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Odkazy:

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? 

linkuj.cz vybrali.sme.sk

poslal scrabblista, 11.07.2010 2:55:00

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