairs now, and are starting to be greatly optimistic about possibly ending up with a medal.

So we now fight the fourth round as high as at tavle #1. But against even bigger top butchers – Ivo Hradský and Břeťa Basta. Ivo throws a pure bingo as soon as in the sixth move, and Břeťa tries one right in their next move. It gets challenged off, but they're in a lead so they can afford a pass. They even afforded an exchange of letters. Břeťa tries another bingo two turns later which this time turns out to be good. To cap it all they get a blank and use it in a fat move again; but luckily I counterblow right away, quadrupling the X and getting 47 points for a move (which makes Jirka rejoice again).

Now, where's the other blank? Guess! Yeah, right, for the second time already, Jirka gets it but so late that it gets “deducted” as a part of the leave. Pissoffable, eh? Taking all this into consideration, a result of 337 – 398 in Břeťa's and Ivo's favor is one we can be happy with after all.

In the fifth round we get Jiří Kučka and my scrabble site buddy Josef Pustka. Dangerous but manageable, I thought. And indeed. After a series of neck and neck moves, Josef starts getting behind. I rightly guessed he is after a bingo. So with the shit I had in my rack, which my fingers were itching to swap, I went and jammed the only spot on the board that offered room for bingos. My move wasn't worth more than 10 points, but considering what it prevented the opponents from doing, it was ... invaluable. Josef made a mittere-sour face. Had it ready, eh? Ha!

We won 289 – 338. Josef confirmed I thwarted his bingo just in time. We move to eighth place of 18 in the continuous ranking. Now we get another butcher – the 2004 champ Michal Sikora with his gal, the beautiful half-Vietnamese Žaneta Leová.

Playing against a champ you don't respect helps – you don't fear then. And this was exactly my case. I don't respect Michal and consider him a lucky ass – he always happens to get bingos without even preparing them.

As if just to prove this, Michal throws a pure bingo as soon as in the second turn – something he sure couldn't have prepared. It just came by itself – as always in his case. Me, for my part, get a blank, and unlike him, COOK a bingo. Cook it during three following turns. When I throw it onboard (nahřátým – “partly heated” with a ř and ý again, those most players would consider crap letters...), getting 86 points for it. Jirka can't help but clap and rejoice... Michal and Žaneta don't catch up anymore and we win 356 – 330. We jump to 4^th place in the continuous ranking and Jirka says again that we could end up with a medal, the imagination almost making him drool.

 

But in the seventh round our hopes get lost, up and gone. We get the Association pres Pavel Vojáček with his son Filip and kick our asses even worse than Milan and Věra did in the first round. They get both blanks on top of that and win by almost 230 points. We don't crap up more than 237 points and they mammon as many as almost twice as much. We lose 463 – 237 and fall to 9^th place – even lower than we were two rounds earlier.

In the seventh round we are to play against two regular Finals qualifiers– the Association financial manager Iveta Vondrátová and Martin Hrubý. This is a non-bingo fight, neck and neck towards the very end – now what decides is the leftover and who goes out first, which is unfortunately them. They add Jirka's leftover. Now, guess what a part of his leftover is again... yeah ... no kidding – the blank!!! For the third time already. Fucccck. Iveta and Martin, who used their blank unlike us, win by eleven points only – 290 – 301, and make us definitely leave the first half. We are twelfth now.

Before the ninth round starts, a complication emerges. Martina Iliasová, the one who always comes to the tourn either pregnant or with a newborn child, needed to breastfeed her baby and we all had to wait. Blood was boiling especially in Jirka and me who were praying that we catch the last Sunday train home.

“Have you finally finished your breastfeeding?” someone called out ironically from among the players.

“They haven't even given birth yet,” Jirka replied. This makes many of us roll on the floor laughing, but it turns out Jirka meant it in some other way than we all understood it. We all thought he was hinting at Josef Nerodil who came last in after the break with his pair co-player Jindra Sikora – as Nerodil in Czech is the masculine past tense/present perfect of “not to give birth”.

Butt that's not what Jirka was driving at – he was making fun of Josef's and Jindra's beer bellies which make them both look as if they really were pregnant and “haven't given birth” yet.

Our fight against Barbora Hrůzová and Radana Williamsová resembles the one against Viktor Hagenhofer and Lucie Jechová in the second round. A neck and neck fight which gets decided by a bingo of mine, which the two gals unsuccessfully challenge. It was a special word used in metal processing which, if you interchanged one letter in it, could be changed into a perfectly common colloquial verb rajcovat, “to make horny”. But I knew this was a trap – rajcovat surprisingly isn't valid.

“Kidding me – and this is what I definitely wouldn't have challenged had you played it instead...!” Radana says, greatly surprised.

 

We win 273 – 332, getting halfway up – 9^th of 18. To our amazement, instead of another 5 – 4 pair we get the opp pair from the very bottom – the two beer bellies who “haven't given birth”, Jindra Sikora and Josef Nerodil. We think we have them nailed in advance. And whadya think – of course; they get both blanks, cook a bingo with it (laughing, because they do it literally – what the bing is is the past tense of the verb “to cook”) and in spite of our trying hard to catch up we don't anymore, losing 303 – 334 and finally ending up as low as 13^th of the 18 pairs.

 

Not a big deal – rather a failure. But hey – not something I'd worry about as the day before at the qualification tourn I finally GOT QUALIFIED for the championship!!! By chance, I'm finishing the story the night before leaving for it. My 1^st championship ever – gonna try and do my best!!!

poslal scrabblista, 12.11.2010 23:46:00, Komentáře (0)

The Brno Qualification Tournament 2010

Brno, CZ, Sat Sept 18 & Sun Sept 19^th, 2010

 

 

Originally, I planned on leaving for Brno as soon as Friday. I hoped to see Katka, the “sexual goddess” I talked about in the Zlín story, and take her to the theater or something. What did House, M. D. say? “Dudes only go to plays if they're dragged by women they're hoping to see naked.” [House, M.D., episode 3-19: “Act Your Age”]. Now this fits here like a hand in glove (or “like an ass on a pot”, as we say here). Hope the theater works out.

It didn't. So I decided to leave as late as Saturday early morning (so was it early morning even if I left as late as possible – at 4.15 AM? ha) and hope for the theater to work out on Sunday. And for the trains not to be delayed, too – though as it is said, morning train delays are rare.

 

As I was walking down the hill below my block of flats, Amy MacDonald's This Is the Life ringing in my ears, a guy asked me for a cig. Outta luck, dude, I doan smoke. As always I bought the ticket the day before already, so I was just about to come onboard the train when I was stopped by another guy.

“Do you happen to know if this train goes through Hostinné?” he asked me. I did know – it didn't – and I also knew that what did go through Hostinné was the very first morning train that left about fifteen minutes ago – at 4.14, and I told him so.

“Ohhh noooope!” he refused to believe me and asked me if there happened to be anyone else he could ask. I suggested asking the train conductress and she confirmed what I had told him. As the train was leaving, I saw this guy through the window walking to and fro on the platform, pissed off to the bone.

I took a slight nap, making sure that the music always kept me a bit awake. It didn't matter anyway – I had to go as far as the terminal. Change for the Hradec train and then for the Pardubice one. I hope to find a bit of time in Pardubice to buy the local famous gingerbread there.

I did. Not that it wasn't available all over the republic, but right in Pardubice you can get gingerbread with flavors you're never gonna find anywhere else. Such as currant... but I watched myself so I don't spend much on the gingerbread – gotta save money for the special Moravian yummies such as the frgál cakes when I arrive in Brno.

I had saved the cell phone number of Martina Iliasová, a scrabble site buddy of mine who, this time, was a co-organizer of the Brno tourn and didn't take part in it herself, in case I didn't manage to come in time. I hope I will.

My dear friend Šárka awaited me at the Brno station – she had said she'd meet me there and give me keys to the house I'd stay the two nights in. I just managed to thank her and hug her goodbye, giving her choice of the packs of gingerbread I had bought at the Pardubice station on the way, when the streetcar arrived.

“I'll go with you for a few stops,” she suggests. Among the bunch of people struggling to get on, I meet Gabriela Gugová, a low-rated player from Prague. We realized that even so, the streetcar trip to the place of the tournament was going to take longer than we expected – thirty minutes and some further fifteen minutes' walk – and we were going to be about five minutes delayed.

“Are you going to call Martina and ask her if they'd wait for us?” Gabriela wondered, seeing me pulling out my cellphone. “Tell her about me, too. My name's Gugová.”

“I know. Of course I will.” There are few tournament players, and even fewer female ones, that I don't know by name or face. We're a small family in comparison with the USA scrabble community – about 200 players many of which don't attend many tourns throughout the year on top of that.

Martina promised they'd wait. We actually arrived at nine – Šárka got off the streetcar halfway through the route, hugging me goodbye and promising we'd meet the following Monday – but spent the following five minutes searching for an unlocked entrance.

I have some 118 qualification points as of now – as Radek Mannheim had told me, I need about two positions up to 20^th place to make sure I qualify for the Championship. Gonna kick asses here!

I rushed in, quickly greeting Martina and thanking her for hanging on, and threw a look on the first round schedule.

Table #13, Vít Sázavský. Oops. A hard tough starter, eh? But oh well – at least a nice game with a nice guy.

“Hi,” we shake hands with a smile. We both hope to meet at the Finals that Vít is helping to organize this year. I didn't know at the moment that after this tourn it is going to decide definitely whether I am going to take part in the Finals or not...

We just knew it was going to be a good game – cuz the two of us don't play any other kind of games. As if to prove this, I soon compose a nice bingo – ofenziv, a blank for the N, the plural genitive of ofenziva, an attack – but wasn't sure of that one much. I rather thought the correct forms are ofensiva (with a S) and ofenzíva (with a Z but with an accented I). Both of these are valid too – and my version as well! Yippee! Such was the result of Vít's challenge. The only thing which irritated me a bit was that he had jammed a tripled spot for this bingo of mine, so I had to content with some 69 points.

He spent some time composing a pure bingo (nekasaje, a negative masculine present participle of “to boast”) but when he played it, I was safely too far gone. Then I even got the other blank and rushed beyond 400. I beat him 433 – 325 and did not know what to do first – whether to enjoy the win or be afraid of what a killer I'd get next.

Coming back from the bathroom, I went by Dana Kučová “IT center” and felt a need to check whether our score sheets had been handed in. Grinning at Dana's pretty daughter Petra who came with her to help her, I cracked, “did you get our score sheets all right? Hope Vít ain't thrown 'em into the stove or something.” We had a laugh over that, and beholding Dana pinning up the 2^nd round pairing schedule, I went to see my verdict.

Josef Pustka. Good – someone I often play against at the scrabble site, the games always being enjoyable. This one was a tough “enjoyer” – with him throwing a bingo as early as in his second move (such an impossible one, I thought, rising with the intention to challenge. The nonsense was valid, leaving my eyes popping). He didn't enjoy his lead for long, though. Just as he threw his bingo, I felt my rack to be bingo-prone, too. It took me just a couple of tactical moves to compose a pure tripled bingo naměřený – I was so excited to have played it that I miscounted the points and said 98 instead of a hundred and ten. But oh well. Josef “didn't catch up anymore” and had a hard time reaching 300 (which he didn't in the end) and I raced towards 400 (which I didn't reach either – but had I counted the points for my bingo right ... oh well). Winning 287 – 398, I wonder, what a cutthroat am I gonna get now?

Ivo Hradský. Like, I ain't expected that at all, eh? I play against this red-bearded freak, who is one of the top three in this year's qualification chart, at just about every tourn.

“Like, we ain't really played against each other for a very long time,” I grin, shaking his hand. Just like he said before our game at the last tourn – “a tradition already”.

If you expect a swift bingo-shooting battle, you're going to be disappointed this time. Our game turned into a silent tactical fight, both of us sitting sunk into our chairs with heads in our hands, each gaping into his own rack. Finally, in the final half of our game, it was clear to me the rat had both them blanks. Heck, we gotta work it out.

Now, something impossible happened. He having two letters and two blanks lerft in his last rack, you would have 100% supposed he'd go out.

But he didn't. The letters must have been so fucking incompatible. He used just half the tiles he had left. So I threw what I had left onboard ...

 

... and won thanks to his leftover by one point. 320 – 319 ... but hey, against two blanks towards the end...! Oooophhh. Third win of three so far!

Moving to table #2...! Ain't been this high for ages. But of course with a killer opponent awaiting me – the dangerous veteran Martin Vacek.

Looks like a good equal non-bingo fight at first. Until I get a blank, of course – a blank in your rack is always seducing, eh, makes you feel like, I should make a bingo with it.

I couldn't the fuck think of any. Luckily, Martin plays a 40-point non-word šató* (which is valid only with a non-accented O) in his 8^th move, so I challenge it off and gain some time for playing off a non-convenient tile.

Needless to say, this non-convenient tile was a C. Now, whadya think I draw from the bag in its stead...?

Right – another C.

Fucccccccccccck.

Not losing hope, I take my time and use up some 90 seconds of my two-minute move limit and then try out a bingo válečci: an animate plural form of the word váleček, “a little cylinder [i.e., the geometrical shape]”, which, in this animate form of its, is sometimes metaphorically used for referring to a fat person.

To my surprise, it got challenged off. Oh well – we'll build another one. I play off the damned C and two moves later feel the rack to be bingo-prone again. But, again, there was no bingo plain to see at first sight. First beep. Nothing. Racking my brains over the rack.

Second beep. Still nothing, trying to rearrange the letters and think again.

Hey! What about vžehlím, the 1^st person singular of “to iron something into”? May sound a bit weird but I guess I'll take my chances with this – can pretty well imagine someone ironing a picture into a cloth. (But heh, a scrabble player can imagine just about anything in case of emergency, eh? Especially with the third beep of the clock.)

He challenged, but the bingo turned out to be valid. It wouldn't have been him, though, if he hadn't evened up in a short time, and as the pool grew thinner, we were rac(k)ing neck and neck again.

I turned the bag the wrong side up to show there was no tile left in it anymore. We now both had our last rack of seven and I thought, it's now or never if I want to take the deciding leap forward.

I worked out the richest move point-wise and was just about to put it on the board, when I hesitated and put the tiles back. Hey, got a better plan. I put podved on a triple, an ancient masculine past participle of podvést, “to cheat”. 27 points – not the biggest move available, BUT now I have just one tile left, as opposed to Martin's full rack. The next move, enabling me to go out, along with Martin's leftover, could hopefully contribute to my victory.

And yes – yes – it did. Winning 302 – 329 at table #2 springs me guess where? To the second place in the continuous ranking of the tourn!

But there's a dark side to it, like there is to everything: after these four wins of four, for the fifth round I have to move to table #1 to play against one of the best Czech scrabble devils – Martin Sobala, currently as high as third on the Chart, a triple National Champ and last year's Slovak scrabble champ as well. Like a bull on the way to the butcher, I just leave it with the One above.

 

Wonder how a game of two legendary bingo throwers like the two of us is going to evolve? Ya expect one to start off with a bingo and the other to bingo back at once?

Nope, folks. No bingo was played ... on either side. We both got a blank and used it for a 50-ish move: mine combined a doubled XU with a doubled koxa, a medical term for a hip joint; his was gnómy, the plural of a gnome, with a six-tupled five-point G.

For the first 26 moves of 32 altogether in our game, you couldn't really tell the winner. That's what got me so much excited – that I can compete this scrabble macho – that I forgot about the first row of the board I had been watching up till then. And what do you think he did? Yeah. Using a blank, he prolonged the rušen (“disturbed”, “spoiled”) right on this first row of the board, making neporušen – “not done harm to, intact”. This 36-point lead towards the end is something he needed – in fact it is what ensured his victory. The non-bingo game of two bingo devils ended 337 – 375 in his favor: no doubt that to lose to one of the best Czech scrabble players by mere 38 is a success, but still, forgetting about the point injection at the top of the board he finally took advantage of is something I still consider nothing but a stupid mistake of mine, caused by game fever.

As there's always a dark side to a win – getting a stronger opponent – , it also works vice versa: there's a bright side to a loss, namely getting a more bearable opponent in the next round. The tourn veteran and good ole Parnas friend Jirka Kracík – rated 1650, sure not an easy one, but my personal ratio with him at tourns to date is 7 – 2 in my favor, so my confidence against him is understandable.

“Come on,” he grins with the lightning of competition in his eyes. This old retired guy never seems to have lost his tournament verve over the whole 13 years at the tournament scene.

Like this were a demonstration of the best we all can do, we kept racing (indeed, literally, both of us being “blitz tactics” players) neck and neck for the first 12 turns just like I had done with Martin, steam coming from our ears as our brains were rotating hard. Jirka might have hoped he'd work it out somehow at the very end – but I took these hopes of his right away at the following three turns. At the thirteenth one I play dušné – an adjective meaning “suffocating” – for 32, in the following move expanding it to dušném (the locative case of the adjective) and hooking the word zamoř on it (an imperative of “to infest”), the whole thing for 41 points. He accompanies that with the usual “for Jesus' sake”, not knowing that with his current move he's just gave me a hook for another killer move – síň (“hall”) for 39. So in the past (mere) three moves I piled up as much as 112 points, whereas he had a hard time making 80. As he summed it up, I won the game by my last three moves – 324 – 362.

 

“Well, congrats and thanks a lot,” he grins, shaking my hand and the ironic tone in his voice is hard to overhear.

Fourth in the continuous ranking sounds much better, eh? Ha. Well, had I known what awaited me in the next round, my good mood would have been gone in advance.

Not that I got some unwanted opponent – quite the contrary. Games against my good scrabble friend Věrka Majtánová are always good fun, and though it's hard to confess, I lost this one because of a damn stupid mistake of mine. Right in the fifth move, she played the bingo setnicí, a case of a feminine form of the centurion military rank. I thought, if důstojnice, a female military officer, is good, which it is, why not a female centurion?

I felt that my rack was bingo-prone too, but it took further five moves before i was able to play one (nepadnuv, an ancient masculine past participle of “to fall”). Having collected 68 points for it, I play another 68-pointer two moves later (anexy, a plural of anex, a material exchanging onions – oops, I mean anions.), and another three moves later, I shove a 42-pointer onboard. Still, these three moves don't keep me from losing by 50 points – 355 – 405.

Now, I shouldn't have done this and rather go on living in sweet ignorance: I went and checked the word setnicí, that female centurion of Věra's.

Guess what? Invalid.

 

I thought I would die – but even more at the end of the tourn, when I learned what this stupid loss of mine actually caused.

Now meanwhile, at table #1, something incredible happened – the triple National Champ Martin Sobala got beaten by 17-year old Jakub Závada.

No doubt that Jakub has always been dangerous – this year he finished silver at the tourn in Přerov – but beating Sobala was a bit too much.

“How's that possible?” I asked right the one who must know – Martin himself.

 

“I tried out whether he'd buy nosálami,” Martin grinned sourly. „Not only he didn't but he went out with a bingo of his own, drahnými (instrumental masculine plural case of a bookish adjective meaning “substantial”).”

 

I cun't believe my ears. What makes a triple National Champ so desperate he tries out a non-word bingo?

“Nasálami would have been good,” I reasoned aloud for him – nasála being a nasal (consonant) and nasálami its plural instrumental case. Nosál, on the other hand, is an animal (coati), but it can't take the -ami ending because of being masculine. That's what Jakub didn't buy.

“Yeah, I know. But it wouldn't compose from the rack I had.”

I almost wished that I get Jakub for my next opponent so I could show him what. But I didn't. In the last-but-one round I get the prettie Jana Vágnerová instead...

 

“Female weapons forbidden,” I grin at her.

“Not aware of having any,” she sneers back. She, though, uses a traditional weapon instead, with a good contribution of Lady Luck – she starts off iwth a 80-point pure bingo netřeba – “not necessary”. Such a bingo for a start was really not necessary... but hey – my opening rack seems to be bingo-prone, too. I got a blank on top of that – a good chance of bingoing right back.

After over a minute of thinking, I work out one – necesita, which I consider a loanword for a necessity.

She understands what I mean by the word, but still she challenges. I don't even doubt its validity, so when the red of invalidity shone at me from the comp dic, I was shocked and pissed off.

 

“Fuck off such a dictionary then!” I exclaimed. Not much aloud but still it was within earshot of the nearest tables. Saša Willerthová, who was playing at table #9 right opposite the comp, burst out laughing – just the right one, as it is her who's famous among scrabble players for swearing like a trooper so I seemed to take her place this time.

She played her move and I was ready to work up another bingo: not for that much this time, but valid and ready to even up the odds. Esencemi – the instrumental case of essences – gave me but 63 points.

 

What I didn't expect at all was what just happened – a pure bingo coming right into my rack after playing the previous one. Played it for 80 points and felt the right thing had just happened – just like she had drawn the opening bingo from the bag, it now came to me all by itself, too. So my third move was a pure 80-pointer mačkána, the feminine passive form of “to squeeze”.

 

She evened up this advantage of mine in time. Blocking a 50-pointer of mine, she made me play vax (a machine for deep-cleaning carpets) for just about 36 and she, having counted beforehand all the endings I could possibly add, made vaxuj out of that (an imperative of using such machine).

 

I was wondering what the heck she could have been counting all the way up till then – I just made the first person singular present of it, vaxuji, and hooked a word on it, altogether for a good thirty, which actually decided the game in my favor.

I discussed her mistake with her after the game and she said she thought there ware 3 I's in the Czech scrabble set, and not four. I wonder how someone can have already participated at a championship and still not know that – but thanks to it, I now won. 356 – 381 – six wins of eight. Will I take down the last one, too? I wish I would! But for that I need one last cup of coffee. According to the rules of pairing, my upcoming opponent has to have six wins too, or a nearest comparable result. So I definitely need a beefup.

I discovered I still have my chocolate along – practically intact. Great, it's gonna come in handy now – at least a half of it. The other half's gonna serve during tomorrow's team league.

 

Jiří Kamín. Owww. But what could expect but a butcher, eh? And anyway, I've already beaten him once at a tourn.

He practically always manages to get to the Finals and does not bingo much; but knows I do, on the very contrary. As he says, “a push for a bingo – a road to hell”.

That's exactly what he said now too, seeing me make a low-point move, apparently a tactical “pre-bingo” one. As if to demonstrate what he'd just said, he used his blank straight away in a 40-pointer.

But didn't know I'd had my bingo ready right by that time. I shove it onboard, and there being few tiles left in the pool, he's already clear about the fact that the game's already mine.

It is. I win 374 – 311: 7 – 2 altogether, seven wins of nine...! I've just qualified for the championship. Downright Jiří already said so in Pardubice. “Rodr's gotten to the Finals – for the first time in history.”

Now, there's even more expectation: have I made it to a medal place?

 

We prevail the organizer to tell us the results starting at the last place.

 

“And now the seven-point ones...” says he, having reached the fifth place in reading the results. It goes to Věra Majtánová. Had I not made the stupid mistake against her...! But oh well – at least she's below me now.

“Fourth place ... Tomáš Rodr.”

 

Ouch. No medal then – or, as we call it here, “a potato one”, as goes the nickname for a fourth place. But hey – of over 60 participants... ain't it still great! Let's let this feeling prevail – and do even better at tomorrow's team league!

poslal scrabblista, 27.10.2010 7:34:00, Komentáře (0)

The Brno Fall Team League 2010

The Brno Fall Team League

Brno, CZ, Sun Sep 19^th, 2010

 

Well now, for the first time in my life, a story I have to force myself to start writing at all.A story of failure which, luckily, didn't influence the position of my team in the end at all.

I have already gotten used to the fact that, if you shine on a Saturday qualification tourn followed by a Sunday team league, your performance at the latter is usually not shit. But it still gets me every time it proves to be so.

Jirka Kracík reminds me of how I did the day before – I finished as high as fourth, losing the bronze due to one stupid mistake – and tells me I'd better keep up the good work. I don't think I will, though. I've been feeling sort of unwell since I had gotten up, and had I not asked Pavel Žibřid for a headache and fever pill, I don't know how I'd have held on. Thank God he had some along and that I had realized he's the right one, being a doc, to ask for such a thing.

As a nice surprise I meet Katka Rusá here who hasn't played the team league for ages. “I officially belong to the Paluba team,” she laughs. “So I had to prove my belonging.”

So-so do I manage to make me a cuppa coffee when Pavel Vojáček, the new Association pres and organizer of the team league, shouts out we're about to start.

He skips from one row of tables to another yelling the schedule of team pairs of that are going to confront each other in the first round.

We Parnas guys get Poškoláci, the winners of last year's team league – a blow right in the first round. At least we have the right to choose the opponent pairs. Of course I take on Věra Majtánová – I hadn't forgotten the stupid loss against her right the day before as she sneaked an invalid bingo past me and won thanks to it. So I wanted to retaliate.

Pushing it from the beginning, Right in the fifth move, I tried a quadrupled pure bingo for 95; unfortunately it got challenged off.

“What a shame. I believed it could have been good.” Not showing any signs of it, the blood was boiling in me at that. As the word got challenged off, me I got pissed off. What is it that makes logical words invalid and vice versa? Fuck. To my irritation, I get a blank in the next move, and the other on top of that in the yet next move, and so I play a two-blank bingo in the end instead of the pure one.

Three turns later, though, she ate up the A1 triple, making 43 points on it, and that move practically decided the game. Fuck. Losing a game in spite of having two blanks sucks, indeed.

Jirka and Zbyněk have lost too – at least a “comfort” for the loss which I'm not alone in. Pavel became the only Parnas team winner for this round, which does not prevent our team from losing the round as a whole.

If I thought I'd take it out on my next opp, my elan was gone as soon as I learned who it was gonna be.

The opposing team – the recently-formed Ýáčci – had the best scrabble player in our eyes Martin Kuča as their biggest booster. Who d'ya think chose me?

Yeah. Downright him.

“You haven't forgotten, eh?” I referred to the dusting I have him back then at the Pardubice tourn.

So this is going to be a relax game, eh? One you don't even hope to win – so one you can actually have a rest during.

His play, though, didn't seem like one of a fivetupled Championship silver holder and a former national champ. He swapped letters, then again, and in the fifth turn he played a primitive bingo I couldn't help chuckling over (and he himself had to acknowledge it was lame). Luckily, I level it up with a (pure and far better) bingo of mine and manage to run neck and neck with this scrabble devil.

Just for awhile though, of course. Doesn't take long though till he gets in the lead and iron again and my defense starts to deteriorate. He manages to pile up 441 points against my 315. Jirka and Zbyněk lose too so the only winning member of our team was Pavel again. Second team loss of ours – well, not a good start, eh.

When it came to the third round, in which we were to fight Túzy a múzy – Deuces and Muses – , my team co-players took the opponents they wished and I got the one who was left, which was Pavel Chaloupka. Again, I composed a bingo against this every-year finals participator as soon as in the fifth turn – which he answered right away with one of his – and played one more against him in the 13^th, a pure one this time. Even these two bingos didn't prevent me from a loss, though. He won 363 – 427, which pissed me off the more when I took my consideration the two bingos I played and the two blanks I got. Not even Pavel Žibřid won this time, so our team got its ass kicked 0 – 4. Neither me, nor Jirka or Zbyněk had won a game so far today so we hoped for the tables to turn at last – guess it's about time they did!

