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Odkazy:

The Kladno Qualification Tournament 2011

I called Zbyněk Burda, wondering whether he was gonna go to Kladno. (Like, he has been attending just about every tourn since 1998, save the Hradec ones which he himself organizes – but just to make sure). That' to say, I needed someone to take me along in a car – there's no way of getting to Kladno from Trutnov by a morning train; I'd have had to set up for a three-day trip that way, and that doesn't sound much attractive.

He answered in his typical way – “dunno”. You could picture him grinning on the other side of the wireless connection.

Of course he did. I called him once again two days before the tourn. After his usual “wharya wakin' me up for” (this being his usual “greeting” regardless of the time of day) we agreed to meet early Saturday morning in front of the Hradec power company.

6.30. I agree it's about time I left the warmth of the train station building and go to the meeting spot.

6.40. No trace of Zbyněk. What's up? He's usually punctual.

6.50. Still no trace of Zbyněk. What the heck? I call him ... nobody answers.

6.55. I call him once again, like, I'm slowly starting to be a bit cold. You're lucky that I'm from the mountains, so I'm kinda used to.

“Wharya wakin' me up for?” Well, apparently he doesn't lose his sense of humor even after 25 minutes' delay. “My car wouldn't start, took me ages to get it on the road at all. I'll be there in five minutes.”

When he finally arrived, he said we should manage to get there in time anyway.

“Alzheimer called me,” he sneered.

“Who's that? Kodym?” Does he call the old-as-hills Grim Reaper that way?

“Haha, nope ... Mannheim.” Oh I see – Alzheimer, eh? “He told me to pick him up on Černý most (The Black Bridge – a part of Prague as well as a bridge in that location).” We didn't know what we were gonna be through because of this extra passenger on our way back.

 

He threw an automap after me. “You're gonna be the navigator.” Haha – I've heard this one before.

Me, the 1996 victim of the biggest cop action when gotten lost after an orienteering school trip.

He luckily knows most of the way. At one point, when unsure, Radek advices from the back seat. And – guess what! He chooses the wrong way.

On finding that out, we head back to the spot of the wrong turn. We should still manage... at ease.

 

We did, arriving at about 8.30. Still a lot of time for a coffee and a breakfast, even a chat with players present. I saw Katka Rusá sitting at one of the hindmost tables, getting the tiles of one of the sets in line (well, in a square, I should say – ten times ten, to find out whether any tile is missing). I went to greet her and help her with the set, while other players were verifying the completeness of other sets.

I enjoy a cuppa morning tea and coffee and some cakes before start. Being seeded at table #11, I get Jan Dvořák to play against, one of the two newbies to the scrabble tournament scene, who at this tourn were experiencing their first scrabble tournament ever.

You know how it goes – playing against a tournament newbie. Every one of us once was a newbie, so you try not to be too hard on him or her. This one, though, asked me to play as I would a normal game. Awright, then. I wanted to forgive him a compulsory pass after three wrong challenges, not give penalty crosses ... but he refused to be given any such reprievement. So, he lost two moves because of not being able to make a move within the two minutes allowed for one, then he lost another because of a compulsory pass for three wrong challenges. I win 258 – 344 without having to make any particular effort.

At table # 3, a strange thing happened – Katka Rusá was beaten by 1472-rated Viktor Hagenhofer, actually for a very second time at a tourn.

I get triggered to table #9 to play against 1791-rated Markéta Gutmanová in the second round. She's a scrabble macho but such a nice lady that you don't even mind losing to her. She got qualified four times for the National Championships in the last four years but didn't attend the last one because of being in a high stage of pregnancy. Now she's evidently left her child at home and went to this tourn – she being right here from Kladno, it would have been a shame to miss such an opportunity.

“Daddy's babysitting,” she says to my question, meaning the baby's daddy.

“I see,” I start a nice, but merciless game at the same time. Neither of us plays a bingo, but squeezing the shit out of bonus squares, I get ahead soon. She gets after me, but I successfully escape, and not letting go of the effort, I win 345 – 304. I thank her for a good game and wish her luck in the upcoming rounds.

On my way to the noticeboard to check on the continuous ranking, I bump into Katka Rusá's uncle, the triple National Champ Milan Kuděj.

“Got two?” I guess his current number of wins after two rounds, to find out whether he was likely to become my next opponent.

“Nope ... don't you know that hares don't get counted until the end of the hunt?” he grins from under his beard.

“Haha ... you're right.”

Enjoying some buns for breakfast, I walk past the computer with the scrabble dictionary installed; bent over it there's Jarda Buksa, typing a word into it. I stop by to watch the weird word he's entering: gavúnkův. A few players passing by pop their eyes at it – what the heck is that? The only thing we can figure out is that it's a possessive first case of an animate masculine noun (such cases of nouns end in -ův) and that the nominative case will be gavúnek – but who the heck is gavúnek?

