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!
linkuj.cz vybrali.sme.sk
poslal scrabblista,
11.05.2010 1:34:00