For our fourth opposing team we get Sirotci, The Orphans, and I get chosen by the new director of the Czech Scrabble Association – Pavel Vojáček.

Even against him I throw a pure bingo as soon as in my second move – as if I'm almost supposed to take it for a bad sign. He got a blank and composed a bingo with it, too. We raced forward like insane, squeezing the shit out of premium squares, and one would be surprised if feeling the bag around the tenth turn – we both have crossed 300 but there was still a lot of letters left in the pool. This is gonna be a hell of a game.

A few turns later, an occasional spectator's eyes would have popped: we both have crossed 400 ... and race on. Most of Pavel's team co-players had already finished their games and so sneaked behind our backs to watch ours. Amazement could be clearly read from some of these faces as they watched Pavel's play for awhile and then switched sides to watch mine.

Here they stayed longer. I just knew it was my time, and so I sunk deep into my chair and X-rayed my rack with my eyes. I worked up two possible plans: play three good-scoring moves in a row and hope for him not to go out in the meantime; or – play off a tile now, then go out with the word nevpec and make him lose “thanks” (from my point of view, duh) to the tiles he would have had to deduct.

Nevpec being a hell of a bookish imperative of vpéci , “to implement [into] by baking”, hardly anyone but scrabble players might ever have heard, I wasn't the hell sure of it at all. I knew it's good in its positive form, but does it allow the negative, too?

A catch-22 like I haven't been through for long. But I thought, if I'm not sure about the word – which I'm not – , I'd better go for the other plan, play something I am sure of and hope he doesn't go out before me, rather than risk losing a turn, which would have been fatal now before the end of the game.

Of course he did.

Of course he did go out. I lose 432 – 421: ain't that a hell of a losing score! But duh, every losing score sucks, no matter how high it is (or you are).

Now, what do you expect the spectators say?

“If he [like, that's me] had played nevpec, he would have won,” says Jindra Voráčková.

“Yeah duh,” Jarda Buksa, her yokemate and a scrabble tourn veteran himself too, agrees. “You could have won, Tom.”

“I know. I just wasn't sure about the word.”

Thanks to this stupid loss of mine, the round is not a winning one for our team – just a tie. But oh well, it's not going to change anything anyway.

Against the Záškoláci or The Detainees team I got my scrabble site buddy Josef Pustka for my opponent. I was determined to break the bad luck strike and started off hard, throwing an 88-point pure bingo moruším, a plural genitive genitive of moruše – mulberry. I don't enjoy my lead for long – it's actually unhealthy, eh, it's a poisonous metal after all. That's to say, he gets a blank and composes a bingo of his for a change four turns later. The other blank doesn't seem to be about to come so I work on another pure bingo. Using a T on the H15 square, I play avisovat – an infinitive of “to give notice” or “to advise” – , raising good 77 points. Josef, though, doesn't get intimidated. He gets neck and neck with me, while towards the end I start getting those shitty “sediments” from the bottom of the bag. These shits, deduced from my total score in the end (including the blank which I got towards the very end only to “deduce” it with the leftover), finally make me lose – 399 – 374. Luckily I was the only one of the team to have lost in this round. Zbyněk ties with Petr Kuča, the father of last year's Champ and husband of Dana the IT manager, although Petr himself is a rather weak player – so the final score for this round is 2.5:1.5 in favor of my team.

In the sixth round we get Paluba – The Shipboard. Not only a scrabble club but a big organization for board games in general which also organizes the Mind Sports Olympiad in Prague which I'm going to participate midway through October too. Who chooses me for his opponent is the western Bohemian freak Martin Hrubý who travels around just about all available tourns throughout the year with a tent packed in his backpack that he sleeps in.

Hoping that the bad luck streak is already over, I start composing a pure bingo and throw it onboard – to use this terminology against The Shipboard team member ... – for 68 points. He, though, counterblows right away with a pure bingo too – for 80. He ain't let me enjoy my lead for long, eh, I thought. Luckily, I drew a blank after the pure bingo and started composing another one right away. Two turns later I come up with honosíte, a second person plural present tense of “to boast”, for 76, which practically won me the game as Martin can't seem to catch up. I win 394 – 334, but this time for a change I save us a tie: Pavel Žibřid beats Martin Vacek but that's all for the winners. Jirka Kracík gets beaten by my dear champion friend Katka Rusá who came just to “prove her belonging to the team at all” and Martin Tancer beats Zbyněk Burda closely, by 12 points.

At least my presence has been worth something here. And it is gonna be yet – in the following round against Nerobité. As is my bad habit, I go and wash my hands after the game, spend the whole break in the bathroom and so I miss choosing the opponent pairs. So I get who's left of the opposing team and whom nobody wants – the scrabble site noplayed Jindřich Sikora.

“Well hello,” he grumbles. But he shakes my hand at least, probably remembering the favor I did him last time we had played when he was “a bit tired” (i.e., hungover) and asked me whether I'd mind summing the turn scores for him.

I'd have had a hard time explaining to him I haven't chosen him for my opponent – but luckily he didn't ask.

Getting a blank, I compose a bingo soon (in my sixth move – just like in the preceding game) – an infinitive ošlehat, “to lash”, with a blank for the L, for 68 points. Right in the following turn I make some more points for free as I challenge his invalid move off the board.

He, though, then got a bit too wild and got neck and neck with me in a few moves. If I thought a while before that that I had had the game nailed, I had to acknowledge I was mistaken. He kept me busy practically for the rest of the game and I hoped to work out what an opponent of mine once called a “killer endgame of yours”.

 

I was the only one of the team who was still playing and – which I didn't know yet – my result was to decide whether the round is going to be a tie or a win for my team.

Jindra whips out his leftover. I do the math with it and...

 

... win 334 – 333.

 

As I report my result to Pavel, he lets a laugh. Not only did my one-point win grant a victory to our team over Nerobité in this round – but on top of that, it was him now for a change who was the only one of our team to have lost.

I get somewhat done in after the fight but there was no time to rest. Let alone before a fight against such a team as Záškodníci – The Saboteurs. I get chosen by a scrabble site friend of mine – Renata Volfová. I resist her for a few turns, throwing a bingo in the fifth but that's when I felt our game has sort of gone over my head. I feel feverish as a result of the morning unwellness but still would rather kick the bucket rather that give up. She got neck and neck with me easily and soon even ahead of me, and I, on top of how my health is, get shit for letters that I have to deduct at the end of our game. All of this contributes to a loss, though just by twenty. 345 – 325. She refused to receive my congratulation, telling me not to be cross but that she was afraid of “getting infected from the handshake”. I told her that was a bullshit but she just wouldn't believe. At least this gave me a reason to call a friend doc of mine from the university years (he was my halls of residence roommate in my third year) and have a friendly talk after a long long time. He confirmed my opinion. “She'd have had to stick the whole hand of hers down her throat right after the shake in order to get infected,” he grins into the phone. But she still refuses to believe.

The only one to win in this round of my team is Jirka Kracík, who can't of course help some quizzical macho talks.

The last round. God, the only tourn in my life of which I'm glad that it's coming to an end. Who I choose for my opponent is Eva Pavlorková, who in the last opposing team substitutes Radek Mannheim, a significant force of this team who unluckily couldn't come. Jirka told me Eva's scrabble site nick and I discovered I often play against her there.

“And don't you dare gape at her tits,” Jirka sneers at me, hinting at the trouble I'm usually in playing against pretty women. He forgets that “tits” are usually the last thing I gape at on a woman. Eh, okay, maybe the last but one or two.

“Doan worry – she ain't my type,” I shoot back his ironical attack. He gets suprised.

I told her my scrabble site nick and she was surprised – probably had never thought of clicking on my profile, that way she would have discovered me straightaway according to the photo I have there.

I remember games against her at the site have always been pretty hard fights, so I prepare myself for another one of these.

She, though, belongs to the sort of players I don't easily get intimidated by. So when I throw onboard a nearly 100-point bingo right in my third move, she has to acknowledge that although this is the last round, I don't even seem exhausted (and had she known about my then health state...). On top of this, I successfully challenge a bingo of hers five turns later.

In spite of all that, she proves her dangerousness and gets after me soon. Hell, I didn't think at all that I'd have to still be careful in this game after throwing the bingo and successfully challenging hers. But it seems so. With a well-done use of premium squares, she fights me so hard that when I draw the other blank, I'm glad to have drawn it – and I don't even think it's unfair of the bag and fate against her. After all, what's at stake is a win of the team as a whole.

I do win in the end. But not even by 20 points – 374 – 393. A lame win, considering the blanks that went to me, I think to myself. But hey – in the team league there's no such thing as a lame victory, cuz had it not been for it, our team would have lost in this round; with my win, it had a tie.

I meet Katka Rusá after the tourn, and complaining I was 3 – 6, she laughs, “Man, I'm 7 – 1 – why the hell didn't I play this good yesterday!” Which was a fact – she was referring to the qualification tournament where you play just for the sake of yourself, not your team. And after my coming fourth of 63 at that tourn the day before, I can't complain at all. It fastened my position in the qualification chart for this year's championship. As they say in America – you can't win 'em all. And you know what – I learn something that gets the team league trouble off my chest completely. This tourn hasn't shaked our position (though not that good) on the team chart, so we haven't improved it, but haven't worsened it either. 9^th of 12 – rather a bummer and nothing that could compare to our 4^th position we gained last year.

 

As agreed on before, I meet my dear friend Šárka after the tourn who had obtained the night stay for me at her friend's, too. Before my train was due, we spent the rest of the time by a beautiful walk around the town eating almonds spiced with wasabi – the kind of Japanese horse-radish that you can't play in Czech scrabble.

 

If I had known what awaited me later at the non-qualification Mind Sports Olympiad tourns in Prague, I'd have hung the anger with that day's bummer right away. Guess what...! But that's another story. And yet one qualification tourn in Prague is there before me so I'd better save energy for it. Cheers!

 

poslal scrabblista, 27.10.2010 7:32:00, Komentáře (0)

The Volyně Quelification Tournament 2010

Volyně, CZ, Sat Aug 14, 2010

Zbyněk threatened he would have fucked picking us up and that he would have gone to Volyně himself as early as Friday to live it up in the countryside of southern Bohemia. But in the end he let us prevail him and promised to take us along. "What's left for me to do if you've conspired with each other on me this way," he grinned into the phone. Almost gave me pangs of consience to spoil his plans on a trip to Southern Bohemia, ha...

Me coming from Trutnov and Jirka from Náchod, we met in the tiny town of Starkoč where Jirka was changing trains and we continued together to Hradec.
Did you also think morning trains aren't usually late?
Well, believe it or not, this one "managed" to pile up as much as ten minutes of delay.
The two talked it off on the phone already, Zbyněk, of course, feeling on the high horse and threatening with a grin he would make off in his car without us; then, "giving it up", he said with another grin "well okay, the worst we can be through is missing the first round".
Of course we didn't want either and so Zbyněk hit the throttle. Letting our (short) hair down a little at a gas station at a town near Prague, we continue our race against time heading south, me sitting in the front passenger seat next to Zbyněk, and Jirka in the back one. From the beginning, we were driving through a slight morning haze.
"Either it's a haze, or it's the smoke from Russia's burning woods," cracked Jirka.

"Does either of you happen to have Vašek Jára's cell phone number?" Zbyněk asks with a grin, turning to Jirka and me – he apparently likes leaving us in uncertainty about whether we'll manage or not. Vašek Jára is the organizer of the tourn so we were clear as the sky about what he's driving at (while driving).
"I do," I say, checking on my cell phone.
"Good," Zbyněk laughs. "Might come in handy."

I finally saw us passing by the Volyně road sign. A quarter to nine... in time indeed. Five minutes later Zbyněk parks his car in front of the cultural hall the tourn takes place at and we rush in.

"You're the only ones left for us to still wait for," Vašek "welcomes" us. That's no wonder – we've just made some 300 kms!
I just managed to wave hello to Katka Rusá and I had to rush to the pin-up (unluckily not a pin-up girl) schedule. Who's gonna be my first punch in the snout right after my arrival? Well – remembering my shining results back in Pardubice, there's no reason to be pessimistic.

Who's going to be my first opponent at this "chamber" tournament?
Oops – Petr Landa. No doubt I've beaten him quite a few times already, making his gruble his famoud "all of this is a farce ... I wish I'd fucked goin' here", but he still holds his 1800-plus rating and fights his way into the Finals every year.
At the gas station we had made ourselves the break at I bought me a cuppa coffee and drank it up so I didn't have my usual problem with the "first morning games". I kept neck and neck with him for at least two thirds of the game, throwing a nice bingo "zkoupav" in the 8th turn to even up his 3rd turn one; whereupon a crisis emerged in my rack. A swapping of the tiles would get him too far gone so I decided to take my chances and open a triple by playing súr ending on N3. Súra being a chapter of the koran, its plural genitive súr offers a prologation by an A (singular nominative case), an O (singular vocative case), a U (singular accusative case), or a Y (plural nominative case). Now, he didn't have any of these to help him make a nutritious triple. He went somewhere else, thinking like "I'll let him make use of the triple; I'm too far gone anyway."
Now, I had this 8-point Ď: laying it on the O4 double-letter and tripling the whole word would pretty much be able to make me some 60 points and get me neck and neck with him again.
But whadya think – of course I had no compatible vowel to help me make such a word. And I mean NO such one.
I lose 302 – 425, the 123 point difference being the biggest of all the 1st round ones; it throws me to the last place in the continuous ranking, which of course, pisses me off and makes me say the poor next player's gonna catch it from me.
Lucie Jechová. Not someone I'd have wished to give the dusting, but... scrabble is scrabble, gal.
Fulfilling the dusting threat, I play a bingo as soon as in my 2nd move – rozčeří, "it will stir [water]" for 83 points. In the handful of letters I draw next I see the other blank – and make a second bingo of it a move later, a tripled one this time (uhlídati – a somewhat obsolete verb meaning "to catch" or "to [manage to] watch carefully"). She racks her brains over bad racks, while four turns later I get a seemingly impossible one, too: CKNNRVV. Do your fingers itch to grip the whole rack and swap it? Mine do, too; but then I see a free U on the board. Making a pure bingo cvrnknuv (an ancient masculine past participle of cvrnknout, "to flip"), I make another thing at the same time, too – a sympathetic grin, seeing she's just gritting her teeth. One of those in-vain-in-advance games when one players goes far over 400 while the other one has a hard time making 300. Indeed – the game ends 280 – 458 in my favor, making me afraid this was the only fucking lucky strike of mine at this tourn. Of course it is going to be followed by a game I'll be remembering for a long time, too – but with curses, for a change. Against Michal Přikryl – a neck and neck one I lost due to my own stupidity – because of not challenging an invalid bingo of his. It made him 78 points and although I made one of mine five turns later for 84, I didn't catch up anymore and he took me out by 32 points: 359 – 327. I verified the bingo right away after our game, and on finding out it was invalid, I though I would die.
"How many penalty crosses did you have?" a player to whom Michal talked about that asks me – if I had had two, it could have been practically the only reasonable reason for not challenging, as that way I could have been afraid of having to pass a turn.
"None," I grin.
"Is that possible? He's got no penalty cross, and still he doesn't challenge..."
Yeah, that was a stupid mistake – but at least something to learn from and a cause of an easier opponent to come.

Ohhh nope.
Aleš Horák? What the fucking fuck...? He's as high as second in this year's qualification for the Finals and a steady top 30-er on the Chart.
Yeah. But in spite of all that, at this tourn he's been sorta outta luck and has just one win of three so far just like I do.
But hey ... does downright he have to be my opponent right now? Oh well – I've taken out bigger aces after all. Just come – you're asking for going back with your tail between your legs, as Allison Moorer would put it...
He fights hard, apparently pissed off by the bad luck pursuing him. But when I get a blank and throw a bingo – vzteknem, "we'll hit the roof", he seems bound to hit the roof as well – apparently no letters coming to enable him to make up for the difference, the bingo of mine making him even more upset.
In accordance with the Czech saying that "luck shits on one heap only", I get the other blank, too, and increase the difference between us while he's glad to at least get over 300. I win 384 – 304 and say to myself, 2 – 2 is a good current status to spend the dinner break with.
As always, Vašek didn't dissapoint us as far as dinner is concerned – the goulash was delicious just like the year and two before. A superb rest before taking on my fifth opponent.
Franrtišek Růžička, I read on the schedule – for a change another someone I always feel confindent against, although as I learn later on, he had beaten 1838-rated Radek Mannheim in the third round. But I start off like a rocket, which makes my cofindence to rocket as well. I play a bingo right in my second move (kordónu – a genitive case of kordón, "cordon") and throw another, this time a pure tripled one, right after that (rozešlo – "it went apart", "it split") – for 88 points. The two bingos put me ahead of him by 150, which he commented with a resigning look. I beat him 245 – 427.
After this fifth rounds statistics are made and a look at my average tourn score sure warms the cockles of my heart. 380 – damn good... one of the best averages after the five rounds.
I have been asking for trouble, of course. I get an every-year finalist Martin Daněk for my sixth opponent. Games against such people have one advantage though – you don't even hope to win so you're quite at ease.
Hey – but still, Martin, you don't have to demonstrate the impossibility of my winning right away! He spits a 82-point bingo at me right in his second move, confessing it was rather about good luck. He then makes off with high-point moves and I have a hard time catching up. When I get a blank, my bingos are homeless, of course – same old curse. I play off some tiles, still trying hard to keep a "bingo-prone" rack while he gets well over 400, up and gone.
He empties the bag, turning it the wrong side up. I shuffle my tiles – the last chance for me to come up with a bingo and shrink the difference at least a bit.
I get it together quite easily – vyplivnu , the 1st person dingular future tense of "to spit out" – with a blank for the I – but the obvious problem with such last-minute bingos is you often – well, almost always, eh – got nowhere to put them. That's why I'm X-raying the board all over with my eyes for a good minute of my move.
Well, I guess my final move's gonna be anything but minute! I finally saw that V on the board and gathered I could hook the seemingly homeless bingo to it, making vyplivnuv, an ancient masculine participle of "to spit out". (I guess the former metaphor of spitting a bingo at your opponent would fit in better here, heh).

"Well done – nice conclusion," said Martin, who even after deducting his leftover had a great score of 460. The freak...! But I guess my losing score of 382 is one of dignity, too – one for which you don't need to feel ashamed even if you lose.
This loss kicks me down in the continuous ranking of the tourn – from 9th place to 15th. But no worries – I'll be right back.
"Hey bro – are you 3 – 3, too?" I greet my upcoming opponent at table #12, Jirka Kracík, an old scrabble freak and a Parnas scrabble club companion.
"Yeah," he sighs. I saw his loss to 1700-rated Filip Vojáček in the 2nd round – he lost by a bit just because of the letters he had to deduct, which kind of loss pisses off the most, duh.
Not getting "bingo-prone" racks, I just stuck to getting the shit out of each and every move, just like the players would in "copy scrabble" – the variant where all the players get identical racks in every turn.
There's a lot of advantages to this kind of tactics – your subtotal grows steadily and it gives you a good TurČAS criterium. But you get in trouble when the opponent springs at you with a bingo or a similar high-point move – you're in trouble catching up.
And that's what Jirka just did. Playing a tripled konexí, the gentitive case of "[good] connections", "influential friends", with a blank for the O for 52 points, he escapes for awhile, but soon I breathe on his beck again, representing a threat. Hell, this "copy scrabble" tactics turns out to be good sometimes...! Especially when no blank seems to come. Who gets the other one? Him, too. Of course.
Luckily he didn't count on getting it, and so, as the game slowly but inevitably drew to the ernd, he didn't have time to prepare a "bingo-prone" rack to accompany the blank. He uses it in a 30-pointer for a reason which delights me – just to keep up with me. Good – now that the blanks are gone, it's time for my "killer endgame". I play a 30-pointer of mine, for a change, which he comments with his usual "for Jesus's sake", even if it's not a bingo – it just seems to be a deciding move right now. And indeed. Getting quite an easy rack to go out with easily, I add his leftover and win 291 – 328.
"Weell then, thanks a lot," he chuckles ironically and congratulates me, shaking my hand. He puts the results of our game down in his notepad as usual – finding this a good idea, I bought one from the cop store beautie next door and began writing them down into it too, instead of doing so on various slips and scraps of paper like I had done up till then.
"Losing with both blanks, shit, what a shame," he laments. I didn't predict at all I'd be lamenting similarly in about an hour as well.
Four wins  – well, one more to have "positive balance" of the tourn – prevalance of wins.
Marek Lašťovka. Ouch. No doubt his rating is a bit lower than mine now but still, if you remember, he was my very first opponent at my very first tournament – here in Volyně three years ago and when I got seeded to play against him in the then first round, I was called an "unlucky fellow". So the feeling of respect towards him remains.
But I'm given a dose of optimism, be it by my win in the previous round, or by recalling a win over the leading player in the qualification chart. I go at it with the "copy scrabble" tactics of making the shit out of every move, because as he has been playing off one tile for several turns, it has been clear to me he's been cooking a bingo. So let's get substantially far away point-wise in the meantime – that way his bingo's gonna have hardly any effect.
Exactly as I had predicted – when he finally threw a 70-point bingo onboard after fishing for it in the waters of the bag for ages, it didn't represent any particular threat to me anymore. Then he got the other blank, too, and used it in a 30-pointer, but I played a similarly fat move of mine and rushed to go out and end the game in my favor. Which I finally did – 348 – 303 against both blanks AND against a bingo...! Daaamn good. 11th place of 36 sure sounds better.
Statistics are made after the eighth round – I can't believe to have played 369 points on average per round, while Martin Sobala, one of the best Czech scrabble players and last year's Slovak champ too, has 373.
For the ninth and last round I was to play against Eva Baďurová. She hasn't gotten over 1600 rating until recently but still she can turn out to be dangerous sometimes – for instance she has beaten the feared-of scrabble site ghost Petr Vejchoda twice. And now, she has five wins of eight so far just like I do.
I feel I'm quite done in, but I'm determined not to show any signs of it – as always, after all.
I have already said that before that I hate this kind of games – these games where everything, and the bag especially, seems to be playing against you. First, I get rid of all the shit I've been getting up till then and, sweat on my face, I get together a pure bingo. Now, what do you think? Right – nowhere to put it in (the bingo, that is!)! Wouldn't that just fucking piss ya off...! Now while you where composing the bingo she'd long have made off point-wise. And, on the top of, what do you get now – now that the board has all been used up? Yeah – both blanks.
I use one of them in a 30 pointer, but still I don't kinda manage to catch up. Had there been a place for the homeless bingo...!
My brains rotate at top speed striving desperately for me to be the first to go out, but to no avail. The other blank in my rack is surrounded by a bunch of letter so mutually incompatible that hardly anyone can imagine that – and I hadn't believed either up till then anything like that could ever happen. There just are things a blank can't save you from. I lose by mere 24 points – 325 – 349, which leaves me pissed off like hell, even though I end up the second best of 5 – 4 players – 11th of 38.
It kind of destroyed my mood for awhile. But hey – even 11th place of 38 ain't that bad and still gains me 28 qualification points for the championship. I win a bottle of delicious sour cherry wine but have to grab it and go – hardly managing to pat and wave goodbye to Katka Rusá. Zbyněk and Jirka are waiting, Jirka all nerves about catching his last Hradec-Náchod train if we manage to get to Hradec on time.
Seeing we do have quite a lot of time, we stop over at a nearby little town to refresh at a restaurant. Zbyněk and Jirka agree they both are hungry and sink their eyes into the menu. Me, a nutritious dish was the last thing I wated to have as my stomach was upside down after the car trip. I gathered it needs "impregnating" for the rest of the way so I ordered a shot of Jim Beam whiskey. It worked as always – so well that I even got a sweet tooth after that and had a piece of the famous Armenian honey cake. An yummy even my mom can boast with being able to bake ... sure made me able to survive the rest of the way. And anyway – I sure got a success to flush down. My first Championship awaiting me at the end of November...! But I still will go to two other tourns to fasten my qualification for the championship. Just for the hell of it and having fun.
Jirka did catch his train to Náchod in the end and me I stayed overnight in Hradec at my grandma's. Next tourn to come midway through September in Brno, my used-to-be university city. Gonna kick asses there...! Let alone if it's gonna be followed by the last, deciding part of the team league.

poslal scrabblista, 31.08.2010 2:24:00, Komentáře (0)

The Pardubice Blitz & Qualification Tournaments 2010

 Pardubice, CZ, Fri Jul 16 th – Sun Jul 18th, 2010

 

There was this blitz tournament the Friday before the two-day qualification one, and so, remembering the gold medal I had brought from last year's blitz one, I decided to take part in both of them.
There was no online list of participants to the blitz tourn, so I had to wait until I'd arrive to know who I was going to face. I posed a question on the Czech Scrabble Association website forum about whether anyone happened to know about any then list of participants, and even last year's National Champ, tourn veteran and best scrabble player in our eyes Martin Kuča – currently fourth on the Chart – was very busy finding such a list. It contained about twenty people – well, seems like nothing's left but to let myself be taken by surprise when I arrive.
Taken by surprise. As if the surprise of the participants at the blitz tourn were not enough, a first unwelcome surprise awaits me right on entering the Trutnov – Hradec train. As I sit down in the coupé and stick out my mp3 player, I soon find out all (and I mean ALL) my batteries are dead. WTF...?! I swear I recharged them the night before...!
Well, apparently I didn't. I sought to buy some "dirt cheap" non-rechargeable ones, as I pointed out to the saleswoman, but she didn't have any cheaper ones than for CZK 16.50. Oh well, I'll have four of them, at least they're gonna last.
"Please get onboard the Hradec Králové – Pardubice passenger train. The train is about to depart."
What...?!
I flew down the hall as if there'd been a rocket installed in my ass. I saw the conductor walking past the train and closing the doors of all its cars, so the speaker probably meant what he said. I reopened one of the door the conductor had just closed, sneaked in, and slammed it again. Ooooophhhh! What a relief to throw myself on the seat and turn the music up.
Having arrived in Pardubice, as I walk towards the place where the tourn took place last year, I notice there being suspiciously few people around the building. Like, I do know that the tourn takes place somewhere else, but I just thought the two places were close to each other.
I ask some by-passers about the way to the cultural house where the tourn was to take place and they sent me nearly a kilometer further. Has my way to this last-year place of event been futile – well, I'd almost say footile!
Having asked about three other people for direction on the way, I finally find the house and, drenched with sweat, drag in. The first thing I look for surprisingly ain't the registration spot but a bathroom to splash some fresh cold water on my fucking face and armpit, not giving a hoot about staining my whole vest with water. It's gonna evaporate anyway and keeps ya fresh.