“I can describe the fish to you,” Jarda says. Awright, a kinda fish, eh? A fishy word, indeed.

What kinda butcher am I gonna get after two wins of two?

Zbyněk Burda, the third round match-ups say. Good. Have beaten him countless times at the club, once at a tourn and once at the National Championship.

As usual, he uses up almost the whole two minutes thinking over his rack... only to say “pass” in the end. “I'll try and pass – and hope you hand me a suitable letter for a hook,” he grins.

Awright. I play smrž – a nice non-vowel word for the morel, a kind of edible mushroom. Hope I ain't given a hook.

“Expected that,” he grins. “I have to break this one up. Had you played just any vowel – I could have played hrochova (possessive of hippo) or hrachový (adjective of pea) or whatever! And you play smrž.”

He did manage to compose another bingo in the 10^th move, but I escaped quickly, and even getting the other blank didn't save him from a loss. I win 307 – 345 and as is already a kinda custom between us, I grin and say “good game”, whereupon he answers with a similar grin “a pretty bad one”. Since then, he kept teasing me with such questions as “when's your train due ... from Kladno?”

 

The fourth round – table #3, against Hana Závišková. This 1595-rated lady is an example of a contrary between their profile evaluation on the scrabble site and the real person. While her profile evaluation is not much to write home about, she herself is a nice woman.

If you think I should manage her without problems, being rated more than 150 points above her, I should add a bit of a detail – she's dangerous. She's even already beaten me at tourns no less than three times.

Even this game against her wasn't a breeze at all. Especially not after her 7^th move when she shot a bingo at me while I thought I was well ahead to enjoy the lead until the eventual victory. From then on, she kept me busy until the very end – and by the very end I mean the utter end. My last move was the one I spent ages over, almost the whole two minutes allowed for it.

And then I know. Křích ... gets me rid of the awful 4-point Ř as well as the C; two birds with one stone. The only knack to it was that it's a poetic word hardly anyone except scrabble players has ever heard about, and scracely anyone would look for the perfectly common word keřích, the locative plural case of bush, behind it.

It's more common for something to hide behind a bush than for a bush to hide behind a string of letters, eh? Let alone several bushes – and poetic ones.

Thanks to my poetic bushes there's no need for me to be afraid anymore of her going out – even if she does, my three-point leftover isn't big enough to help her to a victory I guess.

Not really. Winning 328 – 325 – against her bingo and both blanks makes me rejoice. Now this was no good luck – just a carefully worked out plan which has just brought me a sweet reward.

 

Dinner break. I guess today's one's gonna be a manna – after four wins of four, for the fourth player of 67 in the continuous ranking of the tourn!

 

Katka Rusá's uncle, triple National Champ Milan Kuděj, comes to my table, carrying his dinner. “I'm gonna be dining with ya here,” he says.

“Be welcome. Got four [wins]?” I spy. Just in order to find out whether he's likely to become my next opponent.

“Well – almost! Two,” he laughs fiendishly from under his beard, whereupon he repeats the “paternal advice” he had given me before. Hares don't get counted until the end of the hunt. And oh yeah, he hadn't actually had two after the second round, so now he can't have had four, eh?

 

The dinner being delicious but a bit spicy at the same time, I gathered it needed a beer.

“There's a limited number of beers,” Pavel Chaloupka warned us. First come, first served, eh? I'm finally glad to have downed the dinner so quickly.

After four wins of four, it's as clear as the sky that I now end up at table #1 against a butcher. Indeed – Martin Sobala, one of the very best, if not THE very best, Czech scrabble players, and a triple national champ. Currently, his wife is expecting a child so I express hope it's not gonna put an end to his scrabble career.

“Well, hopefully not – you know, that's why I try to qualify for this year's championship within the very first tourns,” he says. Indeed – he's applied for the very next tourn in Prague in Februrary, too, which I ain't gonna miss either.

I have taken the bottle of beer along to table #1 to help me live this game up – I'm gonna lose anyway, so why stress, why worry? Let's have fun.

He gains his lead without any particular effort with the easiness of a triple national champ. A few leaps, however, from my side, and a bingo (yeah – quite curiously, I was the first to play one in our game, in spite of him being a bigger bingo king!) and I'm neck and neck with him. Peep – I'm here again!

I don't enjoy this for long, though. Not only that he escapes by means of a few pro moves but on top of that four turns later he tries a bingo which he himself isn't sure about but which turns out valid, which gives him further extra 59 points and empties the pool on top of that, which leaves me being tortured with the shits in my rack I hadn't been able to get rid of before. Other two turns later he goes out and I have to deduct all that shit, with gets him over 400 and me under 300, fuck, I'm not even gonna have these fucking 300.

