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Odkazy:

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!

linkuj.cz vybrali.sme.sk

poslal scrabblista, 09.12.2010 23:16:00

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