On my arrival there were still some forty-five minutes left until the beginning of the tournament. The room on the door of which there was a sign saying "scrabble" was still dreadfully empty and it almost made me think I was in the wrong place despite all the SCRABBLE signs all around. Luckily, soon Dana Kučová, the organizer of the tourn and IT manager, came in with her nice daughter Petra.
"So glad to meet you, Tom – could you help us move things from the car upstairs?"
"Sure."
The "things" included several heavy cardboard boxes. Not that they'd have been heavy themselves but they were bursting at the seams with tournament items – one of them with clocks, another one with bags of letters, yet another two with boards and racks.
We hauled them into the tourn room and dropped them on the floor. Ya think the work is done? Nope. We gotta move the tables now, luckily not into the room but in the scope of it.
"How wide should the gaps between the tables be?" thought Dana aloud and suggested the width.
"That's too little," opposed Petra, adding a killing note. "They gotta be wide enough for Kuděj to go through."
We laugh our asses off, having to admit she's right. The triple National Champ, Katka Rusá's uncle Milan Kuděj is ahm... kind of well-built so he'd probably have a hard time finding his way to the dictionary.
As soon as the work is done, the first participants typically start to arrive.
"Thank you for your help," says Dana to me. Well, I gotta say – if your daughter didn't look so good today, God knows whether I'd have been that eager to help, ha!
"Gladly... no prob."

There was about thirty minutes left so I decided to go to a nearby pub and have a cuppa iced coffee. I apparently wasn't the only one to get that idea, as I met Ivo Hradský and Jindřich Sikora there over a mug of beer. The sun was shining so I let them inspire me and I order a beer too, and only then the coffee. Beer as a source of inspiration and coffee to work me up – hell, I guess I'm mucking ready!
Of about thirty people applied for the Blitz Tourn, only twelve have arrived. Even Luboš Vencl, an every-year finalist and about the biggest threat to the Blitz Tourn, called Dana the IT manager that thez he didn't manage and that he wouldn't come until the next day, i.e. to the qualification tournament.
Starting the tourn at table #4 sounds good, eh? But hey – with regard to the total of participants, there aren't more than six tables altogether.
My first blitz opponent is the tourn veteran Martin Vacek who is actually the first scrabble player to read my translation of Stefan Fatsis's Word Freak. We had a nice non-bingo fight even in spite of the fever typical of blitz tourns. It wasn't until the final phase that the winner was apparent.
Apparently the winner wasn't going to be me, though. The even game started to lean towards him towards the end and he finally 310:348.
For my second opponent I get the bachelor railroad engineer and 1998 National Champ Zbyněk Burda from our Parnas club.
Our games are always great fun, spiced by ironical cuts from both sides. Always when you jam a triple-word square with low-point move just to be the one to go there, or if you sixtuple a high-point letter, you're asking for a "what a primitive one..." note from his side accompanied by an ironical grin.
Me getting a blank, the mere minute allowed for a move at a blitz tourn doesn't stop me from forming and throwing a tripled bingo – neržáli, "they didn't neigh", and as the ž falls on a double-letter, the whole bingo winds up to be for no less than 101 points. He runs after me dangerously, but luckily soon I feel another bingo in the air. Spending the whole minute thinking, I work out a pure doubled navodíme, "we will create the atmosphere of", using the E from my previous bingo as a hook. Guess I've created the atmosphere of loss for him!
As if this had not been enough, I get the other blank, too. Using it in another fat move, I win 451:335, creating one of the best blitz tourn scores. My next opp, Barbora Červenková, is someone I had hardly ever heard the name of before, but in spite of that and her low rating, she keeps me busy. The game gets finally decided in the worst possible way – by one of us getting both blanks at once.
Luckily the one of us is me. I use 'em in two killer moves and sneak out with a win of 319:355.
But I don't need to feel ashamed for any blank luck, as in the next round I get Ivo Hradský and he gets 'em both this time. Composing a bingo with them and getting a pure one right after that, he wins 309:382. At least he confesses he just was fucking lucky – like, as if a player of his format ever needed it...
I meet Zbyněk Burda again during a pause between the rounds, who has been pursued by bad luck.
"I've finally gotten among the first ten," he cuts with a grin. The first ten sounds gorgeous – until you realize there isn't more than 12 players here at the blitz tourn altogether, ha...
To my surprise, my fourth opponent was to be Viktor Hagenhofer. The hardly 1400-rated bearded freak and the organizer of the spring tournament in Kadaň doesn't shine much but loves the game enough to turn up at most of the tournaments.
Shortly after the beginning I compose a pure bingo – spojeno, a neuter passive of the verb "to connect" but don't let him rest even after that – the bigger the difference between us at the end of the game, the better, it gives you a good TurČAS criterium. Being worked up by the loss in the previous round, I beat him mercilessly and he's glad to at least scrape over 200. I don't even get a blank until the very end, but that doesn't stop me to push it over 400 – playing axisově with the latecomer blank for the S for 26 points – the possessive form of axis, which apart from being a name for one of the vertebrae (actually even in English – for the second cervical one) is also a kind of deer – towards the end of the game helps me to get rid of the leftover quickly, and so I smash Viktor 205:414. Fifth of 12 in the continuous ranking – ain't that bad, but let's get even higher in the last round (not to mean I'm currently high!). Who do I get to play against?
Věra Majtánová – ohh, I sure did smell danger. But at least a nice opponent to lose to... by which I don't mean I'm giving it up in advance.
No, I really don't. I put her through a neck and neck fight not letting myself be influenced by the strenuous games I've played up till now. I'm fifth in the continuous ranking – I'm aiming higher...
Looking at us, you wouldn't dare guess it was the very last round of the blitz tourn. We fought fresh without pausing for breath, one getting ahead, the other getting close in no time. I work out a tripled 80-point bingo podzimní with a blank for the M, an adjective derived from the fall (the season of the year).
It wouldn't have been Věra if she hadn't made up for the difference quickly. Soon we were fighting neck and neck again.
The game gets decided in the worst way it can – by me getting the other blank. It helps me go out first and take her out by 10 – 340:330. As I learn later on, thanks to this game she ends up as "low" as bronze. The tourn gets won by the tourn veteran Martin Vacek. Silver went to Ivo Hradský who pulled it out against me in the fourth round.
"... the fifth place goes to Tomáš Rodr..."

Well ... none of the last year's first place, but good. I win a bottle of good wine and say to myself, the upcoming qualification tourn is a more important one – let's put off the shining until then.
I offered help to Petra and Dana rearranging the tables for the upcoming weekend's qualification tourn – I couldn't stand the idea the two would have had to do it all by themselves. The train is due in more than two hours anyway – what would I have done with so much time on my hands?
The answer came by itself. We finished rearranging the tables and parted, drenched with sweat, when, right on going out of the building, I saw a known face coming – riding a bike towards me (well okay, the bike was ridden by known legs).
"How did ya wind up here?" Katka Rusá's sudden appearance here has drawn a smile on my face.
"I've mucking ridden all the way from Prague here," she wipes the sweat off her forehead. She doesn't know yet how the "mucking" ride's gonna pay. We walk together towards the station and I offer her a drink, seeing she needs one badly. We hug each other goodbye as my train is due in a few minutes, saying we'd meet soon – actually the very next day at the qualification tourn.

Standa, a Pardubician friend of mine from the university years who was then staying at the same halls of residence as I did, told me to get to the main station after the tourn and if I go to the Černá za Bory suburb of Pardubice by the last available night train, we could meet right on it as he'll be on his way back from Jihlava where he works as a supervisor over archaeological excavations.
We did meet on the train indeed. Coming to his place, we stuck the Trutnov beer I had brought along into the fridge to cool out and I suggested opening the wine I had won. Standa had currently no mind for wine though and so we waited for the beer to be consumably cool.
With cheers we drank it up together, spending the rest of the evening talking as we hadn't seen each other for a year. I had to hit the sack around one AM to be fresh for the weekend's qualification tourn.
In the morning I at first try to refuse the breakfast offered to me, but finally have to confess it did hit the spot. After all I'm gonna arrive just on time and may not have time for refreshment.
Haha – refreshment! All there was was a dish of apples. Thank God I had had the breakfast. I poured me a cuppa coffee and was glad to have at least something to work me up. Who's gonna be my first mouthful?
Holy crap – Katka Rusá. So much have I teased the fate by hollering at her "let's have a game together" that I now got her right in the first round.
"Well hello," she grins ironically. Almost makes one pleased that I seem to represent a threat to her. I wrote her name into my scrabble tourn notebook and drew a circle between her and me, inspired by Jirka Kracík's notes: if I win, I'll color the circle blue, if I don't, I leave it as it is.
JUST as we were ready to stick our hands into the bags, raised Dana her hand.
"PLEASE DON'T start playing – the pairing is wrong."

"What a shame," I sneered at Katka. "I looked forward to a good game of ours." I didn't forebode we actually were going to play against each other later on – and that it would be anything but a good game.
In her stead, my first opponent was to be Barbora Červenková. Rings the bell, eh? We played against each other the day before at the Blitz Tourn.
I start the game by a 42-pointer – playing oryxů with a blank for the R, the genitive plural case of the oryx antelope. I don't regret the blank – be it just my confidence against her which is going to be punished accordingly. Not only is she neck and neck with me in no time – especially when I'm slowed down by getting shit for letters and having to swap 'em – but on top of that the 1438-rated loser that she is manages to play a pure bingo midway through the game. A primitive one as Zbyněk Burda would say – nevadili, "they didn't matter", as any bingo starting with ne- is primitive according to him, especially if composed of one-pointers like in this case. She kept me busy the day before and she does now, again. I can't really say "they didn't matter" didn't matter! It did. It did so much it even enabled her to resist until the very last move. It made my brains rotate hard and count the probabilities of what she might have left in her rack and gather I was going to have to go out first.
Luckily there was a way. With a sigh of relief I play my last move, and adding her leftover, I win by three points – 389:386.
"You're becoming dangerous," I say with recognition. You bet she is – according to our rating difference I was expected to win at least by 58 and not by mere three. But oh well – still better than to lose like some of the favorites did. Katka Rusá came and complained she had burned it closely against 1540-rated Eva Baďurová.
"She'd been moaning all the way that she was getting bad tiles, and was hoarding both blanks in the meantime!" To lose by seven points against both blanks – doesn't it juss suck!
Oh well, had I known what was awaiting me from Katka's side the next day, I wouldn't have regretted this unlucky loss of hers, ha.
Walking past table #3, I see something hardly credible. The 1800-rated every-year Championship participator Ivo Hradský, who won the tourn back in Hradec, is losing to about 1000-ish Drahomíra Venclová, the mother of another regular championship fighter Luboš Vencl but apparently not by far a player of half the quality of her son. Ivo is desperately hiding his red-bearded face in the neckline of his T-shirt, perhaps to conceal his pissed off expression. She beats him 327:276
I check the continuous ranking, expecting to be of the worst winning players. Indeed – 24th of 52. Let's get up there. But hey – looking closer at the 1st round results makes my eyes pop. Not only Katka but also other favorites have lost, including the 1800-rated scrabble site ghost Petr Vejchoda for whom the Pardubice tourn is the only one in the course of the whole year he feigns to attend, preferring to sit on his ass at home playing scrabble online. And holy moley – like Katka did, he lost to Eva Baďurová. For a second time already...

Ya kidding... ya fuckin' kiddin'!
I've just afforded to win by three points over a much lower-rated player – and who do I get? A triple National Champ...!
"Well... come, bro!" he already hollers at me from table #5 (what a leap!). Milan Kuděj, Katka's uncle and a triple National Champ whom I have already once managed to beat.
God forbid.
But hey – we've already seen that the first step to success is to throw away any fear of the particular opponent you might have. We like to play against each other after all – why not again?
You wouldn't believe how good a prescription it is, to throw the fears away. Soon I felt a pure bingo in the air, calmly composed it and threw it onboard – vpeřeny, a plural feminine passive of an impossible but valid bookish verb vpeřit, "to plunge into" or whatever. Right in my very second move. As soon as he catches up, I shove another one, with a blank this time, "n(e)líhnou", a negative third person plural present tense of "to emerge", "to engender". Looks like anomther win of mine over him is soon going to emerge...!
And it does. Getting the other blank, too, and using it in a 45-point tripled word epoxid, epoxide, for the D, I finally win 318 – 413.
"Pulled it out with luck," I say on receiving a congratulation from this triple National Champ and Katka Rusá's uncle – I mustn't forget not to tell her with joy that I had beaten him, ha, like I did last time I managed to do so. She sure wouldn't share my joy this time.
"Nope – well played," he praises me. And he must know...!
"Oh, thanks."
Jumping to 9th place of 52 in the continuous ranking sure delights – just like the words from the triple National Champ.
But I kinda feel I'm gonna get a thrashing now.
Sort of illogically I'm sent to a lower table – #7 – for the third round.
Jiří Kučka – another of my secret wishes for an ooponent come true. He's the one to have beaten me twice with both blanks by five points (in both cases!). A lot to retaliate for.
The neck and neck game gets spiced in the fifteenth move when Jiří plays a bingo, vstrkán ("pushed into") for 64 points with a blank for the K, and I answer with one of mine (nevymaň – "don't get out of") for 83 with a blank for the Y.
But then the bag – guess I'm gonna call it a SCUMBAG from now on...! – started playing against me. A slight jump I had gotten was levelled up and vanished, while he started getting his. Me getting shit for letters, the gap between us started to widen, and I didn't even have the mind to swap letters – to let it widen even more. The game ends 382:328 in his favor, but oh well – let's get an easier opponent in the upcoming round.
Well, I'm glad to have particularly this one. Jirka Kracík from our Parnas club ain't no piece of cake but he's manageable – and someone who loves the game so the games against him are always worth it. After all, he's beaten me at a tourn only twice while I did him five times.
"Who's to start the game?" was the obvious question. We did look at the schedule but you sort of always tend to forget it right on your way to the designated table.
"Dunno. You, I guess," I said and wrote his name in the "1st player" column.
"Are you sure? I guess it's you."
"I'm not." So I had to pick myself up from the chair again and go have a look at the schedule.
"It's me, you're right." I had to stroke out the names and write them in the reverse order.

"Listen to me, y'all," tried Dana the IT manager out of the blue to outshout the introductory tile rattle. To no avail, the rattles were louder.
"Silence!" shouted a player near her who had heard her. He had a stronger voice than she did so we shut up this time.
"We just wanted to say," her daughter Petra takes the floor, "that should anyone wish to have a mug of tea heated, we're able to oblige."
A lot of us couldn't help chuckling, taking it as a good joke. There was such a scorcher outside that the players were almost dropping, so Jirka Kracík cut in:
"It's just enough to put the mug out on the window sill."
"... or go to a gay club with it," he adds with a grin. Just wait – gonna put ya through such a fight that your laughter's gonna freeze – even in spite of the scorcher.
How do you heat a mug of tea in a gay club? Something an Anglophone reader might not get: the Czech word for gay in the homosexual sense is teplý, which actually literally means "warm"...
Right in my sixth move I stick out a bingo – netknul, "he didn't touch", which he accompanies with his traditional "for Jesus's sake".
He levels it up in no time though, not even needing a bingo, and so I become clear about the fact that I'll have to rely on my killer endgame again.
And I do. Going out first and adding his leftover, I win by three points – 337 – 334 – , breathing a deep sigh of relief. Jirka shakes my hands with congratulations and his "well then, thanks a lot", making the thanks intentionally sound ironic.
Moving to 16th place of 52 and to table as high as #2, I knew I was asking for trouble. I did get one. Its name was Michal Sikora. He being a bingo thrower always ready with a bingo shower – always making me wonder where the heck he gets them from – , he didn't surprise me at all when throwing a bingo right in his fourth move. I challenge, chafing my hands: I once played this bingo on the site and it got challenged off.
... what?! What the fucking FUCK?
It was valid.
"Dunno – it may have been added during the last dictionary update," he shrugs at a loss. Not apparently meaning the loss of the game. Three turns later he plays another bingo, a pure one this time, and gets the other blank, too. Another of those games in vain in advance, eh? Almost makes me glad for "just" a 106-point difference: 329 – 435.
"Congrats."
"Thanks ... just luck." Glad he's at least able to admit it.
Falling to 20th place in the continuous ranking, I learn at least one piece of good news – I have a good average score so far. 359 points. And hey – second piece of good news ... this tall bearded not-even-1400-rated freak Viktor Hagenhofer to become my sixth opponent.
"Don't say you got three wins so far," I grin unbelievingly – which was clear as players are mostly paired according to their current number of wins.
"Yeah," he confirms to my utter surprise. "I've beaten Katka Rusá, Radim Hyršovský..."
What...? Just wait. Gonna put an end to your lucky streak – be it only to take revenge for Katka.
And I did as I promised. Making almost 400 points without even needing a bingo, I beat him 279 - 395, using a blank in a 50-point tripled pleň, a 2nd person singular imperative of "to plunder".
Glad to shake his self-esteem and help myself "among the first fifteen" in the continuous ranking – I mean to 15th place, heh.
Seating yourself at table #6 sure makes you feel good – and I didn't know I was going to end up even higher. In this seventh round I was to play against a regular finals participator Břeťa Basta. This young handsome guy my age is a pleasure to play against, even if you lose.
Sweat was flowing off us in streaks – the heat just wouldn't drop; it was rather us who were about to drop. But I didn't let it influence me or my game. Right in my 3rd move I play a bingo upitími for 75 points (the instrumental case of "sips of a drink") with a blank for the I, but he goes after me soon. In my 12th move I escape again with a 40-pointer gnosí, a genitive plural case of gnose, "gnosis".
"Nice," he says. Thanking him, I have to agree – it's even nicer than the bingo I had before.
The neck and neck game gets decided in the worst way it can, though – I get the other blank, too, which enables me to go out first and win by 17 points – 306 – 323.
At the neighboring table, something incredible hasd happened. The scrabble site ghost Petr Vejchoda, a top scrabblist who, though, doesn't enjoy playing "live" tournament scrabble much and prefers butchering people at the site, has just been smoked by Ivo Hradský. He did not even pile up 300 points.
Seeing me having moved "among the first ten" in the continuous ranking – yeah, I mean to 10th place – , a few top players stare at the ranking sheet unbelievably.
"Rodr has gotten into the Finals – for the first time in history," says Jiří Kamín for the ones standing nearby to hear. He being an every-year participator of them for nine years already, he must know by the look at the sheet when this happens to someone. I later asked him whether he meant what he said – he did, especially provided that participation at tournaments has been decreasing, wherefore nowadays it's enough to end up twice in the first ten and then keep up your "average" in further tourns until the end of the year to be able to get into the Finals.
That's a real music to my ears.
By winning over Basta, of course, I asked for even more trouble. This time in the form of one of the biggest tourn veterans, Jana Vacková, who has been at the scene since 2000.
Luckily I'm still in the perfect condition I seem to have been since the beginning of the tourn – neither the hard fights nor the sweltering heat being able to wear me out. And speaking of the heat – hey! Just as I thought we wouldn't make it if the heat goes on like this, there was a roll of the thunder outside, lightning stroke and a hell of a pouring rain started pissing on the streets of Pardubice. We welcomed it with one unisono sigh of relief.
Nor did Jana seem tired, though. We race neck and neck the whole game through, me spicing it with a pure bingo in my 8th move (negoval – "he negated"), she bingoing right back with a blanked one (činného – the genitive case of the adjective činný, "active"; the blank went for the I). We whoosh towards the end in a blitz tempo, only to change it into a tw-minutes-by-two minutes brain war in the endgame. We still being close, we rack our brains over what's still left in our racks. Apparently, who manages to go out first is gonna be the winner.
I watch every new move of hers with my heart pounding: is she gonna go out? Hell, she sure is – she's got the other blank, too.
She didn't. I played my move and didn't either.
She played hers...
... and didn't go out yet either.
Now I can't the heck go out yet... either, in spite of there remaining three tiles in both racks.
Heart pounding, I play off one of the tiles, quietly coming to terms with having to say goodbye to a chance of close win.
She...
... plays TWO of the tiles she has left. INCLUDING the other blank. Yes – YES – NOT three! Apparently the three were not very compatible.
So, who's gonna go out AND win now? Say – who? Ha – me!!! Without a blank!!!
Breathing out deeply, I add her one-tile leftover and win – by three points. 366 – 363.
Phewwww.

I share my fresh win with Katka Rusá who looks done in. "I rely on my autopilot," she uses her fave brilliant metonymy. Needles to say, the autopilot of such a master scrabble player as her seems to be pretty high-tech, though... "I don't even know how I managed to beat Vacek," she refers to the seventh round. "I rather guess he beat himself." I burst out laughing. "Nothing laughable, I mean it," she sneers. "I was just throwing tiles on the board without thinking. Now I suddently have a look on the sheet – and find out I've won."
Somebody slap me – I have more wins than Vejchoda as of now, he being 5 – 3 while me 6 – 2. Seventh in the continuous ranking...! But hey – what sort of a butcher am I going to get to play against now?
9th round – you may think we should leave the rest of the tourn until tomorrow. Which we originally planned to do, but we agreed with Dana the IT manager that we would stay as long as possible due to the kind rainy weather.
I get Jarda Buksa. Awright – another dangerous but nice opp whom I've already managed to beat at a tourn (at the last team league tourn in Prague and, before that, last year – right here in Pardubice! Is history gonna repeat itself?).
He respects me as an opponent – you sure remember what he said last year at the tournament in Volyně. "He's a strong player." Let's confirm that one!
There's a drawback to his respect – he pushes. And he pushes hard. In his 13th move he throws a bingo, nesvědíš ("you don't itch") and then gets the other blank, too. How do I know? Well, I just suspect (and rightly). But at the same time I feel my pure rack to be pretty bingo-prone. Of course I've already evened up the difference made by his bingo, but it's not good to have to endure another nack and neck fight. Let alone with such a bingo-prone rack.
The rack makes me rack my brains for the whole two minutes allowed for a move. I shuffle and shiffle the letters like insane. No bingo coming? There must be one.
I was pretty well aware of this move being the deciding one. I kept steaming with the thinking toil, shiffling and shuffling the tiles to and fro within the rack. When there's no blank, the bingo is, needless to say, much harder to make.
Now – I got it! I knew there was one. Neplítáš, the 2nd person singular of the colloquial negative verb neplítat, "not to knit", will have become mz best move of the tournament by the end of the 15th round. 92 points – gets me over 400 and assures me of there being another win within reach. I take the last remaining letters out of the bag, turn it the wrong side up to prove its emptiness (in accordance with the tourn rules) and work out a 30-pointer to crown the damn good game. Adding Jarda's leave, I win 329 – 439. Daaaamn gooood. Fifth place in the continuous ranking! But I pretty well guess the very first table awaits me now at he upcoming round – with a good executioner and maybe even gallows installed!
Of course. Table #1, says the schedule, and – who else would I get but 2008's National Champ and a sixtupled silver medailist from the finals, Martin Kuča? He's considered the best Czech scrabble player ever by many of us.
He stands up for (even if sitting) this title of his right from the beginning. In his 8th move he sneaks a weird pure bingo past me which I don't challenge just because I believe the best Czech scrabblist knows what he's doing. After all, I soon answer with a pure bingo of mine. For awhile, before whacking the clock, I hesitate between titanová (feminine adj: "made of titanium") and titánova (the possessive form of titán, "titan", the poetic expression for a giant). I decide in favor of the former one – the other one "sounds better" but the first one is "safe". And it's better to vote for safety, eh? (Both are valid, but with the scrabble dic[k] you never know... you know that yourself.)
Where the heck are the blanks? We've both played a pure bingo, so he either holds them both – why do we all always first think of the worst option... – or they're still in the bag.
I draw a handful of fresh new letters – we scrabble veterans usually grab seven of them without counting, having gained a "feel" for ther number – and think I would die. Both blanks at once!
I don't quite get who most scrabblist curse getting them both at once. Such an advantage... the only reason I curse doing so is that I consider it kinda unfair towards the opponent. But hey – against the best Czech scrabble player – ain't two blanks just a necessity!
At the neighboring table, #2, a hard fight is taking ploace, too. I hear Ivo Hradský, apparently influenced by the fever of the game, challenging the obviously valid word kom (the locative case of the pronoun "who"). Haha – is it the influence of the recent heat? Well, it just happens.
I keep thinking for a minute and then play off an unsuitable letter. Luckily he jams the "more probable" spot for a bingo – he didn't count on me going for a triple.
And ya bet I went for it. I played vylétne with the blanks for the L and the N – the 3rd person singular of "to fly out" and catch 77 points which fly out of this bingo. Drawing the last remaining letters, I empty the bag and turn it the wrong side up. Going out, I beat this former Champ and sixtupled "vicechamp" 335 – 409.
"Ain't never even dreamed of such something," I say with a shining smile, receiving his congratulation. What a coronation of today's part of the tourn – to be remembered for the rest of my life!
I finish the game early as usual due to my blitz style and watch the game at the neighboring table for the rest of the time. The red-bearded scrabble wizard Ivo Hradský is being beaten by the amiable charming Hana Lukáčová. Ivo is so nervous he does something to make your eyes pop at – he challenges Hana's word kom (yeah, a three), a word every little child knows – the locative case of the pronoun "who".
I use the town bus to get to Standa's home this time. We drink to my fourth position in the continuous ranking – the dark side of it being the curiosity about who I'd get the next day for my next opponent. Who faces the one who's just won at table #1? Well I wonder...!
I pack my things and leave with my rucksack on so I don't have to come back – Standa's leaving to the south and his parents do to their cottage. I say goodbye and promise to come back in a year – hopefully there's gonna be a tourn in Pardubice again.
Just like I expected, I couldn't find the place. The house is so inconspicuously hidden in spite of its size that I had to ask for direction several times. Then luckily I saw some scrabblists smoking in front of the building – seeing them first and only then the building! Just go on smokin' – before I'll be smokin' you!
If you expect that I now wonder who I'll get for my 11th opp after beating THE Martin Kuča, you're mistaken – it was easy to figure out. I'm currently fourth in the continuous ranking of the tournament and I've already beaten two of the three people above me, so I'll get the third one now – the charming and amiable Hana Lukáčová. The funny thing is that she dates Martin Kuča so she§s gonna take revenge for him on me now, eh? No. I ain't gonna let her.
As if to confirm my words, I start off with a pure bingo for 82 points. It wouldn't have been her though if she hadn't stood up to that bravely with a crux and an ex the quadrupled X of which contributed to 47 points for her. I, though, get the other blank straightaway and cook another bingo with it in my fourth move – zavázali, the 3rd person plural past of "to bind", but again, she confirms her renown and soon gets neck and neck with me again.
Under the quick-game pressure I still manage to crack jokes. As I played off a tile in my third move, creating the word vor ("raft"), I utter "that's something in Russian, ain't it? (Which it really is – "a thief".) Yes it is but the word is still good in Czech scrabble, ha ... just like the English word screening. Later on, I play the word vót (plural genitive of vótum – a term for a promise made to God) and sneer again: "That's also Russian." (vót, transcribed from the cyrilics, really being the Russian for "here" or "well" in the interjectional sense).