406 – 298 – oh well, I can be glad after all that the kick in the ass from this triple National Champ wasn't even harder. “Just” by 108 points, heh.

Well now, I'm still 4 – 1 currently and 10^th of 67 in the continuous ranking of the tourn, so I can still expect another butcher to be matched up against me now, eh?

 

Mirka Zaisová, says the schedule.

Are you kidding...?! Rated more than 200 lower than me – has she been doing so good so far that she's 4 – 1 now as well?

Indeed. She's the common-law wife of Radim Hyršovský, a top player (qualified for the Finals 7 times 1999-2006) who, to his bad luck, sometimes comes drunk to tourns and that's why he ends up among the last places. But this time – he still keeps the first place in the continuous ranking of the tournament and Mirka evidently has her share of their sort of “common good luck” today.

Jarda Buksa walks by: “I'm the only one to have beaten you today,” he says to Mirka, proudly beating his chest. There was a bit of biting irony in it – I have already said Mirka's rating was no big deal and she was just doing extremely good this time.

Apparently, though, I'm the one against whom any good lucky strike of any player just won't work. I throw a bingo against her as early as in my 4^th move. Then I get the other blank and six turns later I play another bingo with it. She tries hard to keep pace with me but after the second bingo of mine it just wouldn't go anymore. I win 369 – 325. “The first game during which the tiles really fell my way,” I have to admit.

So, a butcher to be expected again in the next round, eh?

 

Indeed. A double National Champ Martin Daněk, someone I've never managed to beat, although the last time we played against each other the result was very close. This is what I remembered on seating myself against him and what encouraged me, even so much that I joked, saying to Luboš Vencl at the neighboring table #1: “Gonna make a roasted fallow deer.” (Fallow deer – that's what daněk is in Czech).

“Do make one – I'm gonna make a roasted reindeer,” he grinned in answer, making me roar with laughter. The triple Nation Champ Martin Sobala is often nicknamed Sobi – the plural of reindeer.

 

This was a tactical game many players would recall the old times over: no bingo, just effective usage of premium squares. That's why we ran neck and neck until the very end, silently racking our brains over each and every move, and all you could hear from our table being the regular beeps of the clock and point reports.

Towards the end the tension grew thinner, at least in me. I ain't already gonna make it anyway, I say to myself, seeing the final shits in my rack impossible to get rid of. Even so, losing JUST 337 – 323 to this double National Champ is something I'm glad for.

 

On my way to get some more of the yummy homemade cakes the Kladno tourn is especially famous for among the players, I saw Věrka Majtánová putting on her jacket. What's the matter? She being a non-smoker, it's very improbable she'd be on her way outside for a cig.

“I'm leaving – I can as well sneeze at this tourn. Bye,” she says briefly. As I learn later on, she was 2 – 5 at the time so it's no wonder. She's from Prague which is just around the corner from Kladno and she had another event to participate in anyway.

Getting one of the last few yummy cakes, I meet Katka Rusá during the break between the rounds as is already our kind of custom. She tells me how she played against her mother the last round and how she drew flies on her score sheet instead of penalty crosses. A good amusement before the last but one round: the match-ups say Roman Čejka against me, table # 7. For whom is this number gonna be a lucky one?

This guy is like a tourn ghost: doesn't attend many, but when he does, he just comes, beats 'em all and leaves again. He being rated just around 1650, I can't force myself to any pre-respect, though. First, I have to experience your butcher art myself, guy.

 

I work out a pure 81-point bingo as early as in my 5^th move, but he answers with one of his – not pure, though – right away. Well, I knew this one wasn't gonna be a breeze.

A neck and neck game was slowly leaning towards me, the difference finally being almost a hundred points. I win 419 – 317, thank him a for a good game and go watch some other players. I stop by Jan Dvořák, the newbie I played against in the first round. He was finishing his game at one of the hindmost tables against 1200-rated Gabriela Gugová and I came at a most interesting point just before the end: both players had 299 points and loads to deduct. Gabriela has a leftover of 15, Jan counts his to be just 14. He breathes a deep sigh of relief, until I walk by and make a remark.

“The bingo you made is invalid,” I grin. I can tell by the mere look.

“Are you kidding?!”

“I wish I was.” Now that the game is over, I can calmly tell you. The word was *nepadlí, which looked like an antonym of fallen (I can't say unfallen as unfallen is a good word in English scrabble – let's translate it with a wrong prefix for our purposes, e.g. *infallen).

“It should be good, though,” argued the newbie.

“Like, why? Has anyone ever used it?” wondered I with a sneer. “If a soldier survives a war, he's simply alive, not *infallen.”

“Yeah, but any word which could be created in theory should be valid, not just those used in practice.” Haha! A weird idea about scrabble, indeed. Like, according to your theory, if UNWHITE is good, *unblack should be as well, eh? You'd make scrabble one perfect mess.

