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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!

linkuj.cz vybrali.sme.sk

poslal scrabblista, 27.10.2010 7:34:00

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