The bag is finished and turned upside down. Ya think the game is already decided in favor of one of us...?
It's not.
It's only now, over the last two racks of seven of our game, that we're starting a real mental war.
But I sort of know I'm lost. As always – lack of vowels towards the end. But let's resist for as long as we can. I play off all tiles worth more than one point...
Now the pre-result when she goes out is 365 – 365 .... grrr, how I hate to have to deduct the two one-pointers!
363 – 367. She breathes a deep sigh of relief and grins at me, receiving my congratulations: "... that was a hell of a tough getting up."
At the neighboring table, Katka Rusá had just lost to her uncle, a triple National Champ Milan Kuděj.
"You just turn on your autopilot and then you hit the sack," she uses her superb metonymy again with a sneer.
"No wonder – I got a talented hostess," he returnd her sneer.
Jirka Kracík came complaining to me like a beaten dog – literally, having been beaten by Břeťa Basta by no less than 302 points: 547 – 245. Last year's National Champ Martin Kuča got beaten again – this time by 1757-rated Michal Přikryl.
The continuous ranking was printed out and pinned up again and players crowded at the wall where the result sheets were hanging. The 1831-rated every-year Finals player Jiří Kamín looked at it and seeing my close loss to Hana, he commented on it with a cut:
"Rodr has finished his killing streak as I can see – he's exhausted..."
Just wait, I'll show ya. (I didn't know yet that I'd really show him in one of the following rounds how sadly mistaken he was.)
Falling as "low" as to sixth place of 51 in the continuous ranking, I move to table #5 to play against Hana Filipová, the "Young Shrew".
She gets a blank early in the course of the game and plays a bingo right in the third mi, naražené, "broached", the blank for the Ž. By playing this bingo, though, she opened a triple for me, and so I went there with a 33-pointer. Thus minimizing the difference between us to just a couple dozen points, I then put an end to her leading position by playing jógu, the accusative case of YOGA, for 30 points.
I do not enjoy this slight lead for long again. She had gotten the other blank in the menatime and composed another bingo with it. I, though, had a smart answer straightaway – she opened a lane to a triple by her bingo again, and there being an E of the bingo right to the triple, I played EX veritcally next to it and thus quadrupled its value. Together with the by-words created it gave me no less than 50 points so even though she had already used both blanks in two bingos, I was breathing on her neck again. Now, you couldn't foretell the winner at this point again.
The 13th turn was a most unlucky one for her. She played the word háčí – I gaped at it like a fool, having never seen it before.
"What the heck is that?" I grin at Hana.
"A form of the verb háčit – a slang shortened form of háčkovat, to crochet."
"Don't say," I don't seem convinced. "Gonna challenge that one."

The word wasn't valid (of course – such a horseshit...), so she had to take it back and pass, which in fact decided the game – I made sure to make a fat move she couldn't catch up on anymore. Winning against two bingos and two blanks with no bingo and no blank – doesn't it just warm the cocks, I mean cockles, of your heart...!

I knew I was asking for this kind of trouble. Petr Vejchoda...! The scrabble site ghost. But hey – as far as I know, he's had seven wins of twelve so far, while I have nine, so what the heck made him be here at table #5...?
"Dunno – you may have played with all the nine- and eight-point players."
Which I have to gather he's right about.
I knew there's no use to even try and beat him cuz it's just impossible. But hey – you just don't need to manifest the impossibility right away...! He starts the game with a primitive bingo traceny, the iperfective plural femininine passive of "to lose", with a blank for the C (yeah, the worst letter in the whole bingo was substituted by a blank, to take the biscuit). At least he confessed it was just pure good luck.
Of course he gets the other blank, too, and uses it for a tripled X-word to get 48 points. There's a harsh Czech saying, literally that "there's always just one heap that luck shits on". The heap was now apparently on Petr's side.
I don't even make it to 300, losing 348 – 282. To my amazement, he says it was "just luck", although top scrabble players of his kind are always able to find a mistake on the losing player's side.
Ain't this a little strange – if you lose, you cause yourself to experience a fatal fall through (a Durchfall, as the Germans would say, eh – oh nope, that's diarrhoea in German...), but if you win, you skip up just a mucking little... so now after the loss to Vejchoda I'm as "low" as seventh. And taking into consideration that I've played with all the people currently above me in the continuous ranking of the tourn, I can't even be comforting myserf with the cheap "easier upcoming opponent" comfort cuz if you're killin' 'em all like I am now this rule just doesn't apply.
And so I get 1833-rated Jiří Kamín. God forbid...! Another every-year Finals participator and every-month winner of the Czech scrabble site player league. But hey – let's not get intimidated.
Jiří, quite like Petr Vejchoda, is not a frequent bingo thrower (that sounds even more intimidating than a flame thrower, at least to a scrabble player, eh) but relies successfully on getting the shit out of each and every move of his. The best way to get such an opponent is to adapt to their tactics. I use my blank for a 74-pointer which, quite surprisingly with me, is not a bingo – znuďte, a 2nd person plural imperative of "to get somebody bored", gets me as much as 74 points thanks to the sixtupled 8-point Ď (the blank goes for the Z).
It wouldn't have been this scrabble tourn veteran Jirka Kamín if he hadn't made up for the point difference quickly, so I have to rely on the common "ace up my sleeve" – my "killer endgame". I planned on expanding the word krmí, a 3rd person singular of krmit, "to feed", into ukrmí, ukrmit being a bookish verb meaning "to feed sate". Jiří tries challenging, although he knows it's "probably good". It is. It gives me 31 points – towards this very end a good lead. I beat this every-year Finals participator 377 – 338 – what did he say, about me after the 11th round? "He's exhausted?" Ha!
I check on the averages made after thid last but one round. I played 366 points per game on average – sure not bad!
Ten wins! Hell, I ain't even hoped for such a success. Jiří's probably gonna be right in saying I have already practically been qualified – it's just enough now to "keep my standard".
Now who's gonna be the icing on the tourn cake?
An icing on the cake in the true sense of the word – hopefully she's not gonna ice me! My dear friend and 2003 National Champ Katka Rusá against whom I originally was to play in the 1st round.
We're actually gonna fight each other for a medal!
Well, although I had already won over her once at a tourn, this time I somehow knew in advance that it was gonna be in vain. Indeed – but hey, such a clear demonstation wasn't really needed...! She starts off with a blanked bingo dadaisto, the vocative case of dadaista, "dadaist". Then right in the second move, she springs with another blanked bingo – ponechán, a masculine passive of ponechat, to keep or to leave (alone). Be it anyone else but her, I'd consider fucking such a game – but okay, I'll endure. Just cuz it's you...
What do you think – in the 11st turn she makes a third bingo on top of that. Oh well – I resisted as best as I can, losing 327 – 470, promising her with a grin to declare a Mafia War against her on Facebook. (I did and was beaten within five minutes, lol). But oh well – I'm glad at least to help her to silver medal. Me I finished seventh (of 52) and was confirmed the fact that if I stick to a good standard I have the participation at this year's Nationals in my pocket. Yeah!

Zbyněk Burda finished 24th, Jirka Kracík 28th – I sought to get out of here and for the train home or they would sure have dragged me to a pub and make me pay all the expenses "as is the custom with that member of the team who ends up the best of all its members!"

poslal scrabblista, 17.08.2010 19:32:00, Komentáře (0)

The Litoměřice Scrabble Championship Qualification Tournament 2010

I originally didn't at all count on taking part at this one. Two thundred (heh, what a nice typo) kilometers to the west? But after the tourn in Hradec, there was this heartfelt "invitation" to this tournament, and the ones which had taken part in it in the previous years beefed up the inviation saying it was a beautiful town. So I said why not after all, with an overnight stay in Prague and seeing old friends there it's gonna be a hell of a ride again.

Back home I finally decided to go, finding out there's a nice connexion with only three changing of the trains, which could get me there within some four hours. On the way back I could stop over in Prague, see my cousin and maybe even Dominika and stay overnight at the former's.

Even so, though, we waited with bated breath until the Friday before: it wasn't sure until that very day before the tourn whether or not it would take place at all. There were only 38 applicants to the tourn the fee of whom the organizers said wouldn't cover the expenses. Finally there were 42 of us after I had started an anonymous discussion thread on the scrabble association web, prevailing people to go. Seeing the 42 of us, the organizers finally said the tournament would be held and that they would leave it with us whether we would like to throw in some bucks to help them even up the financial losses.

I work out a plan of the cheapest fare and take the 4.37 AM (ugh) train to Nymburk. Back at the grammar school, we were on an excursion to a penitentiary in the scope of the Psychology subject. I and another boy in the seminar were interviewing a beautiful gal from there and she said she was right from Nymburk – I couldn't help remembering her when hanging around the Nymburk station before the train to Litoměřice came. The station wasn't even worth looking around – now I know why the Trutnov one has won the title of the most beautiful train station in the whole republic. In comparison with it, the Nymburk one was a disaster.

I decided to take a walk before the train to Litoměřice came. Which turned out not to be a felicity, really – I nearly missed the train, having to run when coming back to the station. Just like me...

The train was scheduled to arrive in Litoměřice at 8.45 AM and the tournament was staged to start at 9.00, and so I decided to call a taxi. It would be the first time I'd ever travel by taxi alone, but oh well – there's always a first time.

"Where do you need to be taken?"

"The Havlíčkova elementary school."

"Okay – no prob. In front of the train station there'll be a black Ford Focus standing."

Oh well hello. I have a hard time remembering what a Ford looks like, let alone a Ford Focus. But let's just look for a black car and hope it's gonna say "taxi" on its door.

Heh. It's nice to work out a cheapest train route and then cough up CZK 70 for a cab, eh? But on a faraway trip it doesn't matter that much. The cab driver said we'd manage, and we really drove past the school by about three to nine.

Now, guess what happened.

Exactly. Dana the IT manager asked if anybody of the applicants was missing, and he was. Jiří Matějček texted to a player among the present ones that he'd manage to come but he'd be about fifteen minutes late.

What the heck had I paid the arm and the leg for the cab for?? Of course we waited for him until the beginning of the tourn was announced... in the meantime I'd sure have managed to come on foot even if I didn't know the way.

But I don't want this to sound like complaining – a thing I just chuckled over, taking into consideration the above-mentioned expenses for the trip as a whole.

So – who am I gonna get for my first opponent after the long adventurous trip?

Ya kidding – Zdeňka Růžičková...! A scrabble fanatic from the bottom of the chart (actually THE bottom itself) who plays scrabble just for kicks and doesn't mind often ending up the dead last.

"Good morning – looks like we haven't played against each other for long," she shakes my hand with a smile. No mentions of the seemingly uneven pairing, of an introductory dusting or the like – she justn't doesn't mind. She's come for the sole purpose of having fun playing.

But hey...!

If I thought the game was gonna be a piece of cake, I was – even against a bottom chart player – mistaken. She kept bravely neck and neck with me for quite a time, which even makes me utter some words of recognition. I finally work out a non-bingo killer move and escape with my score; she, though, gets a blank and with its help she soon breathes on my neck again.

I escape point-wise with a non-bingo fat move again. Now, guess her response. Yeah, exactly: she gets the other blank, too, and once more evens up the odds. I grab hold of the last thin thread to hold on to: go out first and rely on her leftover. Which I did and finally won over this bottom-chart easy player in both senses of the word by mere 11 points – 328:339.

"You kept me busy," I tell her with recogintion. The only thing which irritates me that if you win over a low-rated player by just a bit like I've just done, it gives you a bad TurČAS criterium. Oh well – let's get it better by some nice scalps in the upcoming rounds.

Luboš Vencl. Ouch. Always gets qualified for the Finals and is generally on the top of the chart, currently 16^th. I've already once managed to beat him at a team league tourn but that was about it. Even so, though, we'd always great fun games together – not to mention that one last year in Hradec which I lost by two points...

This time I ran neck and neck with him for quite a time into our game. He, though, threw a bingo with a blank, then got the other one, too, and made me glad I was at least able to make it over 300. I lost 304:386 – hey, have I gotten up with the crow of the cock and travelled 200 kms for a kick in the ass...? Hope not!

To my surprise, I'm scheduled to stay high (in high numbers that is) at #6 – to stand against ole Parnas member, a tourn veteran and 1998 National Champ Zbyněk Burda. Not only someone I'm not afraid of – he's tough, no doubt, and especially this year he's been doing extremely good, but as I've beaten him so many times at the club and at tournaments, I just don't feel any particular fear.

As always we spice this hard fight of ours by cracking bits and have a lot of fun over it.

Running neck and neck and slowly becoming afraid of another strike of bad luck to come, I saw Zbyněk making a fatal mistake. He played the word dóže, an Italian title for an emperor evolved from the (also valid) word duce, so that it ended in the N column. Now I almost read his mind what he was after: he thought I'd extend it by a M, hook a tripled word and he'd challenge both off the board as he thought dóže was inflected differently than by a M. But ha: extending dóže by a M is unusual BUT valid – that's, for a change, something I know.

I was sure as hell this move would win me the game – be it for the sole purpose he doesn't expect it.

And yes – now it comes. I play dóžem and simultaneously a neuter personal pronoun oním, for 40 points altogether.

"Challenge against dóžem," he grinned confindently. "That's not Czech – the correct form is dóžetem."

Haha – what did I say before?

"Both are correct," I grinned back. The dic confirmed my words and made Zbyněk grumble he "wouldn't catch up anymore". He didn't, really. I won 376:329 – 18^th in the continuous ranking sure sound much better than the placement after previous round. And if I thought I'd get a butcher now after Zbyněk – hey, a nice surprise once in a scrabble lifetime, eh? Alena Fiedlerová, it says here to my amazement. Has this hardly 1400-rated player won two games so far, like I do...? That'd rather have sounded like sci-fi, wouldn't it.

"No... I've got just one win," she grins, expecting a blowout.

Katka was to play at a nearby table so I asked her – she being a tourn veteran she might know.

"Yeah ... from time to time it happens."

Y'all expect a win for free...?

So do I, and she's aware she's probably gonna lose. So you can pretty well imagine how I felt after her first move:

"Well... um... I'm lucky...," she says and starts off the game with a pure bingo.

Wouldn't that just make ya hit the roof...!

"... ahm... nice," I say gritting my teeth. I just said to myself, keep cool, you're gonna level it up in no time.

But she fought hard and the "no time" actually took the whole game. She apparently wanted badly to keep the lucky start she had. I finally had to rely on my killer endgame again. I won, but just by 10 points – 343:353. And seeing how bravely Zdeňka Růžičková fought before her... winning closely against low-rated players gives you a bad TurČAS criterium.

And so in the continuous ranking I go up just a bit again – to 13^th place of 42 as one of the worst three-win-of-three players. And now I get a killer of an opponent, eh?

Indeed.

"Well bro, come..." the red-bearded freak Ivo Hradský who won the latest tournament hollers at me from table #2. "A tradition already, eh..."

Indeed. We fought against each other in Zlín, in Hradec... and now again. And seeing how lucky and close his latest win over me was... I'm gonna kill ya like I did in Zlín, man.

It wouldn't have been him hadn't he shoved a bingo straightaway, eh? He did, this time as "late" as his 5^th move. Well well, though – poneste, 2^nd person plural imperative of "to carry", is all made up of 1-point letters... as Zbyněk would say, "what a primitive one..."

Thank God I just got a blank. Drenched with sweat thinking, I soon answered with a bingo of mine, upoceny ("drenched with sweat", a plural feminine passive form). All it managed to do, though, was to shrink the difference for awhile – but not that I'd give it up. You know I ain't the kind. While he was playing his turn at ease thinking the game was already his, JUST before the end, I felt my very last seven-letter rack to be so bingo-prone – evidently a straw to clutch at.

There is one, I say to myself while I stare at the rack and at the P on the board I could use. But what the...? I whisper to myself in my mind several nonsense versions. Second beep of the clock. Shut the fuck up!

Now I got it. Pojistka...! What is it that makes us think first of absolute bullshit versions...? I shove the pure pojistka, the Czech for a fuse, onboard across the triple. Now that he thought he'd had the game nailed, me, collecting 83 points, I get neck and neck with him again and a bit in the lead. That'll sure make him blow his fuse! Now he's got two letters in his rack left, I got four.

So-so did I manage to count the 83 before the fourth beep, the long tone of two minutes gone. I whack the clock with relief and cause Ivo to become absorbed deep in thoughts, taken aback by the sudden danger of loss. He stared at the four tiles I had left in my rack and tried to figure out what they might be. He was sure about the fact that he had to go out and could hope to win thanks to the leftover I'd have to deduct and add to his score.

"Two," I chuckle sourly, revealing the two one-point letters I had left.

"365 – 367. Same with you?" In Ivo's favor, unfortunately.

"Phewwwww," breathes Ivo a long deep sigh of relief.

At least, as I can see, or hear, I'm not alone with the current bad luck. Luboš Vencl, my 2^nd round top opp, walks by, uttering: "I just won over you in the 2^nd round and been nothing but losing since then."

Katka Rusá was sitting at one of the tables with her head lain on it. Has she lost again? Yeah – to her own mother, Dagmar, who's, on top of it, rated much lower. "Gonna shoot the bag to death," Katka sighs with a sneer, meaning, of course, the tile bag. "I just swapped HLDJ.... only to get HLDJ back." Incredible strike of bad luck, eh, especially if taken into consideration that the changing of tiles is done by putting the letters to be changed facedown in front of you first, then drawing the fresh ones from the bag into your rack and only then putting the old facedown ones into the bag – just for the sole purpose of not getting the same ones back. So when this does happen... it really takes the biscuit.

Dana's bell announced the beginning of the fifth round and the one big rattle made up of twenty-one little rattles – the beginning of new twenty-one battles – of twenty-one sets of tiles bags was spoiled by dozens of tiles falling on the ground at table #2. Lída Rusá, Katka's sis, scattered them with her upcoming opponent Ivo Hradský when trying to put them all at once into the bag by folding the board at the seam, shaking all the tiles towards the middle of it and then just emptying the board into the bag. Which should be a routine for such veterans, but... shit just happens.

I, for my part, was sitting at table #10 and beginning my game against Filip Vojáček, the son of the current Association pres. You remember my shattering win over him in Hradec, so hopefully he's not gonna retaliate.

I push him to the corner right from the beginning with big fat blows and it seems like it intimidates him. He stays behind, but only for the purpose of composing a bingo, which takes me by surprise. Stříknut, the passive masculine of "to ejaculate" , ejaculates over sixty points for Filip. Then he tries a 40-pointer to get yet further away from me, but he makes an invalid hook with it so I challenge it off. In the course of our game, is bingo gets consecutively expended into 12-letter word vstříknutému – the dative case of the adjective "ejaculated in[to]" and make him further points practically for free. He wins 347 – 381: with both blanks by 34 points ... a lame victory, isn't it.

Being 23^rd in the continuous ranking, I get quite worked up. Such a pulling out from his side...! Guess the poor upcoming opp's gonna catch it from me for him.

Pavel Vojáček, the association president. Yeah. Right after Filip.

"Come get a dusting for your son," I grin at him.

Another neck and neck even fight – after quite a few of them in a row you kinda sart to feel their impact. But I ain't gonna let any signs of fatigue in. I'll just bring me another cuppa coffee and be right back to take ya on, man.

Our cutneck throat and throat fight – oops, I meant cutthroat neck and neck one – escalates towards the end of the game. I finally get together a bingo, which I'd been after for quite a time, counting on using a M already placed on the O8 square. With my heart pounding, I waited to see whether – or I actually almost expected – he would thwart it.

As if just on purpose, he kept racking his brains for the whole two minutes allowed for a move, thus making me excited to the point of going apeshit. Don't you dare go there. DON'T!

Of course he did. And – of course – with a bingo of his.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Now as he was putting the bingo onboard, right in the place where I would have been ready to put mine, the clock started beeping for the fourth time of his move. He feverishly tried to put the letters in the right order to make the bingo he intended...

Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!

The long tone, announcing the end of a turn, moaned mercilessly, although Pavel still had some two or three tiles of the bingo left to place.

"Aww, diddly-squat, then," he grumbled, whacked the clock and took his tiles back. Ya noticed that if I had been in his shoes, I'd sure have called it like "the fucking clock"? Ha! It sure ain't a fucking one at this moment. It made him put his bingo back – stick it up your ass, Mr President! – and I shoved one of mine right in the same place beginning on the O1 triple – balvanem with blank for the N, the instrumental case of the noun "rock". It suits my bingo better there than the one of yours, ha! My bingo literally rocks.

He did a kind of pro thing then – broke his, now homeless, bingo, almost totally up in favor of some fresh strong moves, keeping only the blank. I must say I would have been tempted to keep the most of the bingo and try to place it somewhere else at the cost of low-point moves... he made a totally new one when I was like a hundred points away from him, shoved it onboard for 66 points and started to represent a danger again – now, towards the end. I seek to get rid of all my letters effectively for his leftover to help me win.

And it did. 343 – 359: I guess I'd warned him before that he'd catch it for his son.

21^th of 42 – the exact half. Gonna get into the upper one, I say to myself.

My self-confident grin freezes when looking at the 8^th round schedule: Martin Vacek. God forbid, another "butcher", not to mention how he killed me back in Hradec by 199 points... on the other hand, I had beaten him several times both at qualification tourns and at the team league ones.

Have you ever noticed most games evolve in a completely different way than you expect them to? If I expected being killed by him like I was in Hradec, this time I, for my part, was killing him. I shoot a pure bingo: he challenges and collects a penalty cross. Then I get a blank, use it in a good doubled 30-point move to get me yet further away, and he still doesn't seem to catch up. Are you cooking a bingo...! I tried to jam whatever looked like a hook. In another 30-point move I use žha, this unusual ancient present participle form of žhnout, to heat, and he challenges again to collect another penalty cross. And still no trace of any bingo from his side – another explanation then, do you really get such bad letters? Well, after all, I've been there – with you.

Taking my breath away, he doesn't even get over 300 – and the blank, I learn, he doesn't get until the very last rack of seven. He doesn't even use it ... I win 371 – 274, still not able to believe it.

My victory wasn't the only surprise of the round: the 1800-rated grim reaper Jarda Kodym got beaten – though closely – by 1250-ish Eva Pařízková.

"I remember those times when I even used to let you correct your move if it was invalid," grinned Jarda, digesting his unexpected loss. Yeah – such a relax games against her used to be. Now she is sometimes able to beat me, and even Jarda.

At table #, for a change, the 1430-rated bearded scrabble freak Viktor Hagenhofer, the organizer of the May tourn in Kadaň, managed to beat the pretty and amiable 1702-rated finalist Jana Vágnerová.

I ran upstairs. This needs one last cup of coffee and some sweet refreshment. Hey – as a matter of fact I still have the bar of choc I've brought along untouched.

My enjoyment of the last remnants of yummies gets interrupted by the sound of a bell from downstairs. Yuck – have they already started!

Keep cool, man. They can't have started without there being all of us. I gotta be splitting...

I entered the tournament room without having to search for the table I was to play at – Radek Mannheim was already waving at me from #5 and was like, "where've you been hanging around".

Not a bad table number to end up at, eh? Now it's sure this tourn's gonna get me higher on the Chart.

This last game ain't worth losing many words about. Radek kills me with a pure bingo and even having both blanks doesn't help me catch up. I lose 404 – 316, helping him to 10^th place in the tourn results.

And me – where did I end up? 20^th. At least the first half, but considering the close loss against Ivo... but oh well. At least a slight leap on the Chart – to 59^th place of 243 active players. Now I have a trip to Prague to look forward to.

I join Jindra Voráčková and Jarda Buksa who both travel back to their Prague home, but soon I find out they take a train from a different Litoměřice train station than my ticket said. I said goodbye to them and asked a local train dispatcher for direction to the Litoměřice downtown station. It was just enough to follow the track. A twenty minutes' walk really did lead me there. I turned around the corner to get to the right track and – who do I see? Jindra Voráčková and Jarda Buksa just getting off the train I had seen them getting on – it just evidently having been an intertown one.

"I'm going to Prague too – can I join ya?" My tongue was itching to add an ironic "been a long time, eh?"

Both Jarda and Jindra, tournament veterans and frequent finalists, had the same number of wins as I did, the two ending up just slightly above me – Jindra 17^th, Jarda 18^th. As we sit down in a coupé, the two start sharing their impressions from the tourn.

"Ending up halfway through the ranking is a tragedy," Jarda sighs.

"Oh, please," Jindra lashes her hand with a common fed-up expression on her face (as always). "A tragedy is when you get beaten by Hradský only by 37, in spite of him having both blanks and all the big letters."

"So, you wanna get to the Championship?" Jarda changes the topic for a more optimistic one, turning to me.

"I'd love to," I don't add the obvious, like, if Radek Mannheim has managed, why couldn't I.

"I wish you the best of luck then. You will."

"Thanks." If such a scrabble ace as Jarda Buksa says that, it's not gonna be just some gossip.

I texted my cousin and let him know when I'd arrive. Then I tried hard to contact Dominika, hoping on being able to meet her – maybe not that day but at least on Sunday, the day after. To no avail – she didn't seem to be answering. Let's put the trying off till tomorrow...

As soon as I finished saying this in my mind, she called me she had forgotten about my current stay and that she was somewhere abroad at that time. I was glad to hear her at least. I found a pub near the station and texted my cousin Marty – I would've called but he just wouldn't seem to be reachable – that I was sitting at the Mona Lisa restaurant near the station. My cell phone battery was at the brink of going dead, so I figured I'd better turn it off to save the last bits of energy for the way home.

As I learned later on, my cousin – let's call him Martin – , on getting the text, was like "Mona Lisa?! Where the heck is that? And I thought I knew all the Praguean pubs!" He asked his girlfired – let's call her Tereza – for advice; she didn't know either so they had to find it on the map.

Now, having found it hadn't solved the prob yet. The restaurant was divided into two rooms, and duh, I was in the non-smoker one: but this non-smoker room was sort of inconspicously hidden around the corner so you didn't even actually see it on entering. So I found the waitress and asked her to watch out for a "tall fair-haired bearded freak" and would she send him to the non-smoker room, please.

I finished the coffee and the sacher cake I'd had when a known face aroused from behind the corner, accompanied by another, this time a female one. We said hello and shook hands, and I was made to finish my coffee quickly because we had "a lot of things left to do" (see, Prague is full of other pubs I haven't been to...). As I went to wash my hands I told the waitress there was no need to watch out for the freak anymore as he'd already come.

"You said fair-haired," the waitress explained why she hadn't notified me on his arrival.

"Well... been told his hair was to be considered a very very dirty sort of blond," I said, a main prob off my chest as the two had found me.

We spent the night chatting and drinking as usual, as we had shitloads to say to one another. Martin said among the lot of other things that he had been missing some contributions of mine on his online blog; I had had just one there then, not having time for any other for the time being, but none of us had an idea about how a contribution of mine would turn up practically by itself yet that very evening.

As the tradition goes, I brought a bottle of good wine along, but we agreed we'd rather have beer. We had a good time as always, but shooting the shit over beer has one big drawback to it: due to its positive effect on digestion you soon get hungry. So around midnight we took out a loaf of bread and commenced having what House MD would call a "midnight snack".

Martin brought a lump of butter from the fridge to put on the slices. It was still sort of tough when taken out to room temperature and hard to operate, especially for those not used to it. But soon I found my very own way how to get a satisfactory amount of the butter on the blade of the knife to be worth being considered spreading: to scratch it with the knife from the top.

The waz to the top of the lump wasn't always easy either though, so it was necessary that I change the position of the lump often. The result was a peculiar shape resembling a sag and Martin, looking at it, seemed to be fasctinated.

"Tom, how the hell did ya manage this?" he laughed.

"No idea," I grinned.

"Hey, this is nothing less than a work of art, bro! Lemme take a photo."

He really did, saved it as a computer file and –

-- whadya think – put it on his website.

"And I was grumblin' at ya that you didn't contribute, ha – ain't this a great contribution! It's gonna be called The Butter Relievo."