 

The last round. Who's gonna be the coronation? Apparently another 6 – 2 player.

 

Alexandra Willerthová. Ohhh nope.

If there's someone I really hate to play against, then it's her. Oozing charm, I said when I first saw her, eh? Oh yeah – that's before she opens her dirty mouth.

I seem to be one of the people she hates to play against, too. But in my case, I suppose it's mainly because she loses a lot to me, our personal ratio being 5 – 1 in my favor.

As soon as at the beginning of the game, I feel my rack, though blankless, sort of bingo-prone. I couldn't think of any, though, so after about ninety seconds of reasoning I was ready to put some ordinary move on the board... when I finally saw it. Vodítkem, man, you fucking blind? Such a nice pure bingo and I'd almost miss it. The instrumental case of lead (for walking a dog)...

I'm not allowed to rejoice for long, though, as she counterbingos right away with pyšných (a gentive plural of the adjective proud) with a blank for the C, for just one point less than the one of mine. For the next five rounds, the game is a strenuous fight with neither of us going to give in easily.

 

The pool is growing thin, I say to myself, feeling the bag. Time to make something up.

 

And yeah – squeezing the shit of the O4 double letter square, I play elux, a physical unit, for 48 points, well NOW I think I got it nailed.

Now, guess what comes in my last-but-one draw. Yeah, exactly – the blank. Only now! I burn it in my going-out move for 15. Oh well, anyway – at least I can say I actually managed the whole game without it, whereas she needed one to keep pace with me. 390 – 335 – ain't that a hell of a good score if your blank didn't come until the very end!

7 – 2, man! Now that's damn good. I talked to the scrabble wizards present and they confirmed I should end up the fifth at worst. Of sixty-seven – ain't that a hell of a rocket start of qualification for the 2011 championship!

 

As always, we prevail Pavel to read the results from the bottom to make it as thrilling as possible. As another tradition of the Kladno tourn goes, the dead last player gets a pack of an instant soup. But as she (Zdenka Rosypalová – traditionally again) had already been gone, she missed this prize. Of the 67 players participating, one newbie ended up 46^th and the other (the one I played against) 52^nd. The former could have gotten the traditional best-newbie-of-the-tourn prize, but by the time his name was read he had already been up and gone as well so he was out of luck.

The every-year Finals qualified Jiří Kamín was 38^th to our astonishment, commenting it with the words that he doesn't wanna qualify this year anyway, giving it “to the bingo throwers”. Later on, I checked on how he did on the web – a bad lucky strike hard to believe: one loss by one point, another by two points, a third by eight points.... a 4 – 5 record altogether.

“This place is one I'd rather not read,” Pavel says when he gets to the 35^th one. That's where he himself ended up.

Katka Rusá ended up 13^th – not giving a hoot about the training, it's again rather a result of her natural scrabble talent. And hey – Pavel was only reading the 6 – 3 ones.

“The players from the 7^th place up... have seven wins.”

“Seventh place ... Radim Hyršovský.” Remember how butchersome he was (is that a valid word? Haha) in the beginning, and even his common-law wife was (who finally ended up 31^th with a 5 – 4 record)? Hey, so I'm even better than him today.

“Sixth place... Břeťa Basta.” Hey, better than Basta today? That's even better, literally – better to listen to.

“Fifth ... Dáša Rusá.” Wow, Katka's mom did even better than her today – and I still ain't heard my name. If it were a medal today! I was already once fourth at a tourn... last year in Brno. Nice try but no cigar – can a non-smoker say that?

 

The higher the place, the bigger the hand from other players. I was sitting together with Katka and her mother who's just picked herself up from the chair ... to receive the congratulation. When the prizes are given out, the ranking will be read from the upper end so the more successful players have bigger choice.

 

“Fourth place ... Tomáš Rodr.”

 

Okay... not bad. Bronze would have been better – I even have the same number of wins as the bronze player did. He scored better, though.

Even so – good start of this year's qualification, fourth place being for 42 points. Goin' home...

 

Radek Mannheim joined us again in Zbyněk's car without any of us knowing what it would cause. He said he would spend the night at a friend's in Prague, and as we were driving through it, he “ordered” Zbyněk to take him to the Prague suburb where the friend lived. When we arrived there, Radek said:

 

“You're fifty meters aside from the highway. Just drive back and you get there in no time.”

 

Instructions which kept us busy for like another hour, driving to and fro on lost, god-forsaken Prague roads. Now it's clear I ain't gonna make it ... but oh well, a night at my grandma's is a necessary tax for today's success! Cheers!

 

linkuj.cz vybrali.sme.sk

poslal scrabblista, 14.02.2011 0:18:00

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