And yeah – look there. It's got its corner on the website... at panrano.webnode.cz .

 

... with the following commentary:

Máslová plastika (The Butter Relievo)

autor (author): Anglista (The English Scholar, a nick I present myself under in my blogs)

Martin had a long phone call with my mom and told her abut this one, too, making her laugh her ass off.

On Sunday I take the train home – only to be back on the road in three weeks, and hey, there's gonna be a blitz tourn in Prague! Is history gonna repeat itself? 

poslal scrabblista, 11.07.2010 2:55:00, Komentáře (0)

The Hradec Qualification Tournament 2010

Hradec Králové, CZ, Sat & Sun Jun 5th & 6th, 2010

Here I go hitting the road to a tourn again after a typical between-tourns three-week break. The Hradec tourn, the oldest Czech non-Prague one ever, is held for the 11th time and Zbyněk Burda as its organizer threatened this was for the last time. The not-so-eager tourn entrants who don't necessarily feel a need to go to many tourns to distant places said this was the only not-distant tournament they had always liked to go to because of its proximity and now there wasn't going to be any whatsoever, so it looked like there wasn't going to be any tourn for them to go to anymore.
As you might remember from the previous Hradec stories, the local tourns are traditionally two-day ones, so I tried contacting my aunt, hoping on having a chance to see her and maybe even be put up for the night by her. She, though, was suffering from health problems with her back, so I made the deal with my grandma.
I left home at six AM, having to go halfway through by bus as there were some reconstruction works in progress on the Trutnov – Hradec railroad route. When something like that happens, you can of course travel for the same price as you would have done by train and take advantage of the corresponding discounts.
Arriving at the Hradec station and turning around the corner according to the map I had drawn, I see two silhouettes in the distance in front of me. Superb, now I don't need the map anymore. I didn't even need to see into their faces to know who they are. Martin Daněk and Iveta Vondrátová, both engineers and top Czech scrabble tourn veterans. I didn't even know they dated each other.
"Perfect – no need to follow the map anymore," I say, greeting them.
We had a talk, of course not forgetting to complain about the scorcher to come the day after – not that that day the weather would have been particularly nice either. I remembered in vivid colors what such a scorcher contributed to some two years before.
We were the first to arrive, and soon – surprisingly, eh – there were all available Parnas players. One of the few currently present tourn players from afar, Martin Hrubý, sat on the chair to the piano and started playing. After awhile his place was taken by Martin Daněk.
"As of now it looks like a Parnas meeting accompanied by guest musicians," cracked Pavel Žibřid.
In a moment, though, our joking mood was to be sort of frozen.
"Two cars of players got stuck in traffic," Zbyněk said what he had just learned from a phone call he had. "They've only gotten out of Prague and got blocked in a traffic jam resulting from a car crash in its front."
"Oh well, but we just can't wait for too long," stated Dana. The players luckily managed to get in by 1.30 pm.
Expecting a cruel verdict in the form of a killer first-round opponent, I get a feeling like I'm being made fun of. Petr Kuča! Never gotten such a piece of cake for a first-round opp before. (Don't mistake him for his son Martin, last year's National Champ and a fivetupled National Championship silver medailist).
I've said that one before. Don't underestimate your opps or you're gonna pay dearly. He fought as best as he could, keeping neck and neck with me for a good deal of the game. For quite long time, there was a vulnerable triple-word square on the A8 square of the board, there being this animate noun JUST waiting for either of us to expand it by the possessive suffix -ova or -ovo or one of their cases and thus gain some good 45 points. The good news was that Petr, in favor of leveling up my score, has already used a blank while I still haven't mine. And yes you guessed it, I was just waiting for either an O or a V to come and make me able to get to this triple before he does.
And now there comes one. After playing the long-expected move, we have a laugh over the fact that this was what we both had been waiting for up till then. I collect my 45 points for the word which make the deciding gap between us. I win 319:333 disappointed I hadn't managed to win by more, but oh well. Still better to win by mere 14 against a loser than to throw two bingos, gather 433 points – and lose. That's what's just happened to Pavel Žibřid in his game against Břeťa Basta.
If I thought I'd get an opponent just a bit harder in the second round, I was mistaken. Ivo Hradský – ya sure remember my unexpected shattering win over him in Zlín in front of the popping eyes of Šárka's brother.
Well I don't think I could repeat it. But I'll try my best.
He soon throws a bingo against me, it apparently having come by itself. Lucky ass, eh? Just wait.
I work out some non-bingo fat moves and soon breath on his neck again. He desperately feels the bag. I shoot another high-point blow, opening a lane to a triple, there being a free space next to the X. I immediately reckoned, the only harm he can do there is a tripled bingo starting with a U (XU being good in Czech scrabble but not *xi as it is English one), and as all of the three U's have already been used, he would have to have ready a bingo starting with this U, or more exactly, with a blank substitited for the U. Which is what? Yeah, isn't it – very improblable.
So I play this good move, and –
what do you think follows now from Ivo's side?
Exactly – a tripled bingo starting with a blank for a U.
Now, still not losing hope, and taking out most of the last tiles left in the bag – whady'all think I get?
Yeah – the blank. Only now.
But hey – I guess I know what to do with it. I see a vulnerable triple which, with the help of the blank, would help me shrink the 60-point diff between us caused by Ivo's last bingo.
And yes-yes... he doesn'r block it and thus lets ome go for hnisů, the nominative case of the plural of the noun PUS – this pus leaks out in the form of 44 points for me and shrinks the diff between us to twenty-three points. I draw the last letter left in the bag. Hey – a M. Always comes in handy.
Ivo just automatically plays a move, knowing the game is already his. But in the meantime, I find the best place to put the M in – for no less than 19 points: not bad a move score to go out, eh? Adding Ivo's leftover, I finally don't lose by more than just 17 points – the game ending 352 – 369 in Ivo's favor.
"You played excellently, though," Ivo says to me after receiving my congratulation. "My hat off to you."
Such words from a champ of his kind sure warm the very cockles of my heart.
Further way up at table #1, Radek Mannheim just finished his game against Hana Lukáčová in which he got smashed by her 250:428.
"My lowest score over the last twenty years," he comments on that. A bit of a hyperbole, eh, since Czech version of scrabble hasn't been with us for more than 16 years and Radek himself ain't older than 27.
The third round doesn't give me an easier opponent. Michal Přikryl isn't higher on the chart than in the top 50 but still last year he ended up JUST closely below the dividing qualification line.
The game was equal. Well, to put it more exactly – equal up to a certain moment. It would've been equal all the way had he not gotten both blanks in the second half. Me getting shit for my part, I started to fall behind and finally lost 367:303.
25th of 49 in the continuous ranking... well, I don't like that very much. Guess my upcoming opponent's gonna catch it from me.
Filip Vojáček at table #19. Oh okay... someone "manageable": the son of Pavel Vojáček, the current Association pres. Oh well... I say manageable but he was the only one to beat me back last year at the Blitz Tourn where I gained the first place gold medal... be it only by four points. And besides, he has been getting dangerously better lately. Some even say he's better than his father nowadays.
Even at this tourn he had been doing surprisingly far better than Pavel. Awright – let's shake his self-esteem down.
Right in my fourth move, I shoved a nice bingo from what a renowned Czech linguist rightly called the treasure of the Czech language – diminutives. In Czech you're able to make a one-word diminutive of just about anything – be it a noun, a verb, an adjective, or an adverb. So I made one: tenoučce, with a blank for the T, the diminutive of tence, "thinly". Filip then began a string of low-point moves, indicating he was about to compose a bingo too. He finally made one – podržet, a blank for the ž, the infinitive of the verb "to hold". But needless to say, I was safely too far gone point-wise – AND, on top of that, I answered with another bingo of mine right away, a pure one this time. He challenged, and as I went to take a stroll to the comp with the dic installed to verify it, I noticed there being the word as left by the previous challenging opp pair. Yuck – did anyone challenge this obvious word? Were they kidding...!
I smashed Filip 448:281, moving to 22nd place of 49 in the continuous ranking. My joy didn't take too long, though, as right in the following round, I was given exactly the same severe dusting my Martin Vacek this time. Do y'all know those games which make you feel just about eveything plays against you? Yeah, so this was exactly what I felt in this one. Stumbling so-so over 200 towards the end of the game, I played a 50-pointer at the cost of opening a triple line, and said to myself, he's got the other blank, too (not to mention he had gotten the first one as well) – should he go out with a bingo, that'd just take the biscuit...!
And he did. Making me deduct all my leftover and adding it to his score, he wins 438:239, kicking me down to 31st place in the continuous ranking of the tourn. Phew. Hope the next round's gonna cheer me up a bit.
I was to play against Josef Nerodil, Jindřich Sikora's fellow beer drinker. It didn't start very well for me, as I challenged two Josef's words right in the beginning, they both turned out to be valid and I got two penalty crosses. So if I get a third whenever in the course of our game I'll have to pass a turn.
Luckily I didn't. No bingos being played, and no bingo-prone letter combinations turning up in my rack, I had to work some other plan. I saw this word lying right above the A8 triple. I could hook a word under it, creating some by-words, ending in a Ň which I'd put on the D8 double-letter. Ň being for six points, doubled and the word tripled, the value of the letter would actually get sixtupled. Such a good lot of points it even pays to use the blank. Substituting it for a Z, I played zkyň, a 2nd person singular imperative of the bookish verb zkynout, "to fluff" and although my pile of points wasn't made of dough, it fluffed as well. The sixtupled Ň helping me to 63 points, I finally beat Josef 363:281.
Jindřich Sikora came to him to check on how he did and to complain that he had lost too.
"I just offended the Tile God by overlooking a bingo," he grunted towards Josef. "I've been nothing but losing since then."
Jumping a bit to 25th place of 49 in the continuous ranking of the tourn, I asked for trouble in the form of Jindra Voráčková, a frequent Finals fighter and a scrabble tourn scene veteran.
Not letting the six rounds I had been through exhaust me, I fought her hard, deciding to kill her so I end up 4 – 3 in the wins favor for today's half of the tourn. She, though, soon plays a bingo, a tripled stahovák with a blank for the A, and escapes with her score. I challenge; it comes back good. "It's a kind of wrench," she informs me. "A puller." I noticed she could have made a kind of common bingo with the very same letters; she played this one on purpose to make me challenge and collect the penalty cross.
This made me seek for a bingo myself. I didn't have a blank, though, but still, my current rack looked bingo-prone. I kept thinking for the whole two minutes available for the move. And yeah. Using a letter on the board, I play a nice pure renovace, "renovation".
But if I thought emptying my rack and getting seven fresh letters would help me to a blank, I was mistaken. Who got the other one was her again and she made another bingo with it, optávalo, "it asked [a question]", with the other blank for the L. I immediately go after her with non-bingo fat moves, but I don't catch up anymore, although I don't lose by much in the end: 393:378.
"A good game after all," I say to Jindra.
"Yeah, a good one." Save the result eh? But oh well, against such a scrabble tourn scene veteran and a regular Finals participator of her kind a good defense anyway.

Moving down to 30th place of 49 in the continuous ranking of the tourn, I say see y'all to my Parnas friends as this is the end for today: the second half of the tourn begins tomorrow morning. At 8.30 – ugh.
I call my grandma and let her know I'd turn up in about an hour. She welcomed me warmly, saying she had a nice surprise for me. And indeed. You wouldn't put it past the uneager cook she was but this was hell delicious.
We spent the rest of the evening talking and the next morning I was splitting to the Jiráskovo square school canteen again to continue the tourn.
There's a (although one and only) nice aspect to this y'day's close 15-point loss of mine to Jindra: I get Petra Miartušová for my eighth and today's first morning opponent. A nice, pretty friend from the Parnas scrabble club who, in spite of being 1400-rated and thus not even in the top 100, shone at the last year's Prague tournament where she beat Filip Vojáček and me, only then beginning her losing streak.
"Don't worry, you have another sure win against me," she smiles.
"Well, not that sure. Remember how you smoked me back last year in Prague? And besides, you know I have a hard time playing against pretty women."
"Oh, thanks."
She's not the type just anyone would consider pretty. But what does a lot is the personal charisma, no?
Even the charisma, though, doesn't seem to help her. She gets both blanks but still loses 384:282, although no bingo was played in the game. Statistics are made after the eighth round and mine make me quite satistified – to have played 350 points on average in each of the rounds sure doesn't sound bad.
"How many?" I holler at Katka.
"Oh well, four."
"Don't worry – me too. We're playing each other the next round then."
"God forbid." It sounds nice if a former National Champ says God forbid when it comes to playing against you, eh?
Of course there were several other possibilities as to who was going to become my next opponent. But hey – the schedule of the ninth round is ready and on table #12 we really are to play against each other.
It wouldn't have been her if she hadn't tried a pure bingo right during the beginning – in the very second move. Luckily it sounded very improbable and I challenged it off the board. Say, neslizce – doesn't that sound at least weird? "Unslimily", as it would go in literal translation. Slizce, SLIMILY, would be perfectly OK, but "*unslimily"...? Heh.
After the game I went and checked another version I just thought of: slezince, a case of the noun slezinka, either "a little spleen" (i.e., a diminutive of spleen – the bodily organ) or also colloquially "a little meeting". My eyes popped – THIS one was all right...! Thank God she hadn't thought of it.
We had a nice equal fight decided by a tripled 94-point bingo of mine: navykáš, "you are getting used to", at the same time making the hook áron which is a kind of plant.
She was shocked. "Well hello... makes me want to go and check the áron!"
Feel free to. I'm 100% sure. Later on I learned it's a kind of plant, named after a character from the Bible.
"Holy moley," she shook her head returning from the comp. "And I thought it was árón, with an accented ó."
"Yeah, both are possible."
"Yuck. If I would've known that I'd long have blocked the spot."
"Duh. I guess so."
In spite of trying hard, she "doesn't catch up anymore" and I beat this 2003 National Champ 347:370.
Ouch. I sure wanted a good scalp at this tourn, but not one of a good friend...!
But at least I can say she lost not due to my luck but because of her own mistake. Or two, actually.
"Better luck in the upcoming rounds. Kill 'em," I say, wondering what a killer I'd get in the next round to play against. I managed to beat Katka: who's gonna take revenge for her?
To my utter surprise, it was the blacklisted hardly-1500-rated beer-bellied drunkard Jindřich Sikora. Apparently he's been doing good today.
I expected some ironical cuts being grumbled to me from his side as usual. But I was mistaken this time.
He shook my hand and then leaned towards me so close I could smell his beery breath. "Tom, could you do me a favor, just this once?"
"Of course," I say automatically without thinking. Love thy enemies, eh? It's gonna pay.
"I'm feeling a bit tired today," he says. Aha, tired, eh? I know what that means in your case – been drinkin'. "And so I'd like you – exceptionally – when announcing your move scores, to announce subtotals to me as well. Just for this once. Would that be okay with you?"
"Sure."
Of course I guess that had he played just any other opponent, he or she would have fucked him off with such a request. But I ain't like that – just like he'd anticipated.
"Thanks. I know you're a good boy."
In case Anglophone scrabble players aren't used to doing so – we here in CZ write "subtotals" after each move so the conclusions of the games don't take so much counting. So e.g. if you're in the middle of a game and have currently, say, 150 points, and make a 15-point move, you write the word on your score sheet, 15 points next to it as its point value and 165 in the column yet next to it as the current subtotal (which is how much 150+15 is), and so on.
It's a piece of common knowledge that drunkards are lucky. He drew both blanks and even in the state he was in (and I don't mean the Czech Republic, but the drunkenness, ha) he was able to compose a simple bingo. So if I thought that a pissed opponent was a beaten opponent in advance, I had to confess I was mistaken. He fought until the last move and kept me busy as best as he could, it being absolutely unsure until the very end who was gonna be the winner.
What am I gonna rely on? Exactly – my "infamous killer endgame". I seeked to be the first one to go out and cause Jindřich's leftover to make him lose.
The plan was a success. The game ended 347:339 in my favor, moving me up to 17th place of 49 in the continuous ranking. But now I'm gonna get a butcher for an opponent, eh?
Yeah. Martin Daněk, the every-year finalist I had met on my way to where the tourn was to take place. We shake hands – does an executioner ever shake hands with the one to be executed? Ha...
I have never once managed to beat him, although my loss to him back in Zlín was very close. This game is no exception. I don't let him intimidate me and even throw a tripled bingo for 86 points against him, but that doesn't stop him from smoking me 418:324. I tried another bingo in the game, a pure one, but it was challeged off the board. Before playing it I pass a turn. With the exception of the utter end of the game, a pass is always suspicious, eh? But now that the bag was almost empty, it was something he expected the least.
"Interesting," he commented my pass with a grin. He then unintentionally made a hook for me, but as I said, throwing the second bingo was no good anyway.
Six wins. After Martin, I hope to get an easier opponent at last.
In vain, again. Seeing how many times my eyes had already popped at the schedule in surprise, now they're almost about to fall down on the ground. I kind of always forgot to squeeze them back in. Not only I'm scheduled to stay at #6, but against... Pavel Žibřid...?!
What happened to our Parnas scrabble macho to end up having the same number of wins as me after eleven rounds? Well, regarding the fact that we're scheduled as high as #6, it can be interpreted the other way round and more optimistically – that I'm doing better than usual.
I didn't know yet, though, how this "doing better than usual" of mine was going to be verified right in this upcoming game.
Ya remember what Pavel said before our last game at a tourn? "At last a proper opponent for me." I'll try and confirm the opinion today.
Soon I felt the rack I currently have is kind of bingo-prone, but I just couldn't the heck think of any 7-letter word to make of it. AÍJKNOU – wouldn't it seduce you, too? The first word I thought of was *ukonají, but luckily I knew in advance it was invalid. Although there's úkon – "act", "operation", "transaction"  – , there's surprisingly no verb *ukonat to make of it. But I just can't the hell think of any other version.
At the third beep of the clock, I finally find one. Jíkanou – an accusative feminine passive of the verb jíkat, "to cheep" or "to shrill". The verb sounds okay, but the passive does so very funny – even to me, I must say – it even makes Pavel challenge. It comes back okay, but I don't enjoy my leading position for long as Pavel answers with a bingo of his right away (pokusíme with a blank for the E – 1st person plural future tense of "to attempt"). You think this was enough? Nope! When two bingo throwers like us meet, you can expect at least one more bingo trade.
And indeed. As we both race towards 400, I get my blank, play nezlitý ("not drenched with sweat"; "not pissed") using it for the N and enjoy my lead for a while while he composes a pure one of his own. When he plays it – zdrobnit, to diminute, for 76, he quite astonishes me but soon I'm neck and neck with him again. I'll keep ya busy for just as long as I can, man!
And I did, in the main until the very end. I lose 426:436. The second highest score of a losing player of the whole tourn. What did Zbyněk say? "I left the prizes for the by-contests at home." The second highest score of a losing player would sure have been one of them.
Marie Červinková, my 13th opponent, is a dangerous player as well but doesn't attend many tourns in the course of a year and so she's got quite a way left to go to the top yet (currently 81st on the Chart); being one of the top players at the scrabble site, though, still makes her a respected one. Moreover, she's currently pregnant so her attendance at tourns is likely to yet decrease. She's local, right from Hradec, and comes to the Parnas club meetings from time to time.
Not someone I'd be afraid of, and on hearing from Jirka about her top position at the scrabble site, I say "duh, but she plays the VOID version." Such people lose respect with me in advance.
I throw a pure bingo against her but she's after me in no time. There's a word over the H15 triple starting with a S.
"It's just a matter of time for someone to put SEX here for 39 points," she points at the spot.
"No sex – forget about it!" I grinned. She bursts out laughing, taking a look around the neighboring tables indicating they might have heard our conversation – as always when I think I talk in low voice.
"Well, I must say it is a most pleasant thing for me these days – just like for any pregnant woman."

I play a pure bingo for 77 points against her (obalená – the feminine passive adjective "wrapped") but soon have to gather Jirka was right: she still keeps me busy. I have still been catching up with her – until now. Now that she gets both blanks towards the end. Not that I'd see into her rack – but the tile bag being already empty and I not having seen a single blank in our game up till then, I was clear about it. Of course she went out first and won closely ... by ten points. 353:343 – a lame win, eh? Especially considering she started the game and got both blanks. As Zbyněk would say, "the moral winner of the game is me".
Again – if I thought I'd get an easier opp now, I was mistaken. Nobody else but ... Jana Vacková! Oh well, I guess my hope for eight wins and thus a wins-prevailing win-lose ratio (at least 8 – 7) is gone.
We, though, fight an equal fight. I get a blank, throw a bingo, she evens up the diff quickly and gets neck and neck with me again. Towards the end I feel my rack to be bingo-prone again. I throw off a few tactical moves hoping for a fitting letter to come. It just wouldn't seem to though. I kept tossing away the seventh unfitting letter practically until I drew the very last letter from the bag, while she evened up my score – and now it finally came. It didn't look "nice" at first sight at all – another V (I've already been having one for quite a time). Two V's at once sure don't stand for a double victory in the case of a scrabble rack.
But I did find a bingo now. A pure bingo to go out with – not bad, eh? A coronation indeed. Volíváni, an imperfective 1st person plrual masuline animate of "to elect", is a verb form hardly anyone but a scrabblist would ever think of, but now it's gonna save me.
Jana challenges. Duh – a move the invalidity of which would decide the game. But she was outta luck – the weird word of mine was okay. Yippeee.... I beat Jana Vacková! 371:301. Nice 70-point diff.
"I can see you're fighting a cold," I notice.
"A pneumonia," she utters. A calm answer concerning such a serious thing, eh? But hey – I remember my sis suffering once from this sickness and she couldn't even move out of bed.
I ran out of the building and called my mom. "Pneumonia ain't infectious, is it?"
Nobody caught it then from my sis so hopefully it's not.
7 – 7. The last round decides in favor of which the tourn ends with me – whether of my wins or of my losses. But in either case I'm gonna carry home some great scalps, be it the one of dear Katka Rusá or Jana Vacková.
I stay at table #14: which player is going to be the icing on the cake? Well, not that the tourn would have been a piece of one.
Jiří Kučka. Well, someone I actually wished to play against! I had promised him a revenge for a former win of his over me which then was by 5 points AND with the help of both blanks, so rather a matter of luck.
He starts the game and I immediately answer with a pure bingo. I'll show ya, man. I enjoy the lead – considering a heavy poisonous metal can be enjoyed – for exactly four rounds, until he gets a blank and counterbingos with kořistí, a genitive of PREY, for 80 points. Hey, but I ain't gonna be this prey. (Heh, that rhymed.) Not losing hope, I play several strong non-bingo moves and soon breath on his neck again. He gets the other blank, too, and composes another bingo, hvozdem, the instrumental case of GROVE, for 72. Even in this case I level it up with strong non-bingo moves again. Ha. I ain't gonna let ya intimidate me.
I touch the bottom of the bag.
Ugh – bite me!
Whadya think I draw? Yeah, the scum, the usual shit on the bottom. However, I fight it as best as I can even though I know I probably ain't gonna make it.
Not really. He goes out, adding my leftover which luckily does not contain the big bottom shit anymore, but big enough to make him win. 358:353. Phew – with both blanks by five points, JUST like in our game in Zlín! Fuck off, man!
"For shame!" I utter the only decent commentary the game deserves, shaking his hand. "Next time I'll kill ya. This kinda fuckin' luck ain't even worth congratulating."

I balance the tourn: seven wins, eight losses, but hey: one of the losses by two points, another by five, another by ten, yet another by ten, too, yet another by fifteen...! I could as well say I was just fucking out of luck. The unluckiest fellow of the tourn? That'd fit! My score of 426 from the 12th round becomes the second biggest score of a losing player of the tournament and because of them close losses I end up 20th of 42. Oh well, at least the first half, but the close losses just fucking suck...!
Jirka Kracík ended up 36th, Katka Rusá 18th, the results as usual being read from the "bitter end", as Carlene Carter would put it – that is, from the player who ended up as the dead last. Our Parnas club scrabble macho doc Pavel Žibřid finished fourth so he hasn't reached the "buck places" which were medal places at the same time. He won a bar of chocolate and seeing it was a milk one, he didn't look very happy (me having similar choc taste, I wouldn't have either).
"Next time gimme a dark one," he grins. For the foreign reader to enjoy what followed, I have to explain that the Czech tag for a dark choc would literally translate as "bitter": yeah, we call a dark chocolate a bitter chocolate here. So Pavel said he'd rather get a bar of bitter choc next time, whereupon the hardly-1400-rated bearded freak Viktor Hagenhofer hollered at him from the crowd:
"Ya bet it's gonna get bitter in yer mouth when I get to play against ya, man!"
We burst out laughing, taking it rather as a good joke from a player who sure doesn't stand up to him in any case (which is exactly what Viktor had meant it to be). The bronze edal was won by the charming young every-year finalist Hanka Lukáčová and the second by the scrabble veteran engineer Iveta Vondrátová. Now, who's the winner? Guess! He's one of the close winners over me. Yeah. Ivo Hradský. Just wait... history repeats itself, and even the Zlín one will!
A photo of the guy and the two women – all the three medailists – is taken, while just a split second before pushing the release of the camera, a player named Jan Kovařík cuts: "Let Ivo come closer to the lens – this way he looks like a rose amidst thorns...!"
Another outburst of laughter. Calling the bearded freak a rose and the two women thorns sounds the more absurd even if we know he meant it as a joke as well.

I called Honza, a local friend of mine. Thank God he's here – I've got someone to have a beer with and share my fresh experiences before catching my train and leaving for home. Then granny called me for a change, saying she'd love to meet me once more before I go. So we agreed we'd have a beer together all the three of us. A good crowning of the tourn after all – and hey, I'm gonna be right there at the following one in Litoměřice in two weeks!

poslal scrabblista, 28.06.2010 2:50:00, Komentáře (0)

The Zlín Qualification Tourn 2010

I was looking forward to this one. In spite of Zlín being some 300 kms away, I planned on taking a trip there and see my dearest friend Šárka who'd gladly put me up for the nights before nad after the tourn. So unlike in Kadaň – if I get a dusting this time, I don't care a hoot. It's gonna be a beautiful trip to a beautiful town to see a beautiful friend – hopefully not crowned by a beautiful kick in the ass.
Although I had made a deal with Šárka and her mom to meet at the Zlín-Louky train station in the evening, I decided to leave as early as by the 10.40 AM train, intending to take a two-hour break on the way in Olomouc where I appointed to meet two scrabble site buddies of mine, a mother and her 13-year-old son. They even invited me to have dinner with them, saying that they counted on me with it.
They had chicken and it was real delicious. We crowned the meeting by a couple of scrabble games: in spite of them being both rather low-rated players, I had the lowest score in the first game of the three of us.
"Whadya say, would we manage a rematch before I have to leave for the train?"
We did, and this time I won.
A friend of Jakub's mom appointed a meeting with her, and on asking where they would meet, she suggested the Olomouc train station.
"That's ideal." Then turning to me, she told me they would take me along in their car when going to pick up the friend.
Having thanked them for a good dinner and two good games, I asked the dispatcher which of the trains was going to Zlín, there being no signs indicating that.
"To Zlín? There's never been a train going to Zlín," he grinned. Like, what?! One of the biggest Czech towns – 11th biggest, to be exact, excluding Prague which is not to be considered a "town" – and you say no train goes there...?
"I mean there's no train on the route of which Zlín would be the terminal," he feigned to explain when getting enough of my surprised expression. "Trains go through Zlín and stop over in it, but never to Zlín."
I called Šárka's mom  – not to confirm I was going to be there at the time we had agreed on, but of course to tell her the train was going to be delayed. Like, what else would you expect from the Czech railroad company, eh? No wonder people like to nickname it in irony Času dost – Take Your Time, or Lots of Time [on your hands] according to its the company's initials ČD standing for České dráhy, Czech Railroads.

Walking through the car of the train, I saw a known face.
"Where are ya goin' to?" he sneers. He was Martin Hrubý, a scrabble player from Duchcov, West Bohemia, who always carries a tent along, preferring to spend nights for free in it rather than pay for a bed.
"To Zlín – what a surprise, eh?" I cracked, expecting a similar response. "And you?"
"To Vizovice," he triumphs me with a totally unexpected answer.
"Kiddin' me, eh?"
"Nope. Vizovice offers better conditions for setting up a tent."
"Oh, I see. Good luck." Which he's gonna need indeed – rain has been forecast for the night.
"Thanks. If I don't arrive at the tourn – you know I've been flooded."

I met Šárka's mom at the train stop on the outskirts of Zlín as agreed and she lead me to her home.
"Šárka's still got some seminar," she told me.
"Yeah – I know."
I counted on taking Šárka out for supper but her mom insisted that we stay in her place for it.
Sure something not to regret! Her supper was awesome. I brought her the unique Giant Mountain herb liqueur called Krakonošova bylinná (Krakonoš's Herb Liqueur, Krakonoš being the ghost of the Giant Mts. after whom they are called in Czech). The three of us drank it up together halfway through, spending time talking until it was time to go to bed. I'd have loved to stay up longer but I was going to have to get up at seven in the morning to get to the tourn in time. When going to sleep, I didn't know at all I was going to have a "mascot" along.

When my cell phone alarm went off at 7am, it was one of those few mornings I don't mind to get up early. Especially if the first thing I see is the smile of my dearest friend, and the reason of the early rise is a scrabble tourn. Šárka and her mom had breakfast and I had a hard time explaining I wasn't really hungry. The two are used to having breakfast right after getting up but I ain't the kind.
"Thank you very much, but I'm gonna have breakfast at the tourn – you don't need to worry," I said with a smile.
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah. Thanks again." One thing you can be sure as hell about – you can lose your pants at the tourn but you sure are gonna enjoy a lot of yummies.
Šárka couldn't accompany me to the church canteen where the tourn was held but her younger brother was eager to do so. I didn't know what impression I was going to make on him at the tourn.

When I first read the tourn announcement, I thought she was kidding. A tourn at a church? Like, will we be supposed to say a prayer at the beginning of each round, and is it gonna be cold as hell there like it always is at churches...?
I asked Šárka as soon as I had learnt that and she wrote me back, like, nope, it's a modern church, a silesian one, so don't worry about being cold. Moreover, it's more like a cultural center, so even non-believers find they way into it.
As I said, there was a sort of a "cube" attached right next to the church serving as a canteen and this is where the tourn was to be held. I signed the participation sheet and said to Šárka's brother, "I wonder who I'm gonna get for my first opponent."
Which I really am – it's always a surprise, although mostly not a nice one.
This time it was nice. Jirka Kracík. Come and get a dusting, old Parnas friend.
"Do you happen to have a scrap of paper to spare?" I asked Jirka. It's just like me – I had bought a brand new exercise book from that beautie at the copyshop next door solely for the purpose of recording tourn results, and then left it at home. He did. Thanks – I'm gonna defeat ya as a reward.

Dana rang a little bell to indicate the beginning of the round. "Saint Nicholas is coming, eh?" Jirka cracked. Just wait, bro, in awhile your joking mood's gonna be gone.
Right after the ringing of the bell all the players who were to begin the games simultaneously stuck their hands into the tile bags so it made the one big characteristic noise for the beginning of each round... we're drawing our first rack of seven.
Šárka's brother's name is Jirka as well, so to distinguish the two, I'll call him Jiří as Šárka does – Jiří being the "official" and Jirka the "diminutive/domestic" form of one and the same name.
Since the beginning, Jiří was strolling among all the tables, all eyes as he'd never been to such an event before. Which was a shame, cuz I shoved a pure bingo right in my third move. Jiří would have learned straightaway what a pure bingo looks like. But oh well – it's not my last one at this tourn.
Jirka commented my bingo with his usual "for Jesus's sake" and put it down in the notepad like he does all over-40-point moves.
What'd you think – only then did Jiří come back to go on watching. He just saw I was in the lead and that made him satisfied.
However, as he was watching, he saw Jirka getting neck and neck with me in no time and then ahead of me. The letter pool grew thinner and Jiří thought, Tom's gonna lose.
But that's because he didn't know me, let alone me as a scrabble player. I played two about thirty-fivers right before the end of the game, only to make Jirka lose because of the (substantial) leftover he had to deduct. The game ended 311:334 in my favor and Jiří's eyes popped.
"Well then, thanks a lot," said Jirka, shaking my hand: this sentence is sometimes used ironically in Czech when someone does something nasty to you, and this is exactly what he implied – he had this ironical tone in his voice; he mean't that of course. "Congrats," added he so it didn't sound so rough.

"Gaaawwwd awesome," Jiří was at a loss for words. "I really thought you were gonna lose."
"As one of my opponents once said – it's those killer endgames of yours," I sneered. "So this was it – an infamous killer endgame of mine."

Jiří and me walked upstairs to enjoy some refreshment. I made me a cup of well-deserved coffee and had some yummy cakes. Need to wrap my nerves, eh...

"... cuz there's one drawback to winning a game...," I tell Jiří, "You're gonna get a stronger opponent to play against in the next round."
"I see." I wouldn't put it past the little boy he is but he was interested in the details of the pairing system so I explained the basics of it to him as well as I could – not that I fully understand it myself of course, but just the basic principles. "What's your rating?"
"About 1650." I just hope I ain't gonna shove it down by a poor performance at this tourn – but if it goes on like it did in the first round... I sure ain't.
"And what's the top one?"
"About 2000." A "magic ceiling" the top players' ratings always oscillate around.

"Ohhhh nope."

As you might have guessed – I just saw the "verdict" or the pairing schedule of the second round.
"Who are you going to play against?" Jiří still showed lively interest.
"Ivo Hradský," I made a sour grin. "See that red-haired beardo over there?" I threw my head in a direction of where Ivo was standing. "That's him. A top-15 one. I ain't gonna beat that one."

But not that I'd lose confidence. I'll fight him as best as I can just like I do any other opponent.
And I did. After a few moves I threw in a bingo.
"Seventy," I say and whack the clock, and Jiří's eyes pop. He becomes totally absorbed in my game against Ivo which I had said I lost in advance. Ivo becomes desperate and begins with this unrecommended tactics totally untypical of the champ of his kind – he starts playing low-point moves while getting together a bingo, while I get further up and gone with my score so when he finally throws the bingo onboard there still remains a substantial gap between us. So he starts getting together another desperate one at the cost of another string of low-point moves. I just don't recognize the top player he is. He does manage to play this second bingo of his as well, but thanks to the low-point moves he had been making up till then I still stay safely away point-wise. No wonder then he "doesn't catch up any more" and I smash him 450:335, my sum remaining a top ten high score even after the 6th round. And I can't help noting – I didn't need but ONE single bingo.

Jiří had still been watching us with bated breath.
"Wow... awesome," he just fumbled for words. "I really hate to say so but Šárka's just called me for dinner. I gotta go. Bye..."
"Bye, enjoy it..." I later learn that if he could he'd have stayed for the whole tourn.

Third round: table #4. Haven't been this high since I don't know when ... I mean high in numbers, although high I haven't long been as well.
Yvetta Hlubinková, my upcoming opponent, hates playing against me. She says the game is lost in advance – at least someone who's got some respect.
"Attention please before you start," said Dana the IT manager out of the blue JUST before we stuck our hands in the bags. "I want to offer something to you..."
"Quality sex, eh..." cracks someone from the crowd and causes us including Dana to burst out laughing.
"Well, I'm sorry to say so but I'm afraid this is not what I got on my mind... heh... concerning the fall International Mind Sports Olympiad in Prague, we decided not to hold a tourn there as a part of it. It's going to be held elsewhere in Prague. There is going to be a tourn at the Olympiad, but probably not a qualification one."
Yvetta and I enjoy another of our equal fights she's so afraid of. She's expecting a bingo from my side but it kinda doesn't come. And I'm pretty aware of there being this free seven-field string leading to the upper right triple. So with the shit I have I go and block it. (The one and only thing you can do with shit, block, or constipate, I should say, ha...)
"... I'll kill ya," she grins. She probably had a bingo ready right there. Well, I guessed so... !
"Had a bingo there? Well, I thought so... that's why I went there."
Me, for my part, was striving to compose one in the meantime as well, and the combination being "bingo-prone", I just wouldn't let it go.
I did, in the end, but she was too far away. I then had another bingo but it was homeless so I didn't make up for the difference in her favor anymore, and lost 356:327.
Well, okay – at least we'll get a weaker opp now and a better chance of winning.
I did. Ladislav Čevela, a below-1400 player I had noticed was one of the last ones to apply for the tourn. A sure win in advance, I thought – well, it's about time to have another one, eh? Although nothing is sure in advance – not to speak of that being beaten of mine by the 1200-rated Eva Pařízková when a last-move bingo had come to her all by itself. Brrr. But that's a thing of the past.
Ladislav, on the other hand, was an easy prey.
This game being quickly over – well, just like about all my scrabble games, with this blitz tactics of mine – I go and join the crowd at table #18 where a strange theing was being watched happening – Zbyněk Burda losing a neck-and-neck fight against not-even-1400 rated Milan Svrček. Zbyněk lost by one point, but still we wondered how it was possible.
"Well, bad luck today. I've got one win so far – by one point against [1157-rated Josef] Černotík...!"
"Don't worry," he was told and comforted by our 1875-rated Parnas macho Pavel Žibřid who's currently as high as fourth on the Association chart. "The Little Shrew [Hana Filipová] just beat me ... to death with her tits!"
I had a hard time keeping myself from bursting out laughing. Hana's big breasts are a well-known thing in the Czech scrabble world, but I haven't heard anyone cracking about them so far.
"And y'all know what?" Pavel Žibřid wernt on cracking. "I don't give a shit about results from now on – gonna focus on the beauty of games."
At table #1, Aleš Horák was playing against Martin Sobala who won the Slovak Championship last year. When throwing an eye over the shoulder of one of them, I couldn't help chuckling: on the score sheets they both had written their fave football clubs next to their names. Aleš Horák – FC Arsenal vs. Martin Sobala – FC Baník Ostrava... something sport laymans like me will never understand. They ended up with awesome score ratio 390:412.
In the fifth round, I get the easy prey Ladislav 395:255, having thrown one bingo and getting both blanks on top of that......only to get 1818-rated Pavel Vojáček, the new scrabble association pres, for my seventh opp, who gets both blanks this time for his part and beats me 371:297 without me having any chance to catch up, in spite of no bingo being played. This pushes me down from 12th to 19th place in the continuous ranking. Gotta get back up.
If I thought I'd get someone easier, I was mistaken again. Věrka Majtánová, who's, again, an every-year Finals participator. She's such a nice woman and a co-addict on Facebook's Zynga Mafia Wars I always enjoy games against no matter whether I win or lose.
She doesn't wait long before throwing her first bingo, a pure one, but I play one of mine, also pure, right back. "Nice," we say almost unisono. A few moves later, these nice pure bingos are complemented by "lame" ones – negative verbs starting with ne- and aided by a blank. 2:2 bingo ratio – well, not bad! The only drawback is that before I composed mine, she got substantially ahead. And so although we had a great sum of scores – 819 – , I ended up losing 376:443.
25th of 48 in the continuous ranking, that doesn't sound much good. I was determined to win in the upcmoing round, but I felt something unpleasant in my bones. There was this beer-bellied drunkard Jindřich Sikora whom I'd long kept in my noplay list on the Czech scrabble site. And I just felt I was going to be made to play against him in the next round. He had the same number of wins and was just below me in the continous ranking of this tourn.
And I was right. I gotta beat him, I say to myself – be it only because he did me last time we played against each other at a tourn.
It was an exhausting fight I felt was to be broken through with a deciding blow. But if I thought the blow was represented by the bingo I had just played, I was mistaken. Jindřich was neck and neck with me in no time and I had to make up another way of making off.
And I did make one up. Four squares above the lower right corner triple, just where my bingo ended, I saw my opportunity. Let's play X on the double square – a tripled word with it could make me some 70 points. So I played exitu – the genitive case of the words exit or exitus – for 70 points, quickly went out in the next move and eked out a win by 13 points. 332:345.
"Congrats," grubled Jindřich, shaking my hands. Hearing congratulations from a web-noplayed player was a real music to my ears – a feeling of sheer satisfaction.
I gather I should share this funny medical experience with Pavel Žibřid. He being a doc, he'll have fun over it just like I have.
"Exitus saved me," I grin. "This word won me the game."
"Hah! It sure ain't much frequent that exitus saves someone." Sure not, it being the Latin medical term for death.
Moving up to 21st place of 48 in the continuous ranking of the tourn, I thought, just a little upper and I'll be satisfied.
Table #14 – Jiří Kučka, said the schedule. Oh God. Not a piece of cake at all. But at least one piece of good news – I've ended up higher than I was seeded in the beginning and that means a slight leap upwards on the Chart.
Doping me with the rest of my extra-dark chocolate and some candies available upstairs, I thought, I'll get ya. And I fought in the name of what I had just said. He had a feeling like in spite of being the ninth round, I don't even seem tired but a tiny bit. Me getting ahead, he used a blank to catch up with me, which pumped another dose of courage into me. If he had to use a blank, let's get away again, hope for a blank too and not give him any chance.
But what I had hoped for just didn't come. It was him who got the other blank, too, and composed a last-minute lame bingo with it (59 points – phew!). I sought to get rid of the last letters in my rack and I went out, but still, this wasn't enough for a victory. I lost 319:324, but against both blanks – ain't this still good.
Four wins of nine. No big deal, eh? But hey – regarding the fact that most wins of mine were close, I still end up 27th of 48, earn six qualification points and, as I said, leap a little on the Association chart. Hope to do even better in three weeks (or tomorrow as it's already June 4th when I'm finishing the story) in Hradec.
The tourn was won by last year's Slovak champion Martin Sobala who won eight of the nine games. Second was our Náchod doc and Parnas club scrabble macho Pavel Žibřid. Fourth place was gained by Markéta Gutmanová who came to the tourn in a high stage of pregnancy. It was her last tournament before "retiring" from the tournament scene for a maternity leave. But I bet that regarding her strong qualification position, she's likely to get back as soon as she's able to depart from her baby for at least a while...
When I get out of the church, I see something awesome. In front of the cultural center that the church is, a folklore event is taking place. I saw girls and boys dancing in the traditional Moravian folklore uniforms, which are beautiful by themselves, let alone if their wearers dance. I stood there watching until the end which, unfortunately, didn't take very long. In about five to ten minutes it was over. Otherwise I'd have called Šárka to come and watch with me, which she later said she'd have loved to.
The highest sum of scores of the tourn was attained by the beautiful Žaneta Leová versus Iveta Vondrátová – 857. Iveta won 416:441. Vít Sázavský had the biggest winner score – he piled dreadful 541 of them.
Šárka came to pick me up, suggesting that we take a walk around Zlín before coming to her home for dinner. We did, and despite getting tired and our feet hurting, we had a great time, as always when together. The history of Zlín architecture seemed very simple: just about everything was projected by Tomáš Baťa. I was shocked and grossed out to hear many people around the world think he was American.
We walked up a big hill, supposed there is any in Zlín, from which there was a nice view of the whole town. I learn the plot of the town is untypical – its shape looks like a narrow rectangle.
We crowned the "sightseeing" walk in a coffee room. I wished to invite her for coffee in return for the putting up, and she finally agreed, gathering she'd fancy one after all.
The room was nice and I didn't have the mind to leave yet. The waitress went by and asked whether we'd drink next – just in time.
"I'd fancy a shot of whiskey," I grinned. "What about you?"
"Well, I like whiskey," Šárka said with a sneer, quite taken aback: "But I thought you didn't drink."
"I shouldn't, but... one shot of whiskey keeps the doc away." No rhyme, eh? I don't give a hoot.
Coming home around 9 pm, we had an excellent supper, which we badly needed. We spent the rest of the evening chatting over the Giant Mountain liquor. We even managed to solve Šárka's brother's English homework at which even my eyes popped – I helped him translate it but didn't just get how the teacher can assign them such a difficult thing for homework.
Šárka asked if she could borrow my mp3 player – I wondered what she was going to do with it, and to my utter surprise she copied the songs it contained onto her HD drive. Among the copied ones I saw such ones as To Get Me to You by Lila McCann, or Bob Seger's Chances Are, his gorgeous duet with my idol Martina McBride. And speaking of Martina – her Anyway, too. I was like, those are songs you're surely not likely to know, so why copy them.
"Martina McBride... she's that favorite of yours, no? You got your email address at her website..."
"That's right."
"If you love her, she can't sing badly."
"Oh thanks... sure not. She's awesome. And what about this Lila McCann?"
"Her name's nice."
"Heh."
She didn't even omit copying Brina Vogelnik, a Slovenian folklore singer I had once asked her to get me while she was in Slovenia. So we had an arsenal of music for the whole night.
I'll never ever forget this night. Sitting on the bed with her in a warm embrace listening to Lila McCann was going to be a moment to be recalled frequently in times of loneliness. In the morning, I'm going to wake up to her smile again...
On Sunday the first thing I was about to find out was the departure of my train. I was intending to leave early to be able to stop over in Brno to see Katka, a friend of mine from the university times. I hadn't seen her for ages and so I arranged a meeting with her.
Šárka, though, was gonna do me a favor of giving me a lift to Brno in her car. She was going there too anyway and it was rainy, so waiting for the train somewhere on the outskirts of Zlín wouldn't sure have sounded much attractive.
As we were driving down the road to Brno, the rain was growing thicker. You were glad to be sitting dry in your dearest friend's car even if the smell of gas wasn't doing too much good to your stomach.
I accompanied Šárka to her Brno apartment and, giving her one last long (long-lasting, too) goodbye hug not giving a chit about the rain in which we were standing, I went to the nearest streetcar station to shelter myself from the rain. I called Katka to agree on a meeting spot. She said I'd best see her right at her home, let alone if I'm so near it. I was there in no time indeed...
I should explain now that the bond I felt toward Katka is ... ahm ... kind of ... special. I first met her at the university canteen some four years ago and started an introducing conversation with her for one single reason: be it caused by the power of her huge magical eyes or just the charisma she radiates, what I got right on looking into her eyes was a merciless hard-on. Such an intensive one it took me all strength I had then to finish my soup. She was the first one ever to make me feel that way and I just didn't know what I was supposed to think about that. I was clear about the fact that she was probably going to become my sexual goddess but I didn't have a clue about the way she was to learn that. Before she left for Belgium on a reasearch fellowship, I kind of lost control over my feelings, and threw my arms around her neck in a sad tight embrace, bursting out crying and covering her cheeks with a shower of kisses. During it she surely must have felt this *m*ucking hard-on of mine she was the reason of. But she kind of took it personally and dropped out of contact with me for about four years... after that she emailed me again. I sent her two university stories I wrote about her – concealing nothing in them – and she said they were ... quite surprising.
She now lives in an apartment with her brother who, apparently having been told what she causes in me, sympathetically left us alone in the apartment and made off.
"So .. do you still have... the problem?" she grinned sitting with me on the sofa over a cup of coffee.
"Yeah," I confessed. "I'm so very busy shutting myself down."
"You'd sure better do so," she said. "I'm the kind to ... even be able to slap you if you didn't."
At about a quarter to five PM it was time to say goodbye. "Can I ... venture an embrace?"
"Yeah, sure," she smiled. I even ventured a kiss on her cheek.
When I arrived at the Brno main train station, I was stopped by an elderly white-bearded man accompanied by a lady of about the same age.
"Do you speak English?"
They were quite at a loss about which train to get on. I said they could follow me as we were traveling by the same one. They were quite right the departure info was confusing – our train info didn't appear until jut a few minutes before its departure. They were lucky I knew the Brno train station pretty well so we could hurry to our platform without being afraid to get on a wrong one.

As I said in the beginning – a beautiful trip to a beautiful place to see a beautiful, dear friend and another one in the end. And no beautiful kick in the ass at the tourn – 27th place of 48 is no big deal but it ain't that bad. Six qualification points gained. Hope I'll do even better in three weeks in Hradec!

poslal scrabblista, 05.06.2010 1:08:00, Komentáře (0)

The Kadaň Qualification Tourn 2010

Kadaň, CZ, Sat Apr 24th 2010

300 kms to this beautiful but distant place – I just hope I ain't gonna go the distance for a kick in the ass.
Zbyněk Burda and Jirka Kracík are gonna go to Kadaň in Zbyněk's business car, so I decide to join them; this time, though, not for the way back. After the tourn, that is to say, I plan on taking the train to Prague to visit Dominika. As she said, she's depressed because of not having managed to finish her MA thesis in time, so I just gotta go comfort her and explain it's not a matter of life and death.
There's no morning train, though, which would be able to get me to Hradec (where I'm gonna be picked up by Zbyněk) before six AM. I told Zbyněk, and got a typical answer of his.
"That's too late, but oh well, the worst that can happen is that we'll miss the first round."
Judging from his grin, it was meant to be another of his cuts.
Hitting the sack around 9pm on Friday, I toss and turn for an hour or two anyway before I finally fall asleep, but I count on taking a nap on the train or in the car, so there's nothing to worry about.

The crazy mom of mine woke up with me, too, although I had told her she didn't need to worry. Dunno how the heck it comforts her, but she just had to see me leave. And thus make sure I haven't left my snack in the fridge, and things like that.

I've been making fun of Viktor Hagenhofer, the organizer of the tourn and a buddy of mine from the Czech scrabble site, that the tourn participants would mistake Kadaň for Kodaň, which is the Czech for Copenhagen, Denmark, and that they would end up arriving in this northern European metropolis instead.
"That way they wouldn't have much of an opportunity to play scrabble," he grinned.

In a backwater called Starkoč about halfway though the route to Hradec, I met Jirka Kracík, who had just changed trains for this one from the Náchod one. Starkoč, quite in spite of its size, has been made much of an important railroad junction.

As soon as I sat down in Zbyněk's car on the front-passenger seat, Jirka had shifted to the rear, me having no clue about how I was going to regret my choice soon.
"You're gonna be the navigator," uttered Zbyněk with another grin of his and throwed an automap after me.
"God forbid," I laugh. He couldn't have chosen a "better" one. If he only knew he's got to do with someone who once got lost during a night orienteering some fourteen years ago and became the wanted of the biggest police action in Western Bohemia up till then.

Didn't take long until we arrived at the first "trouble point", but I didn't even notice. Zbyněk just turned left and commented with a sneer, "...nobody's navigating me, so I gotta decide on my own..."
At the second trouble point I watched out, having the map ready on my lap.
"Which way?" wondered Zbyněk.
"To the left," I uttered, being 150% sure.
Believe it or not, I was right. Even in spite of all this bullshit that men don't know their way through maps. Soon we arrived at a gas station where we decided to have a rest for awhile, as Zbyněk calculated we should manage anyway.
We sat at an outside plastic table and had a coffee. Zbyněk touched the table with his finger, and showing how dusty it was, he cracked: "That's the volcano ash dust."
We couldn't help laughing our asses off. That's just like us Czechs – making fun of everything, tragedies not being an exception, and even if this Icelandic Eyafjallajökull volcano afflicted Czech Republic a bit too (not to speak of cancelled flights), sensitive people feeling it in the air, we just didn't take it too hard. Who did sure was the Parliament members who couldn't use planes to get them to work. Yeah – otherwise they do, believe it or not. Even though they could travel by train for free, they choose to pay some CZK 2000 (in fact "small money" from their point of view, eh?) for a plane flight, even if often just a few dozens of kilometers, thus exploitating the state budget a lot. Corruption and money wasting rules...

Entering Kadaň, we had to turn into a street covered with cobblestones.
"What the heck's this road we're going along?" grumbled Jirka Kracík, jumping up and down while sitting on the seat just like Zbyněk and me.
"That's a cutoff via a tankodrome," cut Zbyněk back with a grin.
We did manage on time. At about ten to nine AM we park the car and get in, rushing to sign the sheet. As this time we hadn't been in a position to pay the tourn fee by bank transfer, we had to stand in a long line of cash paying players. Having paid, we got a nice promo sticker of the tourn, serving as an evidence of the payment. Dana Kučová, our IT manager and the mother of last year's National Champ Martin Kuča, computed the first round opp pairs in the meantime, printed it out and stuck it on the entrance door. A moment I call "the verdict": who have I been sentenced to play against?
Markéta Gutmanová, it says on the schedule. The nice pretty pregnant blondie of top 20... no doubt I'm asking for trouble, but we've always had fun playing anyway.
"You still outnumber me, as I can see," I grin, hinting at her unborn one. This triggered a string of funny bits we kept delivering thoughout the game... well, I should say through the first half. About halfway through I composed a pure bingo. Not only a pure one, but... a tripled one. My heart starts pumping as I fix my mind on one target: don't let her thwart it.

She did.

Well, what else would you expect?

The most pissoffable thing about it being that she did so by a low-point move and rather out of emergency – to play at least something.

"You just saved your neck from a pure tripled bingo," I grin. She's such an amiable woman you just can't ever be angry with.
"Whew."
She, though, managed to play one, though not pure (novicích, the plural locative case of the noun novice, with a blank for the other C), and soon got a hundred points away from me.
Drawing the last letter from the bottom of the bag, I thought I would die.
"Guess what," I grinned at Markéta.

It's now only that I got the blank.

"Don't worry, not something I could make a last-minute bingo of," I assure her. Not really. The only benefit I get from the blank is that it'll allow me to go out first. At least something – I sure won't end up under 300 that way.
I didn't... I had 300 sharp. But against her 417... not by far enough, duh.
"Congrats... great game anyway," I say frankly. Save the thwarted bingo of mine, I was itching to add.
From this table #10 I had been seeded at I move lower, to table #24. Destined to play against another nice female opponent – this time Renata Volfová. A buddy – well, sis – of mine from the scrabble site, always putting me in good mood when playing against me there.
Some say everything depends on what attitude you take towards it – that predetermines whether the game will be a distaster or a piece of cake for you. We both looked forward to a good-time one and so we had it: we both played an 80-some bingo and ran neck and neck towards the score of 300. What decided the game in the end was the other blank, which went to me, too. I win 395:333 and gather it was the right time to get me some sweet reward.
And there's lots of it indeed. Loads of homemade candies including whipped cream ones, choc cakes and lots of other yummy stuff were ready for death sentence by shattering in our mouths. If this all was Viktor's gal's handwork, she's a true master of art.
"How many?" I holler at Katka Rusá who's sitting at pne of the tables with her head laid on her arms, apparently having a rest after an exhausting fight. She lifts her thumb, NOT, though, to indicate success but the number of wins.
"Me too – we could play against each other the next round."
"God forbid," she grins. How am I to interpret this, ha? Like, am I such a fearful opp even for the 2003 National Champ that she is? I rather think this is meant to be an ironical cut. "I've just convinced myself that good deeds rarely go unpunished," she unburdens to me. "I've just lost to [hardly 1300-rated] Jiřina Lehká. You know that she's hard of hearing; so when in the deciding part of the neck-and-neck game she kept thinking, the clock started beeping, announcing the end of her turn, she still sat there and kept thinking. Now, it seemed unfair to me just to say 'hey ma'am, sorry, you're outta luck, your turn has ended' cuz I just knew she hadn't heard the beep. So I waited until she played her move, and I lost closely because of that..."

The third round math sent me to play against the Brno Draagons buddy of mine Radek Mannheim. He managed to get into the Finals last year and finished 7th there which boosted his self-confidence but still, I don't perceive him as some particular threat.
"Hey bro," we shake hands, looking forward to a good game. Deciding to give him what he deserves, I compose a pure bingo soon and throw it onboard. Rozdalo  – "it dealt", e.g. cards – deals a good deal of optimism to me.
It was, though, meant to be a vain hope. After the bingo the Tile Fairy somehow changed sides. While I kept getting crap, Radek got a fairy tale of letters plus both blanks. I burned the game 341:287, getting down to 44th place of 60 in the continuous ranking but comforting myself that even the 2008 National Champ Martin Kuča, in the eyes of many of us the best scrabble player ever, is 37th as of now.
Moving to table #23, I got Michaela Marečková for my fourth opponent – someone I perceive as an easy one; indeed. She did try her best – she even played a bingo, while I didn't. Then she got the other blank, whereupon I gathered I hadn't gotten more than three blanks of the eight possible so far. It was one of the lowest blank scores of all up till this round. Despite all that, I beat her 368 – 273, but as I said, no particular reason to celebrate as this was rather a matter of course.

It's now that I'll get an opponent worth it. But hey, first there's dinner break!
On the Czech Scrabble Association site, Viktor, the organizer of the tourn, announced the dinner as "a surprise". The only thing for you to specify in your choice was whether you'd like the "vegetarian version of the surprise" or the "version for people". (Notice his authentic division of human beings into "vegetarians" and "people".) I had the latter and had to proclaim it real delicious, although some might say the "surprise" consisted in quite a common goulash. But hey, WHAT goulash! One would never dare say goulash, with a heap of beans on top, could be made into such a manna. Spicy as it was, we went outside, glad that a restaurant was a part of the cultural center where the tourn took place, with a desire for a cool drink to flush down the heat of the spice. I had a beer – a proved good source of inspiration. So did some top scrabblists such as Radim Hyršovský. Some had a cig and enjoyed a few minutes on the sunny side – with the hope of being in the sun after the tourn.
I wasn't even halfway through the beer when we were called back as the dinner break had ended.
If I had warned you I'd get an opponent worth it now for the fifth round, I was absolutely right. Jirka Kamín, an every-year Finals participator and a practically every-month winner of the Czech scrabble site league.
I, though, was determined to kill him. Beer being not only a source of B-vitamin and minerals but mainly of inspiration, I soon felt a bingo in the air, and made a few low-point tactical moves.
"Chasing a bingo – a road to hell," he mocks. Just wait. Unlike in my early tournament games, I now know when to "push" it, when to "play hardball". And this is exactly the case when it is gonna pay.
And indeed. I have a bingo ready – according to the Murphy's law skepticism I now expect Jiří to thwart it at the last minute.
He didn't ... miracles do come true. He, though, limited my choice a bit by his move – I had to fit my bingo in the space he determinated by it. Marnech...? Well, well... disputable. Marno doesn't take plural, I'd say. [And no, it doesn't; it's actually not even considered a noun.] But ... hey! After the third beep of the clock, I finally gripped the idea. Ranchem...! The instrumental case of the English loanword ranch; sure valid.
Jirka challenged; it came back good. As you can guess, we ran neck and neck towards the end from this moment on, Jirka, as an experienced every-year Finals participator, getting slowly but surely ahead. Now, the bag nearly empty, he being in the lead by about 40 and me having low-point letters, I gathered I probably wouldn't catch up with these.
But hey ... !
Having let myself get absorbed in the tiles, I suddenly saw a pure bingo in them, including one letter already on the board. Yes... yes! I shoved onboard kajmaním, the instrumental case of the adjective derived from the cayman.
Now, what do you think.
Exactly: as the tiles I drew now were the last ones in the bag, it was the worst crap available. Now that we race to get rid of the last letters, I surely won't be the one to do so first.

I wasn't.

I lost to Jiří 367:357 "thanks" to the letters I had to deduct. No doubt a success against such a top player, but – sucks anyway. Falling to 36th place of 60 in the continuous ranking, I found a comfort in many top players having a similar result so far. Jarda Buksa, having had two wins so far like me: 33rd; Lída Rusá, Katka's sister, 32nd; Věra Majtánová had had two wins so far too.
Now, guess who shone at the 1st place in the continuous ranking after this round. It was nobody else but Petr Burda, the chap my age confined to a wheelchair, who needed assistance while playing. Petra Kučová, the daughter of Dana the IT manager and the sister of Martin, last year's National Champ, went along with her family to the tourn just for the purpose of being Petr's assistant.
In the sixth round I was to play against someone I'd have expected the least: Eva Pařízková, hardly 1200-rated Praguean who comes to tourns just to have some fun and doesn't mind often ending up dead last.
"Ya remember our last tourn game?" she grinned. Of course I do, in vivid colors. "You played like two bingos against me and won so mucking closely."
"I actually played three bingos against ya then," I specified. "And won by one point. That was two years ago in Brno."
She kept the game bravely even, up to a point where I squeezed the shit out of a premium square and got substantially ahead. We both were clear about the fact that this was meant to be a sort of a "relax game" for me which I'd win anyway even in spite of her furious defense.
But then it came. After her long thinking at the end of the game, when I thought hey, what the heck has she been cookin' there for so long when the game's already been decided, she finally played –

-- a pure bingo to end the game.

"Pure luck," she confessed. I know. She plays a bingo in one game out of a hundred, and downright against me, eh?
"Ya bet." One of those moments a man's just got to grit his teeth and bear it. "Congrats."

This just takes the biscuit, I thought.

"I've lost to Eva Pařízková," I complain to Katka.
"Who's that?" she grins.
"Yeah – you can say that again," I grin back. "Exactly – who's that? Someone hardly 1300-rated. She just was so fucking lucky to get a pure bingo to end the game."
"Don't worry – chit happens. I've lost to Petr Kuča at this tourn... that's something similar."
"Did you...!?"
"Yeah... due to my own stupidity," she chuckles. "Right in the beginning, I had this easy-easy rack of AIKLNYZ..."
"Zanikly, eh..." I offer an obvious bingo straghtaway – they disappeared; they vanished.
"Duh! And I kept getting such stupid ideas as lazinky*, kalizny* ... in the end of the move I just played kyz for ten, whacked the clock and only then realized what I could have done. I thought I would die."
"You've obviously come to this tourn too sober." I hint at the fact that every time she came to a tourn right from a party night out, she ended up in the front places anyway..."

And – you sure wonder – what about our team league star Pepa Grosskopf, who shined at the team league weekend? He didn't have more than one win so far this time...
I go and stuff away at some of the great home-made stuff as I know it's good for my nerves. Yumm, hell this is good. These whipped-cream "pinwheels" are so delicious I don't mind at all being messed up with the cream all over. Whatever! Just gotta hurry to the bathroom to wash my hands and face of it.
Viktor was so smart (in both senses of the word) to "employ" his red-haired girlfriend in the tourn kitchen so it was plain to see the candies were her work of art. Not only was she extremely nice but on top of this such an artist...

So-so had I managed to return from the bathroom when the beginning of the seventh round was announced. I quickly threw an eye at the schedule and found my table.
Mirka Zaisová, my upcoming opponent, wasn't easy but was "manageable" and I had never once been beaten by her, so I hoped this game wouldn't be an exception.
Upset by my bad luck loss in the game before, I fought like hell, throwing a bingo no later than in my very second move. She, though, wasn't apparently going to give the game to me that easily, fighting back like a lioness. I had to squeeze the shit out of some bonus squares again to get me ahead, but she was after me like mad. Hey – let's get the heck away.
I did. I won 323:353, eking out a third win, though I knew I should sure have won by more. Wishing Mirka good luck in the last two games, I realize I should finish the extra-dark chocolate I had taken along. But hey – let's find out our last-but-one oponent first.

Ohh. Guess we'll really really need the choc. Zuzana Strnadová, the daughter of Jiřina, a Trutnov-resident scrabblist who actually originally brought me to Parnas. Zuzana then got married and moved to Southern Bohemia, got divorced but stayed in the south anyway. After the divorce she apparently returned to her maiden name, to which I hadn't gotten used yet and signed her as Stejskalová on the score sheet, so I had to correct that. On top of that, in her email adress login she uses another surname of hers, apparently after her father who had divorced her mother for a change, but which surname she says is as old as the hills.
And no I won't forget to mention her beauty. She's rather exactly my type so it's mainly me who claims her to be beautiful, but I'll stand up to that. But ugh, she's a smoker. Out of luck.
Last but one game of the tournament – well, whadya think. Yeah – it's now only that I start getting lucky tiles, nota bene unluckily against someone I got a soft spot for. I shove a bingo right on my second move – nezvoníc, the female present participle of not to ring, "not ringing"- with a blank for the O.
She just lifted her sweet eyes in a giving-in look, almost making me want to say "sorry honey, was just kiddin'" and take the move back. And when I got the other blank soon, too, my hands were itching to throw it back for the beauty to take advantage of. But I didn't – I remember thowing it back in against the half-Vietnamese beauty Žaneta Leová, more exactly throwing it in back three times and then getting it three times back, so it's probably more or less meant to be and wouldn't thus be worth doing so.
And so, getting "bingo-prone" letters to the blank, I started composing another bingo to make up for the luck I hadn't had in the previous games. And I really did; this time creating utvořila, "she created", with a blank for the I, but now really feeling the need to apologize for the good luck having finally arrived. "Yeah, and I am to bear the consequences, eh?"
I'm so sorry sweet honey ... scrabble is scrabble. And I ain't gone 300 kms just to get infatuated by a beautiful woman. For such something I could as well have stayed at home.
I defeat sweet Zuzana 411:307, wishing her good luck in the last round – not having a clue that's something I myself will badly need.
Four wins. If it's all for today – which I hope not -, it's the "smaller half"; nothing to write home about.
To let my (short though) hair down a bit before the last round, I go and have a look at the side-contest sheet: as the tradition goes, Viktor promised a prize to the author of the "funniest political bingo". There were already a good few, including one of mine – stínaly, "they beheaded [s.o.]". But what made me laugh my ass off was topánek, the Czech for a slipper. Wondering what the heck a slipper's got to do with politics? So was I, but just until I found a side-note: "that sounds almost like [the Czech ex-Prime Minister's name] Topolánek..."

Saving half the bar of extra-dark chocolate for the last round, I don't have a clue how badly I'll need it as well – just like the mentioned luck. I lift my head up to study the schedule for the last round, only to hear a familiar voice from behind – from table #13 where I was to play at. "Yeah, come on, bro..."

No doubt: the triple National Champ Milan Kuděj, Katka Rusá's uncle.
"Kiddin' me... you?" I didn't bother to conceal my surprise.
"Yeah... not doin' particularly good today."
"Neither am I."

Quite like against Radek, I soon play a bingo against him, this time with a blank, wanting to convince him that even in the last round I don't show any signs of tiredness. He doesn't seem to be getting close, so I race forward in euphoria; scalping a triple National Champ would be a crowning of the tourn for me in the truest sense of the word.
"Well now," he made a fatal grin towards the end of the game, "Here we are." Using the very last seven-square space on the board, he fitted a pure bingo in.
"Ouch. The last thing I'd expect right now," I had to confess.
"Me too...!" he laughed fiendishly, obviously not even having held out much hope for his plan to work out. I do my best to get close to his score, but I can't already eliminate all the difference, duh. The game still doesn't end up that bad – a mere 17-point diff, 343:360 in Milan's favor.
Thanks to the close losses to the aces Milan Kuděj and Jiří Kamín, I don't end up that bad – as high as the second best of the four-point players. 32nd of 60 tourn participants – which means I've come all the 300-km way for ONE qualification point for the Finals. Haha! But still better than none.
There was one new face to the scrabble tourn scene – Radka Hanusová, a pretty fortyish fairhaired lady who showed she's apparently not a complete newbie – she managed two wins and ended up last-but-two. Believe it or not – one of the two unlucky ones she beat was Pepa Grosskopf...! Apparently one of the ones to shine at a tourn and bomb out at the next.
Katka Rusá ended up 22nd with five wins, which for a player of her class is "too low"; I told her it might be that she had come to the tourn too sober.
The tourn was won by Zbyněk Burda (another tourn won after a long long time, he says); he was the better one of the two players to have eight wins. We went to congratulate him, whereupon Jirka started discussing details with him about the way back. I warned them before than I wasn't going back with them this time though – I planned to go by train to Prague instead and visit Dominika and then get put up for the night by my cousin Martin (even if I'd gone with Zbyněk to Hradec, that is to saz, we wouldn't have made it before the departure of the last Hradec train to Trutnov, so there was no use going with him). He, though, couldn't seem to be reachable by phone although we had made the deal long before that I'd come. Oh well. Let's call Dominika – she'll sure be able to recommend some cheap accommodation.
We appointed a downtown – well, "down-city"  – meeting, agreeing that we'd "discuss the remaining matters on spot".
"I haven't managed my diploma thesis in time," she unburdened to me while I was still at the tourn in Kadaň. "So count on having to spend hours comforting me when you come."
So happy to see her again, I gave her a hug, asking where I could invite her for a drink. We ended up in a nice restaurant taken care of by a nice Vietnamese-looking lady. As usual center of Prague we could hear English of the tourists all around and the restaurant just took the biscuit – what we heard there was nothing but English. It confused us so much so that we took it as a matter of course to order in English, too. Whereupon the waitress heard us exchanging some words with each other about what we'd have and said to us with a funny Asian accent that we could speak Czech to her. We had a beer and spent a beautiful evening together walking through the Prague downtown. Somehow I realized I should start looking for a place to spend the night in.
"Don't worry, I can put ya up," she threw a stone off my chest. She leads me to one of the prefabs, saying this was her mother's apartment. What I see just makes my jaw fall down: she just touches the lock with the key, it clicks and the door opens.
We spend a beautiful evening over a cup of white tea, by far not as terrible as I might have thought, having been warned I was likely to "have to pull her out of a depressed state of mind".
When I told so other Parnas members, presenting it as a reason why I wasn't going back with them in Zbyněk's car, they were like "oh yeah, I can sure imagine what the pulling out's gonna look like".

When I shagged off to bed after the "session" of ours, I remembered the words of my dad: "What a macho he must have been – the one who invented beer and bed." After almost 22 hours straight up I sure had to acknowledge he was right.

I didn't plan the time of leaving – it would have been useless. In the morning Dominika said she had to get back home and to bed "so it looks like she hasn't been anywhere". Her parents are used to getting up late at weekends so she said we had time until noon, and we managed. We got on one and the same streetcar, and while she got off two stops later, I continued to the main train station.
I didn't even have to wait. The earliest available train after the time of my arrival was due in five minutes – just about enough to find the right platform and get on. I won't manage to buy the ticket beforehand that way but oh well, I'll buy it from the conductor.
Walking along the coupés to find the emptiest available one, I suddenly saw a known face in one of them. He saw me too and gave me a grin meaning hey, come in.
"Hey ol' boy, what the heck are ya doin' here?"
"Was just gonna ask ya the same question."
He was an old friend of mine from the grammar school times; we haven't seen each other for months since the moment we had met by chance in a restaurant where my classmates held a meeting.

"Hell, such a great meeting – something worth flushing down!" and searching his bag, he elicited a bottle of good red wine and then passed it to his friend who passed it to me after that.
"Hell, this one's good," I uttered after I had a gulp. The bottle was empty in no time whereupon Pavel pulled out another bottle from the backpack, this time of brandy. I refused this time – mixing various kinds of booze is dangerous, duh.
While the two took care of the brandy and started talking trash, I put the headphones on and pulled out what was left of my snack. Sure something I'd enjoy under normal circumstances, but – sure not when Tarja Turunen starts singing a song called Poison...! Ha. (And how I love that song. But there obviously are moments when playing it becomes most impertinent as I can see).

In spite of the one and only qualification point I brought, it was a great trip anyway – hope I'll do better on May 15th in Zlín. Cheers!

poslal scrabblista, 11.05.2010 1:34:00, Komentáře (0)

The Scrabble Team League Weekend 2010

7th March is my nameday. Hopefully I ain't gonna get a kick in the ass at the tourn for a present.
I had made a deal with my cousin again to stay overnight, but he had to cancel the promise as he found out he'd have to leave for Hradec the very weekend. So I contacted my dear friend Dominika who said I could stay overnight in her place.
The team league weekend was meant to join together the 2nd and 3rd part of the team league 2010. Which sure had an advantage for many of us, consisting in "not having to worry about coming one more time" but, on the other hand, if someone was going to be persecuted by bad luck, it was plausible the prosecution would go on on Sunday too.
My dear friend Katka Rusá was so nice that she drew and emailed me a map of the way from the main station to the Tyrš House. I took it along. Pavel Vojáček, the newly elected Association pres, was so wise as to set the beginning of the Saturday league as late as noon, so I could take the 6.40 AM train and not the terrible 4.37 one. He reckoned it wouldn't matter if the 2nd team league would end as late as 8pm as all its participants would have to stay in Prague until Sunday anyway.
In the train coupé I entered I met a girl I once was unrequitedly in love with and wrote a lot of love poems for in vain. She was sitting there with her sister who I also knew and I must say the latter turned into a much more beautiful woman since I last saw her some seven years ago – even more beautiful than the sibling of hers I had lost such a lot of love words to. I wondered what the heck they were doing in an early Saturday morning train; they said they were going to take SCIO tests. God forbid ...
As we parted at the Hradec station, they changing trains for the Brno one and me continuing by the same one to Prague, I didn't know what a disaster awaited me in a few minutes.
Inside came a lady with a whole lot of little children. "Free seats here, please?"
"Of course."
"Come here, y'all... one, two, three, four, five, six... seven." All the seven little ones packed up on the two seats, including the lady.
As little children, of course, just aren't able to sit stiff for long, the lady, whom they called "aunt", had to think up various activities.
"Let's play Incognito," someone suggests. In Czech called Kdo jsem? – literally Who am I?  – the notorious question-answer game of people guessing the identity of a famous personality on the basis of posing yes-no questions and collecting facts from the answers. The version for little children does not concern famous people of course as they might not know that many – they can make a deal about the topic; this group chose animals.
"And will the gentleman play too, aunt?" asked one of the children.
"I don't know – you have to ask him." I realized that by the gentleman they meant me.
"Why not," I grinned, not wanting to destroy their joy, and my vision of a peaceful train journey was gone.
But not that I didn't enjoy it. It's a kind of welcome change to the stereotype after all. I got this good memory for names, so I soon remembered most of the children by them. This is Nikol; the only boy in the group is called Tom; the beautiful nut-brown girl's name is Barbie. Why are all Barbies so gorgeous? Not to speak of those dolls.
The only disadvantage of me playing was, of course, that just a few hints was enough for me to know the answers right away. The "aunt" thus asked me to keep them for myself to give the children a chance to guess, which I did.
We guessed the anteater; the stork; the parrot; and a few others when the children's attention became quite distracted. Children from other coupés came "to see" us and some of them stayed for the rest of the way, jamming their butts among the others on one of the seats. The "aunt" soon saw it was necessary to come up with another game to keep them seated and amused.
"Let's play telephone!" one of the children suggests. Another well-known children's group game, also called Chinese whispers – the Czech name for it being tichá pošta which would literally translate as "silent mail" – was, for a change, designed to train children's ability of hearing. You know that – it's a notorious one: one whispers something to the one on his/her left, this one passes what (s)he heard them whispering on to the one on their left, and so on it goes until the message reaches the last one in the row, who is supposed to say what (s)he heard aloud. It is often something completely different from what it was meant to be in the beginning, which causes great fun. For instance, I sent "Niagara falls" which resulted in "a pig is watching TV"; the "aunt" though said that with her it still was the Niagara falls, she being someplace midway through the "telephone wire".

Shortly after 10am, we arrived at the main Prague train station.
"Thank you for bearing with us," the aunt grinned.
"No prob. My pleasure," I smiled, packing my things and getting off the train.

Over the map, I called my mom to let her know I had arrived alright and told her about what I'd been through.
"You said they all called her aunt?"
"Yeah."
"Jeez. They were from a children's home then. You'd better check all your things. I suppose a lot of them were gypsies?"
"Nope," I grinned into the phone. Just the beautiful Barbie, eh? And I didn't miss anything, as I had all my money half to half in the fanny pack wallet and in my pocket I had kept my hands on all the way, so I could be sure as hell no one had touched it.

I figured out the route before me was about two miles long. Alright – we got lots of time on our hands, I said to myself. I ain't gonna pay an arm and a leg for a streetcar ticket.
Despite all expectations, I even recalled having gone through some of the places before, which made the way a whole lot easier.
In front of the Tyrš House where the tourn was supposed to take place I met Pepa Grosskopf that came to fight for the Parnas team as a substitute for Pavel Žibřid who, as a doc, was on duty then.
We arrived at about 11.10am – more than forty-five minutes left for my rest after the "hiking expedition". The atmosphere of the upcoming tourn, though, didn't let me keep seated for long. I helped bring (from Pavel Vojáček's car, which took running down and up again the stars with several huge cardboard boxes packed with scrabble items) and hand out scrabble boards onto each table, along with two racks and a bag of tiles per table. After assigning a number to each table, printed on the good ole carton pyramids, it was also necessary to set up the chairs, they all being stacked in rows along the walls.
Making me the deserved cups of tea and coffee, I saw Jirka Kracík coming, and Zbyněk Burda shortly after him. "Typical – coming when the work's all done, ha?" I sneered.
Among the over fifty people gradually arriving, I saw Jarda Kodym the old Grim Reaper. What the heck is he doing here? Hadn't he said before that he'd never ever again play the team league?? Someone's apparently prevailed him, needing a substitute member for their team just like we did.

"Here we go! Table #1: Poškoláci – Túzy!" hollered Pavel Vojáček, meaning the tables 1 to 4 are going to be occupied by the two mentioned teams, Poškoláci or The Detainees and Túzy a múzy or Deuces and Muses, and putting down the player pairing schedules on the tables. "...Table #17: Nerobité – Parnas!"

Well okay – a kinda tough warming up against a team boasting such aces as Radim Hyršovský, Lída Rusá or Břeťa Basta...
I chose Břeťa for my opp. No doubt he's tough and he always ends up in the finals, but I'd managed to beat him a few times and even when not, we'd always had great games.
This one was the more interesting as neither of us played a bingo. But even a non-bingo game turns into an intellectual fight when in charge of two top-35 players that we are (in Břeťa's case even top 13).
Many elderly players wonder how the heck it is possible that nearly all the tip of the top (the Grim Reaper being the exception to the rule) is made up of young people. Don't life experience and acquired knowledge count the most?
Well, apparently that's not the alpha or the omega of it. Strategy, vocab, staying alert to discover the opp's mistakes ... not necessary to name for y'all all the important factors. Squeezing the shit out of all these, we battled one of those blitz games of ours, both of us being fast players. Like we'd made a silent deal that "anyone whose move takes over ten seconds is a wimp".
Until the utter end. Drawing slowly – oh well, fast, I should say – to the conclusion, we thought our moves over more. We were still neck and neck, Břeťa in a slight lead. If I wanna win – which I sure do, ya bet – this could work: get rid of the most valuable letter first and the low-value ones would go together all at once. This way I could go out in two moves and win thanks to his leftover.
The only thing I gotta hope for is that he isn't plannning to do the very same thing, and if he is, that I still manage to do so faster than him.
I did. Yes... yes!!! Against this top-15 guy. 345:331.
"Congrats," he shakes my hand, signing the score sheet.

If I only knew this was going to be the one and only huge success of mine in the whole two upcoming team leagues. I wouldn't have rejoiced that much.
And how did the other Parnas boys do?
Zbyněk Burda lost to Lída Rusá (Katka's sister) 381:316. Pepa Grosskopf lost to Pepa Nerodil 325:358 ("I don't care... I'm just a victim," he says. If he only knew what was going to come....). Ouch... so the highest result we can have in this round now is a tie.
Jirka Kracík was just finishing his game against Radim Hyršovský. With regards to my win, everything now depended on him – whether the round would be a tie or a loss for our team.
We crowded around his table to watch his last moves.
"Going out," Jirka said finally. Chances were Radim's leftover was going to help him win... well, we hope so!
As Jirka was finally signing the sheets, we couldn't help looking over his shoulder.
Whewwww. Could you believe it – 339:340...! We gained the small tie by one point.

Second round – this time against Záškodníci, The Saboteurs. Who chose to play against me was Barbora Hrůzová. Heh, come on for a dusting, gal. Had she known who I'd beaten before her. She'd probably have thought it over.
She, though, kept me busy. Quite like a saboteur, she kept destroying my point plans, and I had to make up new ones at the cost of low-point tactical moves.
But the bingo I was cooking just the heck wouldn't work.
She was neck and neck with me in no time, but, busy with making up the bingo, I let her go, sure as hell that I'd manage and catch up on her soon.
Reminded me of my early tourn games – the big difference being that back then that my effort at bingos used to be as desperate as to make me pass even halfway through a game to finally manage one. Not now. This time I was sure I'd deliver one.
And yes I do mean deliver in the sense of giving birth – Czech women like the metaphor and use it often for a similar toil. (Typical example: mom was telling me about her boss, a stupid ass of real rare kind: "He locked himself in his office and literally delivered a newspaper article there. We could hear him sighing and suspiring exactly as if he was really giving birth to it...")
After throwing off another letter on the board in a low-point move, I got something I expected the least. After moves and moves of six bingo-making letters (a blank among them) plus a seventh shit, and after countless-th throwing off the shit, I drew – guess what?
Yeah – the other blank.
"And I thought all the way that you had it," I grinned at Barbora, by it meaning the blank, which she could tell – now I could tell her fearlessly, as now I would deliver the bingo at last.
I did.
Having gone out shortly, I won by seven points – 359:366 – apologizing for this "lame victory".
"Lame or not, it counts," she says. A cold hard fact. Barbora's surname means "fear" – sure something I didn't feel.
Zbyněk Burda lost to Eva Baďurová 297:307 – quite surprisingly, but she has taken quite a few top players by surprise already, the surprise consisting in beating them. As Jirka Kracík beat Markéta Gutmanová, Pepa Grosskopf was the one whose game would decide whether the round would be a tie or a win for our team. He was playing against 1687-rated Radek Baďura, again having said he didn't care he cuz he just was a victim.
And hey – looks like he was gonna win again! Pepa's shining day, eh? He took Radek out 257:405.
3:1. Good – first victory for us today.

Third round and we stand – well, sit – against Brněnští draci, the Brno Dragons, the renamed team of the used-to-be Kómáci, The Gadgeteers. I liked their old name far better but I got a feeling they might have started to dislike it for the other meaning it implies – "coma people"... someone might have made fun of it, like, you're all playing as if in a coma.

Whatever the reason, we're now facing these Brno people as we would the same old faces. Who chose me was, as always, the good ole scrabble buddy of mine Radek Mannheim.
How else could it proceed but as a good, thrilling, neck and neck game. His confidence rose mainly since he managed to get into the Finals last year and shone there, ending 7th. But that doesn't make me afraid of him – quite the contrary!
"Hey Bro," we shook hands with a grin. We knew another good-time fight was ahead of us. What we didn't know, though, was the ridiculous endgame which was going to come out in some twenty minutes. He played two words I was not sure about and for which I got two penalty crosses as they came out good when challenged.
The neck and neck game kept us thrilled until Radek played a bingo. Well now, a catch-22, eh? If I challenged and it came back good, I'd get a third cross and would have to pass a turn, which would most probably decide the game in Radek's favor.
More exactly, there was nothing doubtable about the bingo as such, but about the hook he made.
"Well... I'll trust ya," I let a sneer, and slowly came to terms with not winning this one. The game status of ours being 389:312 in Radek's favor, I congratulate him and go check the hook he made to hang his bingo on.
Well, whadya think. Invalid. Of course. I felt like shooting myself in the head.
Checking up on the score of other Parnas players, I find I am the only one to have lost in this round, so our win is not threatened by it. Whew. Three wins so four points for our team. Yippee!

"You're the only one of us to have lost in this round," Jirka tells me grinning with the typical scrabble geek tone in his voice. "For shame!"

I kinda feel the whole team league ain't gonna be a shit today.

Fourth round – against Sklípkani, the Trap-Door Spiders. I took another scrabble buddy of mine for my opp, Marián Viochna, a fresh father of little twins, from that beautiful tiny town of Bystřice nad Olší where I spent marvelous time with Šárka in that boarding house. Sure not someone I'd love to win against thanks to getting both blanks and a bingo made with their aid ... like I did (401:309). But oh well – every win counts, and you've got to be glad for it whatever lame it is especially at a team league tourn. Jirka Kracík won over the top-32 player Aleš Horák by 60 points, and Zbyněk Burda did over the finals fighter Martin Kapler (top-22) by 8 points; so we won again. Pepa fought bravely against Ivo Hradský, too – lost by mere 17 points.
Well now, the fun is over. Awaiting us are Střelené kachny, or The Meshugga Ducks – among them the beautiful Žaneta, or the 2004 Champ Michal Sikora, or the 2002 one Martin Sobala who also won the Slovak Championship last year.
Who chose me was the latest mentioned. I play against him at the scrabble site from time to time and ahave managed to get him a few times, but I don't think I could now, at a tourn. He's a bingo thrower, just like I am, but a far bigger one, both creative and lucky as hell – yeah, he's the one to have played 30 bingos at the 15-round Hradec tourn last year.
Well, I remember a tourn at which Jirka Kracík boasted with beating him, so why couldn't I, for this once?
Almost looked like a good time game to be. I made fun of him trying to get away with Slovak words – just for kicks; I just commented them with "I suppose you wouldn't buy this one, ha?", took them back before whacking the clock and played a Czech one.
But just up till a certain moment.
Yeah – the one he started shoving those bingos. The first one was counterblown – I played one of mine right away, also pure, which took him aback.
"Yeah – I know you're a bingoist," he grinned.
Yeah, and didn't take me long till I played another pure one of mine. This time, though, the time over which I composed it, he got substantially ahead, so even the second bingo of mine didn't threat him.
"No way I could catch up anymore," I response in Zbyněk's way. I didn't, but still, against a player of his class, a National Champ and a Slovak National Champ in one, a result I can be satisfied with – just slightly over 40-point difference. 348:389.
Pepa Grosskopf, who had just finished another of his victorious scalps (against Tereza Matějková – 290:323), went around to check how we did, and seeing that, he made a long face: he was the only one to win in this round and so he found his victory "completely fucking useless". The half-Vietnamese beauty Žaneta Leová won over Jirka Kracík (haha, like, hadn't he talked smart ass the day before when I lost to her?) and Zbyněk Burda lost to the 2004 National Champ, sinologist Michal Sikora – though only by 20, so his close loss was most pissoffable this time.

If I thought the next round was an opportunity for a rest, I was badly mistaken. Who awaited us was no other team but the winner of last year's league, Poškoláci or The Detainees. Who chose to play against me was the triple National Champ, Katka Rusá's uncle Milan Kuděj. I've already beaten him once at a tourn and a few times at the scrabble site, so why not again?
And I let him feel this intention of mine. He has to acknowledge a game against me is not a piece of cake at all. We race forward, me getting a blank and throwing a bingo soon, he getting the other and throwing his shortly after. As we both get over 350, we can't but comment this is a great game. Still close, we reach the bottom of the bag; Milan still unsure about the result – but me, in my heart, I already know. The shit I've just drawn can't be gotten rid of any other way but one by one – so he's sure gonna go out before me.
And he did. But still – ain't a 384:403 loss against a triple National Champ good anyway. The most important thing again, though, is how we've done in this round together as a team.
We were one of the last opp pairs to finish, so my team mates gesticulated at me wanting to know how it goes. I frowned and shook my head.
"Okay – a tie then," I heard Jirka say. "We gotta wait for the point diff – to know whether it's gonna be a big tie or a small one."
Whew, then. I lost just by 19. Zbyněk, though, lost to Věra Majtánová 442:370, so by 72. Thanks to my quite close loss it's still going to be a big tie, though – thus for two points. 1530:1490.
The ties between teams were the only thing not to be computed. The individual duel results were written by hand onto a special sheet of paper in guard of Jiří Kamín, and the team results then calculated.
Seventh and last-but-one round for today. As a team we're bombing out, and personally, I'm 3 – 3. No big deal indeed. Two more games ahead of us – this time against the teams Ýáčci and Túzy a múzy, respectively. From Ýáčci I decide to take on Milena Filipová – Stará saň or the Old Shrew.
"You chose me, right?" she grins. I knew it was apparent.

We had a great game, as always. If the team league day is one of a crisis from the point of view of competition, at least I'll live it up.
Another of the games I thank God for the fragrance and deodorant I had taken along, for during such hard fights you sure sweat like a pig. Racing ahead neck and neck with her, I throw a bingo and hope for the tables to finally turn.
They did. But in her favor. No sooner than so before the last letter from the bag was drawn she threw a bingo in return. We both made a sour face at it, disbelieving, saying almost unisono, "well, well".
"I guess I'll challenge," I laughed, saying that in a tone like it was the last thing to do about this dubious-at-first-sight bingo.
"Will you...!" she acted surprise in the very same way, having gotten my irony.

Holy shit – holy moley, could y'all believe it came back valid...?! Took both me and her by surprise. Seems like even the dic(k) is playing against me today too.
Thanks to this impossible bingo of hers, I "couldn't catch up anymore" and had to come to terms with the upcoming loss of mine, hoping the other team members did better.
oOops!
"We got our asses kicked. Oh – four..."

Indeed. We all lost in this round and gave the Ýáčci team four points and a reason to celebrate.

If I thought the last today's round would be a plaster on the aches...

... I was badly mistaken again. I was going the biggest kick in the ass ever. Even my opponent, Pavel Chaloupka, had to admit he had been so fucking lucky. Getting both blanks and a fairy tale of letters, bingos keeping coming to him by themselves, he whacked me 228:463. Uggghhh. No mind to lose any further words about it any more.
Zbyněk Burda lost to Vít Sázavský 362:327, whereas Jirka Kracík won over Marek Lašťovka 432:366. All depended on our substitute "victim" Pepa Grosskopf, playing against Petr Landa (6th on the Chart...), whether he would try and save us a point for a small tie.
We couldn't help but go take a look over his shoulder. There was no need to do so, though, as – as you might already have guessed – their game status was already plain to see, or more exactly plain to hear, from Petr Landa's usual moaning. You know that one by heart, eh? 'All this is a farce... I wish I'd fucked going here...'
Indeed. Pepa beat Petr Landa 396:351, leaving him grumbling as always what a farce all this is, and that a few more of such farces and no one's ever gonna see him at a tourn again.
Well then – one point for a small tie then. Me personally I was 3 – 5, no big deal at all at all, but what comforted me was Zbyněk's results which were 2 – 6, so I didn't end up the worst of us... Jirka and Pepa both shone, ending up 6 – 2 and 5 – 3, respectively. I didn't end up that bad as a whole, 33rd of 53, but at a team league this is not what it's about as you know. What counts is the position of the team as a whole, and we've just worsened our current one. No more of that 4th place of 13 for our team that we'd held up till then. The only thing that's left is to have a beer together at a nearby pub to "flush down the sorrow" and hope for better tomorrow at the 3rd part of the team league.
We walked together a mile, all Parnas members with Zbyněk at lead and us not having quite a clue about were the heck he was leading us to. We were tired and hungry, and were all "hey Zbyněk, when the heck are we gonna arrive?"
He said he needed a hotel to stay overnight close to the main train station – in order not to have to walk too far when the league is over and he'd be off for home. We finally crawled near the station, he found a nearby hotel and left us standing in front of it, uttering that he'd be right back and then we could go have the supper.
Ten minutes, twenty minutes... still no trace of Zbyněk whatsoever.
"Where the hell is he? He said he'd be right back."
Thirty minutes having passed, we were on the brink of going for him to the reception or even turning around and setting out for somewhere for supper just the three of us, when Zbyněk finally appeared with a sour grin.
"I suppose you've had a lot of fun with the receptionist," we sneered ironically, cold to the bone.
"You aren't gonna believe that," he laughed, "not only that the receptionist was apparently Russian so she had a hard time understanding me, but when she finally found out what I was after, she checked the list of applicants and said, ‘I'm sorry, sir, but I don't have you zdyes.' I thought I would die."
We chuckled. Zdyes, transcribed from the cyrilics, being the Russian for "here", we were clear about how hard it must have been for him to finally have her accommodate him.
Seeing the boys having their supper, I started to really look forward to having mine with Dominika.
The boys stuffing away at the grub, me I just ordered a non-alcoholic beer, telling myself I'd better put the supper and the "genuine" beer off for later to enjoy it with Dominika to have an opportunity to invite her for one and thus reciprocate to her for putting me up for the night.
I went to the front of the restaurant and called her. But if I thought that standing in front of the restaurant would help me hear her better, I was mistaken. The wind blowing, cars passing by – there were the more of them the longer I called, of course – I thought I'd hit the roof, or the sky at the moment as no roof was above me.
I finished my beer and said goodbye; now I sought to take the tube to Kobylisy, the Prague suburb where Dominika lived.
The station where I was told to get off (the tube, I mean...!) was called Ládví. A funny name, I thought – when I come home, I must find out where it came from. It reminded me of the word ledví, a bookish Czech expression for the kidneys. And indeed – in this part of the Kobylisy suburb there used to be a nephrologic center.
Lame as it may seem, right after saying hello and giving her a hug, I had to pose this stupid question about where we'd go for the supper. I was as hungry as a wolf, or, as a modern popular Czech simile goes, "as an actor". It being something we'd already arranged before in the phone dialog, she lead me to the nearby pizzeria. Well, ur, nearby – supposed half a mile is still "nearby". But for a mountain hiker, it sure is!
The tuna pizza I had, crowned by a mug of Pilsner, really hit the spot. Not to speak of the good music accompanying it!
"Who's singing that?" I quizzed Dominika, grinning. At the time of our university years, I gave her some "listening classes" after she confessed to me she was quite a laywoman when it comes to music.
Of course I had to tell her. "Mark Knopfler and Dire Straits, duh," I let a sneer. "Such a legend!"
"You know, no one's there to teach me since you've been gone," she sneers back.
To my wonder, a lot of other Dire Straits' songs were played as well while we were there.
"Holy moley – Dire Straits again. Looks like the current DJ over there likes 'em. This one is called Private Investigations."
What would have hit the spot after the arrival to her place was a shower; I was told warm water was not available in her place though.
"Okay, but that way you'll have to put up with the sweaty smell of mine," I grinned. After the tourn a player was nothing but one big stain of sweat.
"Well, no prob really – you know how it is with my smelling ability," she triumphed me again. That's a fact – she'd already once told me.
She took me aback a bit, asking whether I'd like her to turn on the TV. "What for?" I asked perplexedly. "I have you here."
"Well, some like to use it as a background."
"Not me, indeed – no worries about that." We had a nice chat over a cup of tea; around 1am I decided it was high time to hit the sack so I could be fresh for the next day's team league.

Dominika was kind as always and she even accompanied me to the tube station on the Sunday morning. After a few stations I had to change for public transport and right at the stop I met other league players – Katka's mother Dagmar Rusá of the Záškoláci or The Truants team, and her brother, Katka's uncle, the triple National Champ Milan Kuděj of the last year's league winners Poškoláci. Great. Now I sure won't mischange or whatever.
"Hey... you guys are sure gonna gimme advice," I grinned. A bigger prob than which streetcar to get on was where to obtain ticket if you don't have any change.
"Come get on with us, we're gonna go together," Dagmar said, and Milan even gave me the change to buy a ticket.
"Thanks a lot. I'll give it back to ya as soon as I spend the notes and get change for them."
"Don't mention it," he lashes his hand.
Right down the hall of the Tyrš House, we saw a surprising scene – a group of players were trying to get upstairs a chap confined to a wheelchair. I rushed to lend a hand too, but it turned out to be useless – the two gals managed it themselves and refused the offer to relieve.
Throwing the backpack off my back, I hoped the day before's prosecution of bad luck was gone. As the tradition went, we stuffed away at the delicious garlic spread with no heed to what effect on the upcoming opponents it was going to have.
"The guy on the wheelchair, that's Petr Burda," said Jirka Kracík. "You sure know him as Burdik from the scrabble site." I sure do! He's been called up to play for the Ýáčci team as a substitute for a player who had to leave after the Saturday league tourn.
Pavel Vojáček, the new Association pres and team league organizer, called up for attention. "We're having a player needing physical assistance here today."
It was understood that any "superfluous" player of any team who was not playing in the current round was supposed to help Petr put the tiles on the board, hit the clock for him, and so on.
Our first venture of the day is the Sirotci team – the Orphans.
I take on Jindra Voráčková, while Zbyněk does Jiří Kamín. Jiří Kracík sits against Michal Přikryl and Pepa Grosskopf, who "doesn't care and is just a victim", gets the fourth one that's left – Pavel Vojáček himself.
Lady Luck is apparently a passing lover. If I was lucky against her last time, eking out a "lame victory" thanks to getting both blanks at a last minute, getting together a bingo, the tables have turned thid time. With a bingo a both blanks she beat me 280:414, without me having any chance. I could only hope the other team members did better ...
... but save Zbyněk Burda, who won over Jiří Kamín (321:357, one bingo and one blank per either of them), they didn't. Jirka Kracík lost to Michal Přikryl 385:349 and Pepa Grosskopf did to Pavel Vojáček 360:326.
"Okay. So my win is kinda completely fuckin' useless, eh?" grinned Zbyněk, saying just what Pepa did the day before. Indeed. As a team we get diddly-squat for the round.
Let the second round be better. We're playing against Záškoláci, „The Truants"; who chooses to play against me is one of my fave scrabble buddies, Pavlína Pospěchová.
Pavlína started the game but saying she had crap, she swapped her letters. And so my first move must have pissed her off: using a blank I got right as a part of my first rack in this game, I start off with a bingo and chafe my hands, thinking, if I don't stop pushing, I'll for sure have the game nailed soon.
She, though, pushed too. She being neck and neck with me in no time, I had a hard time escaping again. I finally did, but – the same scenario: she soon was after me, breathing on my neck and... making me finding it necessary to compose another bingo, which I did – a pure one this time, blanks having been fairly "distributed" by fate 1:1 between us. The sum of our scores reaching good 778, I don't win, though, by more than 28 points – 375:403.
Jirka Kracík lost to Josef Pustka 369:288 in this round and Pepa Grosskopf did to Dagmar Rusá 295:349, but thanks to Zbyněk Burda who smashed Petr Kuča, the father of last year's National Champ Martin, 422:205, the tie was big for us – our sum of scores was bigger: 1408:1298 in our favor.
But hey – back at home, after a few weeks only, I find something which would made one go apeshit: could y'all believe that – NEITHER of the two bingos I had played against Pavlína was good....! The game's victory of mine and the tie for our team was thus gained thanks to a sudden lucky strike.
The fight exhausts me so much so I spend the whole break sitting on the closet. Now, why am I telling ya – literally – such shit? Well, 'cause right there on the closet, isolated and locked as I am, I could hear interesting details of the current team league round which was still in progess.
"Ya know what I've done?" a guy was telling some other guy standing at the neighboring pissoir. "I played OB [the Czech for "every other"] and simultaneously, I played BO* by mistake. I had to take the move back and pass, and 'cuzza that I caused the loss of my team by one point. Man, I'd kick my ass for that."

Looks like the crapper is a good source of information, eh? Not to speak of inspiration.

I come back just as Pavel Vojáček is announcing the end of the round – good, so the break hasn't even started yet. Even so, though, I've already been sought for.
"You've come late – you'll get Vacek," Jirka utters towards me. Like, he's the most dangerous of the four available opps.
"Okay... I don't mind," I grin. I don't, really. Pepa Grosskopf, as a "victim", takes on the top-10 old Grim Reaper Jaroslav Kodym, who played as a substitute for the pretty and amiable Jana Vágnerová.
Had anyone watched our game "from the outside" without being able to see our racks, they would probably have considered the game quite equal. Yeah – that's 'cause they wouldn't have seen all those pure but homeless bingos of mine...
One. A second. Man, a third....! And still homeless. Guess I'll hit the fucking roof.

And now he – guess what!

Yeah – not only played one of his, but downright a tripled one.
Thank God it's so dubious. Let's go challenge that.

"Outta luck," I rejoice in secret, coming back. He has to take it back and pass.
I still can't help but try it one again and throw off one more letter in a low-point move in the hope of composing a placeable (!) pure bingo.
But it fucking won't work.
I abandon the hope – or the hope does me? – for a bingo and push it forward. Seeing the strong moves, he pulls away... finally managing to go out and cause the game to end at 296:337 in his favor. Not that bad to lose by 31 to him, but – had there been "homes" for the three homeless bingos of mine...! Scrabble life's not fair sometimes.
As I walk away, passing by the neighboring tables, I see Pepa Grosskopf just finishing his game against the top-10 old Grim Reaper Jarda Kodym. AND – guess what...!

".... yippee!" rejoices Pepa, merrily signing the sheet. He won just closely, by six points, thanks to the letters Jarda had to deduct – but hey, he won in spite of the Grim Reaper having both blanks...! He apparently goes on shining as he did the day before.
His joy, though, was up and gone on finding out he was the only Parnas team member to have won in this round. Zbyněk Burda lost to František Růžička 387:322 and Jirka Kracík did to Jana Vágnerová 288:415. Our second loss after three rounds. Ugh. Let's fucking do better.

When in the fourth round we had to do with the Nerobité team, guess who chose me?
Yeah. Exactly – Břeťa Basta.
"Revenge, eh?" I grin. Just like the one I did after the February Prague tourn at the 1st team league when he killed me first at the preceeding February qualification tourn.
Getting ahead, I manage to compose a 8-letter bingo, using a letter on the board. He didn't even block it and so I played it, not willing to believe the bingo was that easy to play. There's sure something behind it that fate plans to do against me.
And indeed. Towards the end, when I expected it the least, he played a tripled bingo for 86 points and then got the other blank, too. His win of 370:322 leaves a bitter feeling inside me, like, he pulled the game out and he knows it.
Pepa Grosskopf beats the "bald-headed beast" Martin Ďuriš 357:305, but on finding again that he was the only one of Parnas team to have won again, he burst out laughing.
"Fuck off, ya two fools!" he laughed fiendishly in desperation – thus addressing me and Zbyněk. Again all he could do was proclaim his win "completely fucking useless"...
Fifth round – against Záškodníci or The Saboteurs this time. Jirka Kracík takes on Barbora Hrůzová for a personal revenge and Pepa Grosskopf puts his name down opposite Radana Williamsová's, while I'm washing my hands: when I come back, I'm only put in a catch-22 between Eva Baďurová and her son Radek. Eva is rated lower than me but even so she's dangerous, having scalped such aces as Petr Vejchoda or Zbyněk Burda (right the day before). Although she ended up 4 – 4 the day before, that day she hadn't won a game yet. At the 2nd team league the day before she played against Zbyněk as well and beat him, so the two had a personal revenge.
This game reminded me strongly of the previous one I had. A neck and neck equal fight, the difference being that my bingo this time was worth no less than 81 pts. But he was the winner, although he bingoed for poor 59 points only towards the end. I didn't lose by much – by 21 points, 392:371. Zbynĕk, though, lost to Eva by quite a lot – 292:424, by 132 points, so all we acquired was one point for a small tie.
"You'd better win some at last," Pepa cuts in an ironic tone.

We sure had.
Standing – well, sitting – against the Brno team Brněnští draci or The Brno Dragons in the sixth round, I choose to play against a buddy – or sis – of mine from the scrabble site, Martina Iliasová. Yeah – the pregnant one living with the "stud" Petr Landa.
"Two on one, eh?" I laugh. "Don't you dare let the little scrabbler inside you give ya advice."

As I shove a pure bingo (koupali – a pural past tense of the verb koupat, "to bathe"), I got my optimism back for a while, thinking, if I win the remaining three games including this one, I could still be 4 – 4.
When I said for a while, though, I meant it literally. If there's this Murphy's law in scrabble according to which you automatically get shit for letters after playing a bingo, then this one must have been downright a constitutional one. Not only that I did, but the shit even kept coming for the rest of the game long, such one that the racks I kept getting didn't even let me block the triple that shone right over there, and it just left me hoping, don't she dare play a bingo in that spot.

She did.

Yeah. What else would you expect on this fucking day? Playing nev(z)duje for 86 points, she practically shrank all my hopes for winning to the size of Emmylou Harris's Wrecking Ball. All I could hope for now is that she gets shit for letters, drawing the last ones from the bottom of the bag.

She didn't.

Now I know – just like a few rounds before – I won't make it anymore. Not indeed, I lose 375:399, but even so thank her for a great game.
Zbyněk Burda is eager to "report" the results of his game against Radek Mannheim (he beat him 338:370), but on seeing he's the only one of us to have won in this round, he rolls his eyes. Jirka Kracík lost to Tomáš Fanta 280:354 and even our "shining" Pepa Grosskopf burned it closely to Jiří Kučka, by two points – 372:370.
"I would've won too," Jirka defends against Zbyněk's mocking, "but he [Tomáš Fanta] shoved příšero there on the board right before the end of the game!"
We couldn't help but laugh. Příšero being the vocative case of příšera, the Czech for a monster, Jirka could pretty well take the bingo personally, as the vocative case is used when addressing someone. Not only did he dare play a bingo against him, but he called him a monster at the same time...
Seventh round Against Sklípkani or the Trap-Door Spiders. I feel the need to go outside before we start and take a gulp of fresh air, only to be told on return that I'd come too late to choose my opp and therefore I'd get Ivo Hradský.
"Okay... I don't care," I lash my hand; today's not my scrabble day anyway.
Ugh. Someone I just can't beat, let alone under today's constellation. This red bearded guy being a top-20 every-year Finals participator, I remember giving up a game against him once at the scrabble site, he getting such great tiles it was just too much to bear.
This time, though, it was a fair loss at least. Yeah – I even defend with a bingo after he attacks with one. And believe it or not, I sneak a non-word sift past him. Not that he didn't doubt its validity, but he said after the game (when we found out it was *ungood) that I looked so assured when playing the word that he bought it... actually I looked assured mainly because I just believed it was good, not realizing at that moment that I was confusing it with the English scrabble version. I lose just by slightly over a hundred points – 426:330, which against a top fifteen player is sure not that bad. What I felt to be bad was just the fact I was the only Parnas member to lose in this round, although Jirka Kracík won over Aleš Horák by mere six points. Pepa Grosskopf shone again, beating a top-20 Finals fighter Martin Kapler 271:445.
Well then, last round before us. Not that it would play any substantial role in changing our team score – so far in the third team league we had been through four (!) losses, one big tie, one small tie and now, finally, a first win. What a crying shame. Let's at least have another in the upcoming last round, against Střelené kachny – The Meshugga Ducks.
Now, guess who.
Guess who chose me.
Yeah – none other than the beautiful half-Vietnamese Žaneta Leová.
"Guess your team mates made you play against me on purpose... cuz they know what chills you give me," I sneer at her.
"Nope... I have chosen you," she defends. Oh well. Be it as may, let's not let her charm distract me.
Being in the lead from the very beginning, it makes me happy that I really didn't let myself get infatuated. And anyway, a thought of her PDA with this Sikora makes my stomach turn upside down.
Well then – seems that Lady Luck has finally arrived. My index finger itches to tap my watch in an eloquent gesture: you've come kinda late, Lady! Now that it's almost over.
(And my middle finger was itching too – to show her a much more eloquent gesture.)
Now, I've never done this at a tourn but – against sweet Žaneta I just can't help it: when I get two blanks at one draw, during my next move I throw one of them back into the bag for her. I play a bingo with the other blank... heh, guess what happened in awhile after a few moves. Yep – the other blank came back. I swapped tiles and threw it in again. And several moves later... the cursed other blank returned for the third time.
Ehh... we still are at safe lead, so let's turn it in again.
A few further moves... then guess what.

Of course: the other blank came for the fourth time. I'm so sorry sweet Žaneta... now there's no way I could throw it back again.
"I'm so sorry... I've thrown the other blank back for ya three times, and now it came back to me for the fourth time," I grin.
"Well, why do you do that?"
Because you're so beautiful, my tongue was itching to say. But anyway, I just utter that I did that so that the game is as fair as possible.
On arrival to report my 367:303 win I find we really do have managed a second win as a team at least. The only Parnas member to have suffered a loss is Zbyněk Burda this time, who lost to the 2004.National Champ Michal Sikora 501:256.
Four losses, one big tie, one small tie and two wins for our team today. Makes us sick. But whom it makes sick the most is Zbyněk and me, both having won just 5 of 16 games.
"How did you do?" we ask one another, asking for personal results – tho the fave typo resluts would sure fit in better this time.
"2 – 3," says Zbyněk, the number this time not meaning wins – losses but wins Saturday – wins Sunday.
"Good – at least someone having performed as lamely as me," I rejoice, provided one can rejoice after a double kick in the ass. "Me I'm 3 – 2."
This strangled the hope of achieving the bronze place as a team in the league. The two unlucky team leagues kicked our team down from 4th to 7th place of 13.
Ending up 38th – ughhhh – of 52 league players, I have fallen down to the ugly 57th place of 243 active players on the Association chart. Ughhhhh. Where's the good old 33rd one of the end of last year? But hey – gonna get right back there!

poslal scrabblista, 13.04.2010 0:34:00, Komentáře (0)